This month marks 20 years free of IBS symptoms for me.
I suffered for 6 years, tried multiple treatments with no success and got little help from my doctors. Their only contribution was to tell me I’d have to learn to manage it for my entire life.
Living with IBS was not an option for me. And I while I feared the doctors were right, I refused to give up on myself. I fundamentally believed I was meant to be healthy and would find my way back to how I was before this started at the age of 28.
It took 4 intense years of trying to find my solution. But having and healing IBS brought many gifts to my life. It helped me stay healthy into my 50s and gave me a rewarding job I love, helping others find their way back to health and inspiring hope for thousands of people over 10 years.
Being a digestive health coach for more than a decade, I’ve learned there’s no one formula for gut healing. Everyone is different. Everyone has a unique root cause.
But if you want to get to the other side of gut complaints, you have to advocate for yourself, learn about your body and take stock of what is not working in YOUR life.
IBS is not just in your head, but your emotions, past trauma and current stressors have a HUGE impact on gut function. You can’t be passive in your healing process. You have to prioritize it, keep going despite hiccups (also known as failures) and believe it IS possible. These things are key to solving your personal IBS puzzle.
How I recovered
After trying many diets, detoxes and herbs I finally took a hair tissue mineral analysis test and found out I had heavy metal toxicity. I was copper toxic. Not a lot of people have heard about copper toxicity. I’m currently learning how to interpret the HTMA test and am excited to offer this test in my practice in January 2024.
It can be caused by a vegan diet, birth control pill, diet, stress, sugar consumption and the genetic tendency to poorly detox copper from the body.
We all consume copper in our food, but my body was not detoxing it well. I was on the pill, was a raw vegan to try to heal IBS and super stressed about my health.
I also had aluminium toxicity from popping too many Tums to ease heart burn. Using regular deodorant, aluminium foil and eating canned foods exacerbated the issue.
I spent a year detoxing these metals from my liver and brain, rebalancing my biome and gently mending my gut lining with an anti-inflammatory diet. My hormones also benefited.
My diet looked very similar to a Paleo diet (no grains, no beans, no dairy and no refine sugars or industrial oils) but with specific adjustments. I removed copper rich foods (avocados, nuts, most seeds, chocolate, black tea, dried fruit, mushrooms) as well as pork.
I had terrible candida overgrowth (which often accompanies heavy metal toxicity) and adrenal fatigue. I was able to eat fruit and get rid of candida without taking any antifungals. I took the slow road to healing candida and it worked well, without a ton of die off.
My healing protocol lasted a year. I followed that strict diet for 1 year and it was enough to crowd out the candida by feeding the beneficial bacteria in my gut.
Often, healing involves slowing down and that’s difficult in our fast world. People feel rushed and impatient and don’t want their digestive issues to get in the way of their schedule, travel, work or social life. They want healing to happen as fast as possible, pushing hard to make it happen. In my experience, slow was the way to go.
Supporting my blood sugar with a whole food diet that was mostly protein, veggies, fats and a bit of fruit was good for mending my adrenals. I also quit a job I didn’t like to take care of myself. I did freelance writing and even ghost wrote a book on gout.
When I started eating red meat again for my year long healing protocol my digestion was weak. I took hydrochloric acid (HCL) to support my stomach acid to help me digest the meat.
As my digestion improved I stopped the HCL.
I learned to cook because eating out was challenging. And found that I loved making myself delicious meals. Learning how to cook has been the gift that kept me symptom free.
These days, I eat everything but gluten. I became gluten intolerant after 2 years of mold exposure.
Getting sick also clarified that I needed to live life on my terms. No more 9 to 5 office jobs. I felt trapped in that structure and wanted to work at home.
Understanding who you are and what you need out of life is essential to lowering stress.
It’s extremely difficult to heal if you’re stressed, angry, terrified, or feel unsafe, unloved, purposeless or unsupported.
Being in tune with and taking care of yourself and your needs balances your nervous system better than all the vagal exercise, yoga or meditation in the world. Feeling safe and supported in life is KEY. And we can create that support for ourselves.
A year of following a diet, reducing stress and taking supplements (minerals, vitamins, liver support, hormonal support, etc.) my constipation, bloating, heartburn, fatigue, brain fog, migraines, anxiety, chronic yeast infection and painful periods were gone! My food sensitivities were also gone.
I know it is possible because I lived it.
After IBS I traveled, got a dog, learned to rock climb, got married and found a job I loved working from home. My gut was the last thing on my mind. That chapter closed.
What was left were healthier habits that prioritized my health and happiness.
How I stayed healthy
While I had some health hiccups in years following my recover, I was able to regain balance and health quickly.
I owe it to cooking my own whole food meals, a moving meditation practice called chi gong, and working with my subconscious mind with hypnosis.
I have developed a confidence in how to heal my body from anything having dealt with long COVID, mold, pathogenic tick bite, thyroid antibodies, and other gut infections and overgrowths which never caused bad symptoms.
What I’ve learned is that mental health IS physical health, you have to address both to heal. Emotional pain and physical pain travel on the same neural networks. They are connected. Dealing with stress and trauma is the missing piece of healing for most people.
Here is a list of what I successfully dealt with after kicking IBS. I blogged about some of them. If you have questions about any of it, please reach out through the contact form on my website.
Adrenal fatigue (from starting my business and writing a book in 6 weeks)
Long COVID
Tick bite with borelia and anaplasma (I used Stephen Buhner’s high dose adaptogen protocol to support my immune system after the bite and never got sick)
Anxiety and depression (after moving to to a new country during COVID)
Why I was able to heal easily
While IBS is not in your head, but you need to use your head to heal. You need a very strong belief in yourself and your body to keep healing when things don’t work as expected. This is the biggest challenge for most humans. We stop, doubt, shut down, deny, avoid, self sabotage as a self protective mechanism.
The subconscious mind is not logical but it will run your life if you are not aware of what it is doing and why. That is why subconscious work is so crucial when you are feeling stuck or hopeless.
If you don’t believe healing is possible it is very important to work on this. It is the only reason why I got to the other side. My belief was strong.
Doubt, suspicion and caution is a protective mechanism that could be holding you back from the recover that’s available to you if you could get past your self protective blocks.
To keep going, I read success stories to remind me it was possible. I believed but I also had moments of doubt. I just didn’t let the doubt stop me.
Now I get to be the success story that fuels other people’s hope.
Your body was intelligently designed to heal. Healing is possible for you. Your mindset matters immensely. Get some good support.
You have many years of health ahead of you when your health issues are over.
One day it will be a bad memory for you like it is for me. But your story will inspire other to keep going.
Angela Privin is proof that IBS is NOT an incurable disease, but a cry for help from a gut out of balance. When the body AND mind are complaining, it’s an opportunity to examine what’s not working and change it. After solving her own IBS mystery almost two decades ago, Angela became as a health coach to help others. Angela uses root cause medicine protocols personalized to the individual to solve each IBS mystery. Her tools are lab testing, dietary changes, supplementation, subconscious mind work and nervous system rebalancing . Learn more here.