r/GutHealth

Just curious if this has worked for anyone. Desperate for any solution to fixing my stomach problems so im turning to this

I’ve never had bloating like this in my life. I did move to a different country, but my diet hasn’t changed much since most of the groceries I buy are the same. I even started taking a probiotic and digestive enzyme supplement between meals, but it hasn’t made much of a difference.
I’m starting to wonder if the antibiotics wiped out something important in my gut. It feels like after every meal I look pregnant, and nothing I’ve tried has really helped.
I’m thinking about focusing on probiotic-rich foods for the next month to see if that helps. I also know I eat a lot of sugar-free products, and I’ve heard they can affect gut health, but I’ve been eating that way for about five years without ever having this kind of bloating. That’s why I keep coming back to the idea that the antibiotics may have disrupted my gut bacteria.

TW: mentioning of weight and weight loss

I’ve been having stomach issues practically all my life. A few years ago I was even diagnosed with ibs. Last year in July I started my apprenticeship, meaning I now work 45h-60h a week and I have different shifts. Since I started working there I lost 6kg in a span of ~8 months and I was only 60kg (and 167cm) to begin with. I’m practically just skin and bones now and everything hurts all the time. Sometimes I can’t even walk up the stairs bc I have so little energy. After every meal or snack I have I am in intense stomach pain, to the point I started eating way less just to get around the pain. I also have severe emetophobia which means I have (mild) panic attacks after every meal I eat. I’m constantly weak, dizzy and in pain bc I barely have appetite anymore and I can’t eat normal anymore. I know it’s all in my head bc I was on vacation a few months ago for 4 days and I was feeling perfectly fine with no symptoms (besides reduced appetite). In August I’ll switch workplaces to hopefully reduce my stress but that’s just so long in the future and my health keeps declining. I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore and I need help.

I've been dealing with bloating and irregular digestion for a while and recently started paying more attention to patterns. What I noticed is that during high stress periods, like tight deadlines or weeks of poor sleep, my gut symptoms flare up way more than usual. More bloating, more discomfort, slower digestion overall.

I did some reading and came across the gutbrain axis concept, which suggests stress can directly impact the microbiome and digestive function. It makes sense on paper, but I'm curious whether others have actually experienced this in real life.

For those who've dealt with something similar, did managing stress actually help your gut symptoms improve? I tried adding a short daily walk and cutting back on caffeine during stressful weeks and it seemed to help a little, though I can't tell if that was coincidence or not.

Also wondering if anyone has worked with a doctor or dietitian who addressed both the mental stress side and the gut side together, and whether that approach made a difference compared to just focusing on diet alone.

Would love to hear what has actually worked for people, because gut health feels so individual. What helps one person doesn't always help another.

One of the greatest principles of Ayurveda is this:

Before asking “What medicine should I take?” ask, “Can my body digest, absorb, and use it?”

Ayurveda teaches that health begins with Agni—our digestive and metabolic fire. A strong Agni transforms food into nourishment, builds healthy tissues, supports immunity, and helps eliminate waste. When Agni becomes weak or imbalanced, digestion is incomplete, leading to the accumulation of Ama (toxic metabolic waste), which classical Ayurvedic texts describe as a major contributor to disease.

Modern research increasingly supports the importance of gut health. The gut is home to trillions of microorganisms that influence digestion, immune function, metabolism, and even mental well-being through the gut-brain axis. Studies have also shown that many nutrients and medications depend on a healthy digestive system and intestinal lining for proper absorption and effectiveness.

This is why, in Ayurveda, simply adding more supplements isn’t always the answer. If your digestion is impaired, your body may struggle to fully utilize even the highest-quality vitamins, herbs, or medications.

Instead of immediately asking:

Which supplement should I take?
Which herb is the best?
Which medicine will fix this?
Ayurveda first asks:
How is your digestion?
Are you absorbing nutrients properly?
Is your elimination healthy?
Is your digestive fire balanced?
Supporting gut health may include:
• Eating fresh, whole foods suited to your constitution.
• Eating at regular times and avoiding overeating.
• Managing stress, as it directly affects digestion.
• Getting adequate sleep and daily movement.
• Using herbs or treatments only after understanding your individual needs.

A healthy gut doesn’t just improve digestion—it lays the foundation for better energy, stronger immunity, hormonal balance, clearer thinking, healthier skin, and greater overall well-being.

In Ayurveda, the gut isn’t just one organ among many. It’s the foundation upon which the rest of health is built.

I used to poop once almost everyday when i drank coffee, but on this vacation ive had none and aint pooped ina while. This is good right?

for reference whatever I ate or did id always have one solid poo in the morning and the rest of the day I'd be fine. my friends and i once went to a restaurant where every single person but me got severe diarrhea. no matter what i ate my stomach never so much as churned.

earlier this year I was dealing with constipation and I think I overcorrected when trying to fix it bc now I have to shit once after every meal and twice or thrice if the meal was spicy or oily. I'm Indian 😭

i know the advice about eating certain foods etc but honestly i miss my iron trap stomach. i don't want to have to eat a certain way. I'm ok with doing it temporarily so I can repair my gut but long term i wanna make my stomach strong.

any advice? right now I'm taking psyllium husk every day and it's definitely helping a lot but I think its also contributing to the frequency I've had to poop

Coffee has been messing up my stomach lately. I still love the whole morning routine, but now even one cup can leave me feeling nauseous or weirdly acidic for hours. I tried skipping it, but mornings feel off without something warm to drink.

I want something that still feels like a real morning drink, not just plain tea or hot water.

Where do i start? I been having gut issues for awhile, I always feel constipated and bloated, I am gassy all the time. I have this pain in my stomach all day. I am also always feeling nauseas. it never goes away. I got a ct scan recently as i went to the ER for my stomach pain. They said it was all clear. Now waiting to see my primary and hope to get a referral to GI doctor. I can't figure this out. This is draining and super stressful. I have no idea where to go from here.

I understand probiotics well enough, they add beneficial bacteria, but prebiotics still confuse me a little. From what i’ve read, they’re supposed to feed the good bacteria already living in the gut, but I can’t tell whether adding them to a morning drink actually makes a noticeable difference or if it’s mostly another wellness trend.

For anyone who uses a prebiotic drink regularly:

How long did you take it before noticing anything?

Did it help with regularity, digestion, or bloating?

Did your stomach need time to adjust at first?

Has anyone else had their gut completely change after repeated antibiotics?
I keep looking back at my timeline and honestly feel heartbroken.💔

I was completely fine before 2019. Then I got food poisoning and went through an extremely stressful period and started having urinary symptoms.

I was treated multiple times for what was thought to be a UTI, but later I realized stress and pelvic floor dysfunction were probably playing a huge role. Looking back, I question whether I even needed many of those antibiotics.

Here’s what I ended up taking over the years:
Jan 2019 – O2 (Ofloxacin + Ornidazole) for 3 days
Jan 2019 – O2 for another 3 days
Feb 2019 – O2 for 5 days
Aug 2020 – Levofloxacin for 7 days
Oct 2020 – Ciprofloxacin for 7 days
Dec 2020 – Antifungal treatment
Jan 2021 – Metronidazole for 7 days
Feb 2021 – Metronidazole for 7 days
Jan 2024 – O2 for 5 days
Jan 2025 – Two rounds of rifaximin (14 days each) for SIBO
March 2024- Antimicrobial Oregano and Berberine
Before 2019, I hadn’t taken antibiotics for around 5 years.

Since then, I’ve been dealing with ongoing gut issues bloating, gas, abdominal pain, food sensitivities, and eventually SIBO. I know nobody can prove that antibiotics alone caused it, and I’m sure stress, pelvic floor dysfunction, and other factors also played a role. But it’s hard not to wonder whether repeated courses especially fluoroquinolones and combination antibiotics disrupted my gut enough to contribute.

The hardest part is realizing that the original “UTI” may not even have been an infection. If it was stress-related or pelvic floor-related, I may have taken all of those antibiotics unnecessarily.
I’m not trying to blame doctors or say antibiotics are bad they absolutely save lives when they’re truly needed. I’m just grieving how different my health feels now compared with before all of this.
Has anyone else here had a similar experience where repeated antibiotics after a suspected or misdiagnosed UTI seemed to be the beginning of your gut problems? Were you ever able to recover your microbiome or get back to feeling like yourself?
I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences because this has been a long and frustrating journey.

I want opinions on if you believe I have been blown off by my GI.

I went to my initial appointment today regarding 10 months of bright yellow stools with lots of mucus, I also have extreme full body itching and really bad fatigue which has caused me to be on leave from work for 6 months.
I have to use the toilet 10-20 times a day and experience intense cramping and pain with every bowel movement.
I have low vitamin D, b12, iron, fecal IgA of 1089 and low healthy cholesterol and regular symptomatic hypo episodes of blood sugars below 2.5mmol.

Today I went in for my initial consultation (which lasted 5 minutes) expecting him to really look at my symptoms and hopefully start getting some answers. He told me that I was constipated?! And to take a colonoscopy prep and see him again in 3 months. I explained that I have already done this and it did not help, he said sometimes you don’t do it right and need to go again?!

Can someone tell me if this sounds correct, can constipation cause this? Do I need to go see another GI?

I felt like I was made to feel stupid and that it’s all in my head. I understand I am young (24 years old) but to me this doesn’t explain my issues.

Does anyone have any recommendations on what I should do? Do I go back to my GP and get another referral?

Hi all, I’m at 21 yr old male with a height around 5’10 and a weight around 250lb. I’m not on any medication and I don’t smoke and rarely drink. At the beginning of June I went on a vacation to visit my girlfriend for the first time and we went out to lunch and before we did I felt completely okay but as soon as I went to eat I instantly felt extremely full and thought I was going to throw up so I stopped eating after a couple bites.

Then for the rest of the day and about 2 days later I was having really bad stomach pain and constantly thinking that I was going to throw up but never did. After a few days I slowly got better and was able to eat more and more without feeling full as quickly and ended up getting back to normal.

Then 3 weeks later I went out to dinner with my family and the same thing happened to me again where I couldn’t eat and thought I was going to throw up but never did. I stopped eating after a couple bites and went back home and for the rest of the night had stomach cramps which I believe to be bloating cause it feels very tight around my stomach.

Since then I’ve been waking up with some stomach pain each day but then later on in the day I’m feeling completely normal again and don’t have anymore pain. This was 6 days ago since I went out to eat and wasn’t able to but each day I have less and less pain in my stomach but it’s still bothering me for a couple hours after waking up.

Part of me thinks it may be caused from anxiety because I was a little anxious when going to lunch with my girlfriend for the first time and when it happened the next time I was already feeling weird in my stomach and was worried that I wouldn’t be able to eat again.

I also want to mention that I’ve recently been working overnight shifts which is messing up my sleep schedule and because I have no food to eat while working I’ve ended up doordashing food almost every night and eating really horribly which I’m planning to fix.

I haven’t had any sharp pains or any pain on the lower right end of my stomach so I don’t think it’s appendicitis and I’m still able to use the bathroom perfectly fine so I don’t think it’s a blockage or anything but I would love to get some help on this and see what people think it could be.

Hi everyone,
I’m a 22-year-old female trying to figure out what’s causing my digestive issues.
Today I had a probiotic yogurt, then about 2 hours later I ate a cottage cheese crepe. Around an hour later I developed very loud intestinal noises, passed a huge amount of very loud, long-lasting, extremely foul-smelling gas, and then had one small, loosely formed stool (not watery).
This isn’t a one-time thing.
I’ve noticed that I frequently get:
A lot of gas after drinking milk.
Even worse gas after cheese, especially pizza.
Gas and sometimes stomach cramps after spicy foods.
Coffee can also trigger it.
Passing gas usually relieves the discomfort.
The smell is extremely offensive and embarrassing.
What confuses me is that I drank milk throughout my childhood without any issues. Also, several members of my family have problems with excessive gas, so I’m wondering if there’s some genetic tendency.
Interestingly, I don’t think ice cream bothers me nearly as much as milk or cheese.
I don’t have blood in my stool, fever, weight loss, or persistent diarrhea.
My questions are:
Does this sound more like adult-onset lactose intolerance, IBS, or something else?
Could the probiotic yogurt have temporarily made today’s symptoms worse?
Why would milk and cheese affect me more than ice cream?
Is there any testing you’d recommend (such as a lactose hydrogen breath test or anything else)?
What are the best ways to reduce the extremely foul-smelling gas?
I’d especially appreciate input from doctors, gastroenterologists, or anyone who’s had similar symptoms. Thanks!

I dont know whats wrong with me. I have been having this issue for over 2 months already. It all started with being woken up in the middle of the night feeling dizzy and hungry for a couple of days. And then come the severe bloating everytime after i eat. And this bloating will also make me feel out of balance/dizzy. Then after a few weeks the bloating got better but i feel swaying feeling/ out of balance 24/7

I already went to the doctor and my blood test all return okay except my ALT level is just a little bit high. I was diagnosed with gerd and anxiety and was given some ppi that i did not take because after doing some research its not good for the body.

Im currently on HCL Betaine (which reduce my bloating), tudca, digestive enzymes and also took supplements vitamin d3-k2, vitamin b complex, magnesium byglycinate. I also took some probiotics

I dont know what wrong with me. Sibo? Ibs? Its hard because where i live there is no teat for this. I do have irregular stools though and sometimes there is a bit of mucus. And also if i eat boiled brocolli i got bloated really bad.

Honestly i dont really mind about the gut issue as im no longer bloating that bad. But the constant swaying feeling and headaches are really killing me :(

I keep buying probiotic pills and then forgetting to take them. I’d rather have something i can mix into my morning drink and actually use consistently.
Has anyone found an easy drink with probiotics and fiber?

Hi everyone. I decided to make this post because, when I was going through my journey, there wasn’t anything anywhere that made me feel seen or heard with my skin struggles. I really hope this post can be that for someone else.
Some background information: I’m 25 years old, and I’ve been dealing with acne since I was 13 years old. I’ve also had gut issues for as long as I can remember. They were never too severe, but I was always constipated and always bloated throughout my entire childhood.
Three years ago, during my undergraduate studies, I started experiencing extreme bloating to the point where I actually looked pregnant. For the first time in my life, my doctors became genuinely concerned. They ran some tests and found out I had H. pylori. During undergrad, I treated the H. pylori with a course of antibiotics, and it was successfully eradicated.
At the time, I had no idea where I got H. pylori from. I honestly just assumed I picked it up while traveling or from somewhere random.
Then, when I flew to Korea with my dad in August, he also decided to get a full medical checkup with me. That’s when we found out he also had H. pylori. He told me that he had actually been diagnosed with H. pylori when I was in early high school, but he never got it treated. I had no idea H. pylori was contagious or that it could spread through saliva, sharing food, or even sharing utensils. It really made me wonder if that’s how I got it.
What made it even crazier was that about a month later, my cousin, who had also been struggling with gut issues, found out she had H. pylori and gastritis too. It really made me realize how much more common this can be than people think.
However, that wasn’t the end of it.
About two to three years after treating the H. pylori, I started experiencing extreme migraines. Then, in January 2025, my migraines became so severe that I wasn’t able to go to work or even start my master’s program. My family became very concerned because I was living in a different city from them. I would wake up in excruciating pain every morning because my head hurt so much. I couldn’t even make my bed anymore, and getting up just to make breakfast felt like I had run 10 miles.
This was a really big deal for both me and my family because I’m someone who has always made my bed every morning and always prioritized exercise and healthy eating. I majored in nutrition and psychology, so taking care of my health has always been a huge part of who I am.
Throughout my life, I struggled with migraines and severe headaches. My doctors prescribed Motrin and several medications from my neurologist, but nothing ever worked. Just for reference, I had been prescribed a lot of NSAIDs since the eighth grade.
Eventually, I felt like I was dying. I had to quit my job, and my family became extremely worried about my health because I was crying all the time and became very depressed. I was in so much pain, and none of my doctors in America could figure out what was wrong. They kept telling me it was just stress, even though I honestly wasn’t stressed about anything. I have a very blessed life.
My family decided to fly me to Korea because my grandpa knew some excellent doctors there. They did a full-body workup, including scans, extensive blood work, stool testing, breath testing, and so much more. That’s when they found severe erosive gastritis and high-methane SIBO.
Everyone in my family was shocked because, in real life, I look very healthy and live a healthy lifestyle. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I’ve never really partied, and I’ve had the same routine for years. I only ate whole foods—nothing processed. I was the person drinking apple cider vinegar, taking ginger shots, eating grilled chicken breast with avocado, sauerkraut, kimchi, and all the foods that everyone says are healthy.
Ironically, those foods were actually making me worse because of my gastritis. The apple cider vinegar, ginger, sauerkraut, and kimchi were irritating my stomach. I was also eating quinoa, rice, starches, honey, maple syrup, and sourdough, which weren’t helping because they were feeding my methane SIBO.
I completed the two antibiotics that are commonly prescribed for methane SIBO, and I’ve been on my healing journey ever since. Starting this month, I’ve finally been able to eat about 90% of the foods that I couldn’t tolerate back in March.
I also wanted to mention something else. Throughout my life, I experienced random heat flashes, and I could never understand what was causing them. It turns out they were food-related. I’ve also suffered from headaches, heat flashes, and acne since I was around 13 years old.
I’m so happy to say that I haven’t had a single heat flash, headache, or acne breakout in over two months now.
Now I want to get back to the acne because that was the original reason I wanted to make this post. I couldn’t find anyone in the gastritis Reddit community or the SIBO Reddit community talking about their acne improving after treating their gastritis and SIBO. I just wanted to share that mine has. My skin is getting better day by day.
For more background, I’ve tried everything for my acne. I’ve been on doxycycline, minocycline, spironolactone, birth control, and even two rounds of Accutane. I’ve done every diet imaginable for acne. I’ve taken pretty much every acne supplement on the market—Clearstem, carrot juicing, turmeric, beef liver, chasteberry, dandelion root… the list goes on. If you can name a supplement, I’ve probably tried it. If you can name a skincare brand, I’ve probably tried that too.
My mom is also in the beauty industry, so I’ve done just about every laser treatment and high-end skincare treatment you can think of.
Nothing ever got rid of my acne until I treated my SIBO and gastritis.
Now, I do want to say one thing. I know not everyone’s acne is caused by gut issues. Acne can have so many different causes, and everyone’s situation is different. I’m only sharing my personal experience in hopes that it helps someone who might be going through something similar.
If you’re like me and you’ve tried absolutely everything, but your acne is still there, maybe it’s worth looking into your gut. For me, treating my SIBO and gastritis completely changed my skin in a way that nothing else ever could.
Be patient with yourself. Healing takes time, and everyone’s journey is different. Give yourself grace. I know how exhausting and heartbreaking it can feel, but I promise you’re not alone. I hope my story helps even one person feel seen, because that’s exactly what I was looking for when I was searching for answers.

genuinely by like 5pm everyday I look pregnant and it's just from normal food, dal chawal, roti sabzi, nothing crazy. tried isabgol, tried some gut powder thing that's been sitting half used in my cupboard for months, a probiotic for like 10 days before I forgot. nothing really sticks tbh