u/Efficient-Quiet-6381

Hi everyone.

For a bit of context, I have been suffering with stomach/gut problems since Christmas last year. I still don’t know what caused it, but one day I woke up with stomach ache and feeling sick, and then had to rush to the toilet twice, as then again later that day. I presumed it was a stomach bug at the time, but whatever it was it still seems to be causing me issues 9 months later. The only two things that changed at the time were:

1. I drank more alcohol in the run up to Christmas (but not masses - probably 2/3 drinks 4/5 nights per week, as opposed to my usual 2/3 drinks across 2 nights per week).

2. I started taking M&S Gut Boosting Mix. My symptoms seemed to cool off a bit around the time I stopped taking this, and then seemed to come back when tried it again. Could be a coincidence, or could be a factor, I’m not sure.

Anyway, since then I’ve had intermittent issues like I had on the first day. I noticed that I would get acid reflux every now and then, which coincided with needing to go to the toilet urgently, so I started taking omeprazol. That seemed to help a bit but not completely. I tried a few other drugs that the doctor prescribed but they didn’t seem to do anything.

After a while I tried taking loperamide (2 x 2mg each morning) and that seemed to work like a silver bullet, at least for a few weeks. However, after a while it seemed to stop working, so upped the dosage to 4 x 2mg per day (one dose first thing, one dose before bed) and that seemed to stop the urgent toilet issues, but it seemed to make my intermittent stomach ache worse. I then decided to try reducing to my original dosage, and that again worked well for a while, until one day when I had really bad stomach cramp and several urgent trips to the toilet. This really worried me, but I’ve been keeping a diary for a few months, so I pasted that into ChatGPT and boom! It spotted a pattern with onions - in particular, the recent night where it all seemed to go downhill coincided with me having a very onion-rich dinner. They led me to do some research, and voila, this FODMAP thing pops up.

Since then I have tried to avoid onion and garlic wherever possible, and it really seems to have made a massive difference. Not only do the really worrying symptoms of stomach aches and toilet urgency seem to have stopped, but the mild nausea and the mild ‘need to poo’ feeling I get intermittently both seem to have stopped.

I then made the mistake of eating a packet of cheese and onion crisps, which absolutely knocked me back again - nowhere near as bad as the onion meal thankfully, but still not good. That was yesterday - I am feeling mostly better today, but still not 100%.

So that’s my story. I don’t really have any specific questions, but I would love to hear any tips/ideas people have, or just hear about similar experiences people might have had. The whole FODMAP thing is completely new to me, so feel free to give me even basic tips or suggestions!

Thanks.

I seem to have gastritis or something very closely related. Weirdly enough, I can control the main/obvious symptoms of gastritis easily enough through diet and avoiding things like wine or coffee. However, even on good days I generally get an intermittent ‘need to poo’ feeling once or twice a day, lasting anything from 30 minutes to a couple of hours. It’s mostly a false alarm and no matter what I do I can’t actually have a poo. However, very occasionally it is genuine, so it’s not something I can just ignore, and it makes my day to day life very stressful. Is this a common thing with gastritis? Does anyone have any methods of combating it?