A troubleshooting tip for GI issues: try ONE thing at a time.

[notacommittee]

(I  hope this is appropriate for this forum; I realize it's mostly people asking questions but I think this might be helpful to them. Mods, please let me know if I posted in the wrong place.)

 

As someone who's been troubleshooting her own digestive nonsense for over a year now, I thought I'd share a tip learned from hard experience: try one thing at a time!

 

For the first few months (while I wasn't sold on Paleo yet but was working towards it), I was so frantic about it that I was trying everything at once and inconsistently - one day it was eliminating soy, then I realized my canned soup had soy in it and decided to give up and switch to eliminating gluten, but whoops, I didn't realize barley was a gluten grain so might as well give that up and try a probiotic supplement, except I only took it like once every 3 days because I kept deciding it wasn't helping and then deciding to try it again...

 

And then I got into Paleo and it was no FODMAPS, then no nightshades, then only cooked food, then eliminating all coconut products, then cod liver oil...

 

On and on. I tried everything. And obviously none of it was helpful because I had no way of evaluating any one of these remedies (also wasn't keeping any records, of course) and kept getting discouraged/giving up when each new thing didn't instantly cure me of all my ills.

 

Then life fortuitously got busy, and I got distracted from my GI issues for six weeks or so and amazingly enough, things started to even out, and now (fingers crossed!) they seem to be healing up. The magic combo for me seems to be a magnesium supplement + apple cider vinegar, but really, it's possible that the "magic" was just leaving my poor gut alone for a while and letting it get used to one thing instead of bombarding it with constant changes of diet and supplements.

 

So long story short, my advice is to pick one thing, test it, and then give it time to work instead of frantically flipping back and forth between dozens of different solutions.

[Guest]

In general, I believe in the one thing at a time rule.  My dad uses it for tuning his race car.

 

I'm about to do something much more extreme, but similar.  I am going to try it all at once with the AIP.  I am hoping to allow my body to heal from anything that might be bothering it.  Then, I will systematically reintroduce one thing at a time.  It's basic Whole30 protocol.  Take it all away, add one thing back, watch, wait, continue.

 

I am so sorry your relief took so long to come.  I hope that your current magic lasts a very long time.