Season 4 Episode 6: Is My Body Broken Because of IBS?

The question that I get asked often from clients, that truly breaks my heart is, “is my body broken because of my IBS?” The short answer is no. The long answer is there's something very real that's going on and that is going wrong in your body, but the good news is that it can be managed.  

During this episode, I explain why your body may feel “broken”, the pathology and its impact on your gut-brain interaction, and routines and other guidance you can incorporate to help with your IBS symptoms. 

In this episode, we cover:

• Why your body may feel “broken”

• My own experience with IBS

• The disorder between your gut and brain

• Guidance and strategies to help with IBS symptoms

• Fueling your body with fiber

Don’t forget to connect to others in The GUT Community, a Facebook group for those with IBS and digestive disorders to support one another and dive deeper into each episode together.

What if you could develop vital skills to help manage intrusive IBS symptoms in only 10 minutes a day? How would your life change? Today’s episode is sponsored by Mahana, an app that teaches you skills to manage your IBS and decrease symptom severity. Through the app, you’ll get short daily lessons and experiment with new skills, unlock tools to support your symptom management, and learn to make small changes to improve everyday patterns. Get started now and download the app at mahanatx.com/TheGutShow.

A question that I get asked often that breaks my heart, but I also understand where it's coming from because honestly, I asked the exact same question whenever I was struggling with IBS, without a lot of guidance. And that is, is my body broken because of my IBS? 

The short answer is no. Now the longer answer is, there's something very real that's going on and that is going wrong in your body, but it can be managed. So what I want to talk about first is why it may feel like your body is broken, and what is actually wrong.

So whenever we feel like the body is broken, this really stems from the body not being able to do one of its natural functions that we were literally born to do. So if you were born into this world, and pooping pretty soon and pretty early on and if you weren't, there's something else going on, but if you were pooping as an infant, and even as a young child able to poop and eliminate stool, chances are you didn't think a lot about it.

Yes, you might have needed a little extra support like some prune juice, moving your legs to pass gas, getting your body moving as you get older, but for the most part, pooping was a natural thing that you were able to do.

With IBS, either we feel like we can't stop the poop, so you deal with diarrhea where it seems like your body is unable to form poop correctly, and hold it in and stop it from coming out at the worst times. Or you feel like your body is literally incapable of creating, moving and passing poop out of your body, so you're constipated.

Now, if you feel this way, your feelings are very real. And you're not alone in that, I know a lot in our community, a lot of people in our community have mentioned the same thing and they feel broken, they feel something's wrong, they feel lost, and honestly, I felt that way too, especially in college.

I dealt with IBS, you know, I was diagnosed in fourth grade, most of my elementary school years were marked by digestion issues, which we kind of linked back to Giardia at that time, but whenever I got a little bit older, I wasn't really given many options, right? So we ruled out, the major things diagnosed me with IBS and then I went through puberty, I went through middle school, I went through high school, all with IBS symptoms that were deemed as kind of whatever, right? There's no big deal, like we don't have to go the hospital anymore, just do an enema every now and then if you need to and try these things.

Nothing really worked. And so not only was I struggling with learning about my body and learning about what's normal, or not normal becoming an adult and a functioning human being in this world, I was also struggling with this feeling that something's not right in my body. And if it is like, why is everyone else living like they're okay, because I'm in pain. I'm uncomfortable. Like, why am I struggling with this when other people aren't? Like maybe I'm just weird, or like I'm overreacting or whatever it may be.

So I kind of struggle between the I'm overreacting and my body is broken and something is wrong phases, which you might, you know, relate to, and you may feel as well. And then whenever I got in college, stepped away from home and began to see how other people live by living in a dorm, I realized that I was not like everybody else. Something was wrong, and my body wasn't normal. And you know, the way that my body functioned was not like others were functioning. 

That was really challenging for me, because not only was I again, struggling with becoming an adult and thinking about my future and all of that, but I was also struggling with these feelings of my body is broken and something is wrong with me, right? And we take that on as personal, right? But that's not true.

So the reason why we feel that way, is that IBS is a functional disorder of the gut brain interaction. What this means is that there's not really a clear pathology to the condition of IBS, meaning there's not just one single thing wrong. It's not like there's one immune marker or one abnormality or one thing that can be necessarily diagnosed, it’s diagnosed based on the symptoms over time.

What we do know is that there are signs now towards pathology and there are reasons why this can happen, but what's happening with the pathology is that it's impacting immune function, impacting gut brain interaction, impacting gut motility, but not necessarily impacting that true inflammation where the body's fighting itself fully like we see with IBD or inflammatory bowel disease, or even like a colon cancer like it's not that, so the way that it's treated is much different and the way it's diagnosed is different, because there's not as much of a clear pathology currently. 

Now there could be immune activation issues, which would be similar to what we see with autoimmune conditions, there's also a really clear change in motility, the gut brain interaction, the gut microbiome makeup, and so these are changes that we see with IBS and make up the disorder of IBS, but they can be frustrating because they impact the body and lead to this feeling that the body is broken, without any clear answers of why and what's going on. Because it's all kind of new and we don't really have the technology yet do that sort of testing outside of the research parameters.

So what that means is that if you are feeling like your body is broken, and like, you know, you got the IBS diagnosis, and your doctor says, well, it's not this, everything's okay and it feels like there was no test that really proved that this was even happening, you're not alone and that doesn't mean that it's all in your head, or that your body is just this abnormal thing that can't be fixed. That is not true. It just means that these things that are wrong, aren’t as easy to detect and kind of prune if you will, be on how we know symptoms come up and how symptoms occur.

Now, alongside that, there isn't a known cure for IBS currently, which can make it feel like you're stuck with this malfunctioning body and this dysfunctional gut forever. And I get it, that can be hard to hear. But the truth is that the different issues that we see with IBS can be improved and supported so that the body is functioning well. So you are able to actually manage symptoms, to have a healthy, thriving gut, to have healthy motility to have a good gut brain communication pathway, it is possible for you

So the body is not broken. There is hope it is takes a little bit of curiosity to see what's going on in your body and specialized guidance to understand what works best for you.

Now I want to give you a few examples of what that guidance could look like, because this is going to be different for every person, but there are some specific strategies that you can use based on these different kind of drivers of symptoms, what I like to call them.

One is the altered immune activation. So we do see that there is sort of like an autoimmune condition but not fully yet. This altered immune activation, which is related to mast cells, which are immune cells found in your gut. Two of the biggest things that can help this outside of specialized treatments and things like that are sleep, good quality sleep, consistent sleep, and routines that support immune health, like stress management, routines around how you start your day, how you end your day, how we regulate the nervous system, all of that could actually impact your immune health, which is really great.

The second main driver is your changing motility, and this is why they're whether it's constipation or diarrhea. This can be due to any overlapping issue as well as IBS itself. So if there is any overlapping issue or something going on, we need to address that and that might include like hypo or hyperthyroidism, or anything like that, that could be either slowing down the gut, we can also see that with diabetes.

We also want to support digestion overall with foundational habits, so consistent meals, adequate nutrition, balanced meals, good fiber intake, movement, sleep routines, all of those different things that can help support healthy motility.

Now for constipation, we may also focus more specifically on hydration movement, fiber and supporters of motility which might help speed the gut up, might include some supplementation or something there if it's needed. And then for diarrhea, we may focus more specifically again on fiber, maybe medications if they're needed, stress management, and really trigger identification and that's where we may utilize something like a low FODMAP diet, which has been shown to help decrease the amount of bowel movement, so kind of regulating bowel habits a little bit better.

Now the third driver is the gut brain interactions, gut brain communication pathway. Since this is altered, we need a lot of extra support for both the brain and the pathway itself. So this is going to include stress management and mindfulness, that's going to help with the brain and that realization process, which will help the communication pathway function better. We can support the pathway itself through visualization techniques, which is also shown in like directed hypnotherapy. We may use some coping strategies for what can be triggered in the brain that might spiral through the gut and that's where we may utilize cognitive behavioral therapy specific to IBS and gut health. And then this is where we're also going to utilize sleep routines and self care, because that will help both ends of that communication pathway function at their highest capability.

So if you think about two irritable people that are trying to get on the same team, work as a team and do their jobs well, if they are both nourished, healthy, rested, and feeling good, they're more likely to work together well then if they are sleep deprived, they haven’t eaten in a long time, and they've had stressors coming at them in every direction without time to rest, right? Think about that with your gut and your brain, they need extra support, they need to be their best selves coming forward to be able to communicate the best they can.

And the fifth main driver is dysbiosis, which is a poor makeup of gut bacteria, and other microbes. So here, we really want to focus on fiber increase and fiber diversity. Even if you're doing the low FODMAP diet or any type of dietary intervention that may reduce carbohydrates, you still want to focus on adequate fiber and fiber diversity, meaning different sources of plants and different fiber sources throughout each day in each week.

For some, and this is interesting new research, the low FODMAP diet might actually help rebalance the microbiome towards more of a favorable makeup what we call similar to healthy controls. This has been shown in recent research and is interesting, but with any type of dietary intervention, you do want to make sure you're working with a dietitian, because there are some negative sides to something like the low FODMAP diet that a dietitian that is well trained and specialized like those on my team will be able to help with more.

And then for dysbiosis, we also want to address any overgrowth that's happening, like SIBO, and then we want to make sure that we include fermented foods and specific prebiotic foods and resistant starches in time. These things might not be as easy to digest early on in your IBS control journey, but as you build up that diversity of your fiber intake and build up the health of your gut, fermented foods, resistant starches and prebiotic foods, they'll be better tolerated.

So if you are struggling, if you are feeling hopeless, if you're feeling like you haven't been seen, if you're feeling like you've been ignored, and like everything is just broken and has been falling apart, I want you to know that I see you and I hear you and I know it's hard. And nothing that I would say right now is going to take that feeling away, and it shouldn't, it's okay to hold space for those feelings. I also want to challenge you to hold space for this idea of hope, that there is a way to manage symptoms, that there is a way to address these things that are actually wrong in your body and can be supported and be improved. You can hold space for both, and that is okay. So I challenge you for that. 

I hope that you know this conversation is helpful and that it does spark something in you that that can be helpful. If you do have any questions or you want to share your story for someone who will understand it, please find us over on Instagram at @erinjudge.rd, I would love to hear from you. There's also a phenomenal community of others who deal with IBS who talk about it through the comments and different stories that they share and they are great people to connect with if you haven't been able to feel really heard and understood by anyone else before. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. I'm so glad that you tuned in and I can't wait to see you on our next episode!