The best gut healing advice and an IBS success story

A long time blog reader contacted me recently to do an interview for her new podcast about gut health.

She also shared her story about how she recovered from IBS, SIBO and multiple gut infections.

When we finally spoke, we realized we both discovered very similar things in the process of healing our gut. That there’s no magic pill or diet. That healing is a holistic process that addresses every aspect of our lives, minds, emotions and souls.

The interview is only 20 minutes long, but one of the best ones I’ve ever done. She asked questions that most people don’t, about how and where we fall down in our best efforts and good intentions to heal our gut. The podcast never came into fruition but we both thought the interview was too good not to share, so I am sharing it below.

We cover:

• A counterintuitive gut health practice that works.
• 3 “healthy” habits that sabotage gut health.
• One mistake people make that lands them in gut trouble.
• The most common misconception about gut health.
• How to stay motivated when everything sucks.

You can listen to the interview here:

How Anna recovered from IBS

Impressed with Anna and her healing story, I asked her to share with all of you how she did it.

While everyone has a unique path to their own recovery, I love sharing real life success story to encourage people that it is possible if you really commit to the hard work of healing.

I think healing yourself is the hardest and most important work we have to do on this earth. And when people believe they can and face their personal challenges along the way, I have seen nothing but success and improvement in their health.

Being willing to face your personal demons along the way requires a tremendous amount of support. So invest in what you need to make you successful. Don’t let past disappointments deter you. I had so many failures before I figured it out. The key is to keep trying. Hopefully something in Anna’s story and the interview above will resonate for you.

Anna’s story in her own words

I’d been sick a long time – way before I knew I was sick.

My relationship with food was unhealthy from an early age. Plagued with pop-culture ideas of being fat, I developed a shameful and secretive bulmia pattern – this cycle “allowed” me to eat “bad” foods that made me feel gross, but then get rid of the guilt, fear, and pain. I’d eat a massive white chocolate frozen yoghurt in a waffle cone, then take a walk and purge my shame into my neighbor’s bushes.

I was officially diagnosed with IBS at 17, after the use of birth control and harsh acne pharmaceuticals. At the time, my symptoms were fairly mild, but the diagnosis only served to demonize eating further. By the time I was 25, I was incredibly sick. My binge-purge habit was replaced by strict diet control because I could hardly eat anything. I was haunted by raging food sensitivities, severe pain, and anxiety.

I was scared, hurting, alone, riddled with symptoms and ruining my marriage. I was mentally, emotionally, and physically broken. The doctor’s office was the only phone number I knew by heart and the mind-altering cocktail of medications I was on only stoked the fire that was burning my life down.

Even though my doctors assured me I was perfectly well and in the prime of my life (and that IBS is just one of those “things” that you have to cope with) I knew something was wrong.

Desperation led me to try anything and everything; all creams and concoctions, every pill and herbal tea. I went over the counter, under the table, expensive, cheap, high-end, homemade.

I saw specialists, herbalists, quacks, and highly-qualified patronizers. I grappled online for anything and everything that might help. I became addicted to Google, and researched my doom on the daily. I hated my life, floundered at work, and resented my husband.

But mostly, I simply believed I would be sick forever – and that terrified me.

It started with SCDlifestyle.com – and that’s where I found Angela. Amongst the piles of well-meaning, but ineffectual blogs, diyhealthblog.com stands alone as a genuine, raw, honest account of true healing and real life wisdom.

Angela’s approach is different. She’s a huge advocate of smart testing, personalized care, and getting to the root of the problem (not merely “managing” symptoms).

What really sets Angela apart from many, is her grasp on the emotional side of gut health. She is deeply tuned in to the intimate and complicated connection between gut health and the human experience. Before diving into her invaluable content, I wasn’t aware of how stress, intuition, empathy, trauma, sensitivity, personality type, and even modern culture can shape the way we get sick – and especially the way we heal.

Her story is inspiring and real – and it gave me the courage to believe that healing was possible.

Eventually, after over a decade of blood, sweat, tears, and way more cash than I liked to admit to, I found help – real help. Turns out, I had just about every gut based issue in the book: H.Pylori, Candida, SIBO, and life-threatening parasites, not to mention adrenal fatigue, histamine intolerance, hormone dysregulation, and fibromyalgia.

It took nutrition, herbs, medication, and professional help to get rid of the pathogens and conditions that made me so sick – but even those were slow, disappointing, and complicated until I faced up to the fact that I had to acknowledge the pattern playing out.

That isn’t to say I was simply imagining the deadly parasites and that they could have simply been disbanded by a bit of blue smoke and hocus-pocus. The symptoms were real. The test results were real. The danger was absolutely real.

However, I believe the mother of my sickness wasn’t decades of American junk food, an ill-advised trip to Mexico, and bad genes – but, rather, a manifestation of the negative belief systems that had instigated my eating disorder so many years before. A reckoning of fear, self-loathing, insecurity, control, and my past.

True healing was never going to come by way of pill, potion, or practitioner – for this was a matter of brain, body and soul – and therein lies the answer.

My real, honest-to-goodness secret sauce to healing is self-awareness and personal insight. It may sound like boring hippie nonsense, but the easy, one-size-fits-all-miracle-pill doesn’t exist. It took me a long time to realize this. My health wasn’t about the bad bugs, good diet, and expensive supplements. It was about my frame of mind; about the habits, patterns, actions, reactions, emotions, and cognitions that lead me to this point.

To be sure, it’s a continual journey that I continue to walk – but until I laid myself bare, took a long and unflinching look at all the missing, broken, and hiding pieces, there were never going to be enough rules, protocols, or paleo snack packs to make me better. I had to decide to get better. My heart, mind, body and soul had to become present, aware, and willing – together. Even when it was hard. Even when it hurt. Even when everyone thought I was crazy and made fun of my weird diet.

And, as Angela says, I had to find what suited me, not what was popular, mainstream, or touted as the next best super food. I had to dial into the energy of my experience. Accept my sensitive, empathic nature. Forgive myself.

Healing is a choice. It’s a lifestyle. It’s action taken every day that moves you forward on a journey of purpose, meaning and connection.

I chose to heal.