Here’s something I bet you didn’t know about irritable bowel syndrome—once upon time doctors thought IBS wasn’t even real. I mean it! They thought it was just an imaginary health condition made up by middle-class housewives with too much time on their hands, can you believe that? And not only that, but because they thought the condition was “all in their heads,” their solution was just to prescribe antidepressants. Thank goodness we’ve come a long way since then.
Today the medical community recognizes that IBS is a real, honest-to-goodness disorder that affects millions of people all over the world, but even now many doctors are still prescribing antidepressants. And while yes, there is a mental component to IBS, antidepressants are really just a band-aid for a group of symptoms that begins elsewhere…in the gut!
It’s no surprise that IBS involves symptoms that affect mood and emotions—the gut-brain connection is very real, and it’s true that what goes on in your gut affects your brain. But…if you have IBS and have been given the antidepressant band-aid, you need to dig further. Sure, antidepressants can make you feel better—that’s what they’re meant to do—but they don’t come without side effects, and they don’t get to the real cause.
Your symptoms of constipation, diarrhea (or both), gas, bloating, abdominal discomfort and moodiness are the result of a war going on in your own gut, so what’s the solution? I’m blogging all month on the real truth about IBS to help you take the steps necessary to bring peace to your gut—and eventually, peace of mind.