u/KarenKarrde

My grey has gotten a lot better with fireworks over the years, but still struggles when people in my neighborhood go bananas with their fireworks on the 4th of July. This year being the 250th anniversary, things will be more bonkers than usual. Any CBD recs? I’ve used Rescue Remedy and that does seem to take the edge off, but I think I need to break out some bigger guns this year.

Little backstory… when I moved into my house about 10 years ago, there was an old Whirlpool fridge in the kitchen. I didn’t have the money to replace it at the time because I’d just spent all of my moolah on the down payment, plus I figured, yea, it’s old, but it’s still working fine! I filed it away in my head as something that would eventually need to be replaced, but figured I’d just wait till its natural demise. I mean hey, a lot of times things that were manufactured 50 years ago work more reliably than stuff made today! I also assumed that when a fridge died, it just died. Like you’d open the door and the light would be off and it’d be warm inside and all the food would be spoiled and you’d go “Oh! The fridge is dead!” I did NOT know that sometimes a fridge will just sloooowwwwwwly die, losing efficiency over the course of months, getting warmer inside just a litttttttle bit at a time. Well this is apparently what was happening to mine. Since it’s an old fridge, it doesn’t have a thermostat inside like some of the modern ones do. Refrigerators are supposed to be kept at around 36-38 degrees inside. If yours is running closer to 45, your food is growing bacteria. I’ve been having stomach issues for MONTHS. It was manifesting as heartburn but also as bloating and stomach cramping and back pain. I chalked it up to having had a reeeaaally bad bout of norovirus a while back and figured my stomach was just taking a long time to get back to normal. Finally went to a GI doc, got an endoscopy done a few weeks ago, and I was expecting to find h pylori or a great big hernia or something really obvious because my symptoms have been severely bad and were getting worse . I’ve had episodes where I felt like I was having a heart attack, episodes where my stomach was bloated and cramping to the point where I couldn’t stay still because the pain was so bad. The endoscopy came back with mild chronic gastritis, but no h pylori. Basically, no answers. I’ve been waiting on an appt to meet again with my doc and wanted to get tested for SIBO next because the symptoms seemed to check out. I have been keeping a food diary and trying to narrow down what the cause was. I’ve been taking various supplements like licorice and l-glutamine and both seemed to be helping a little, but then I’d have another episode and be back to square one. How does one NOT KNOW that they’re eating spoiled food, you ask? Well, for one thing, I’m a vegetarian. So a lot of what I eat is veggies. They can stay in a 45 degree fridge and not look that different than normal fridge temps. Bread can go a long time and be fine. Leftover pasta and rice weren’t getting moldy or anything obvious, so to the eye (and the fact that I’d just cooked them a day or two prior), they were fine to eat! But they were probably laden with bacteria. Things I thought were a no-go for me due to acidity - like tomato sauce - were probably slightly spoiled and I didn’t know it. Essentially ruining me just a litttttttle bit at a time. What finally clued me in was that the other day I came down to breakfast and opened the refrigerator and noticed it didn’t feel quite as cold as it should inside. I guess it finally reached a temp that was too obvious to ignore. It didn’t take long for my brain to start spinning and making connections and thinking back to why I felt fine eating dry cereal in the morning but felt gross after an egg sandwich last week even though eggs usually don’t bother me. Or why I was okay eating a slice of pizza but got “heartburn” eating the leftovers the next day. A thousand little clues that I overlooked. I don’t tell this story because it makes me look smart. In hindsight, I probably should have realized what was happening a long time ago and maybe would have if I’d been keeping a proper food diary from the start. I tell it in the hopes that I can help someone else who might be looking for clues to their issue in the wrong place. If you don’t have a thermostat in your fridge - get one. It costs like $5 on Amazon. I have had a brand spanking new fridge for the last week and zero signs of gastritis. I am going slow and still eating fairly “safe” foods as I’m sure my stomach still needs time to heal and get rid of all of the bad bacteria. But already I feel like a fog has lifted. I feel better than I have in months and have zero symptoms. I hope you all find answers to your gut issues and wish you all the best of luck. This board was a big help in making me feel less alone while I was dealing with this. ❤️