Having Digestive Issues? Here’s Your Miracle Diagnosis!
You’re allergic to gluten. Did you know that? Yep. That’s why you’re always bloated after meals.
Wait, no. You’re allergic to dairy. Yeah, that’s it. Wait, no—
Everybody is allergic to gluten and dairy. Yeah. Including you. Yeah. Well— everybody except Europeans. They can have as much bread and milk as they want and live to 120 years old. Why?
Um—because—it’s an agriculture thing.
A Monsanto thing. You know Monsanto? The supercorporation that produces most of the wheat that the US uses in its bread products? That’s what’s fucking up your digestive system. That’s what you’re allergic to. Also, you’re sensitive to certain gas-causing vegetables. Like broccoli and cauliflower. Those are good for everyone else but you. No beans either. Chickpeas are beans, so let’s have a moment of silence for hummus.
Also: you can’t have guar gum, the binding agent in many plant-based milks. You can’t have any of those pesky gums. Carrageenan, xanthan gum, gellan gum, locust bean gum, acacia gum. There are a lot of gums, you wouldn’t believe how many gums are in our everyday foods. Oh and SUGAR. No sugar for you. Sugar feeds the bacteria in your gut and causes overgrowth—
Everything is a little bit poisonous, actually.
Wait, never mind. You can eat anything.
It was stress the whole time. You’re just stressed.
That’s it! You’re allergic to yourself.
Well, and lactose. No ice cream for you.
TL;DR - This Week’s Topics
How to Have a Colonoscopy.
How to Learn to Live in Your Body Comfortably Because It Feels Like Your Own Body Doesn’t Like You Very Much.
Are Food Allergies Real or Do We All Have Fucked Up Guts at this Point?
Products and Tests That I’ve Tried and Have Failed Me.
Let’s start with the How to Do Colonoscopy, though.
We’ll walk into this shit together. And I do mean… shit. You’ll see.
The Youngest Person to Ever Get a Colonoscopy?!
How to Have a Really Shitty Time in 1 Easy Step.
I’ve always been told I was mature for my age. An old soul. A 60 year old woman in a preteen, teenage, young adult’s body.
But never did I think I had a 60 year old colon.
A colon beyond her years. A colon that wears wool, knits, has grandkids; a colon that cannot see the world for what it is, but yearns for what it once was. Never would I have thought my digestive system were on par with her foremothers’. A colon old enough to have bought a San Francisco Victorian house when it was as affordable as a bag of lettuce. NEVER would I have THOUGHT—
—but here we are, less than 24 hours out from baby’s first colonoscopy.
(I am baby.) (I am a Benjamin Button, wrinkly old baby.)
10:20 AM tomorrow—it’s game time.
Sad & Bloated
How did we get here? An ode to the self-care complex & lots of stress.
SHE WAS SO BLOATED, SHE DIED.
The headline of my newspaper obituary. That’s what it’ll say one day.
Her intestines, they just weren’t designed for this world. Every meal she ate left her feeling pregnant and sad. And now, here she lies. So bloated that the rest of her body just—like— gave up. Her brain, her gut, her kidneys—the whole team “tapped out the game,” as they say. (Do they say that?). She was emotionally, physically, desperately, spiritually over it.
No ice cream, no deal. If I can’t eat what I like, how am I to go on?
Full disclosure: For most of my twenties, I had an eating disorder. Haha—“had.”
Fuller disclosure: The disordered demon still lives in my limbs. Shakes her head at sides of fries (why so many?), reminds me of the anti-bread craze of the mid 2010s every time I eat a piece of toast, guides a judgmental hand to my stomach post-meal as if to say, Did you really need all that?
But! She’s not nearly as loud as she used to be. I feel better. My therapist(s) ask me: If you feel “better,” why do you so often fear food, still? Because! As of late, food feels physically bad. My aversion to certain (/most) foods has graduated from emotional to physical. I can’t digest anything. Well. That’s not exactly right. But it feels that way, sometimes. I’m bloated ALL THE TIME.
The colonoscopy was a last resort after trying, well… everything else.
Everything Else I Tried Before Sticking a Camera Up my Butt ;)
Metamucil powder: Made me more bloated, but apparently that eventually subsides, so I’ll keep trying it.
Psyllium husk pills (the same as Metamucil, basically.)
Nerva anti-IBS meditation app: Weird and expensive weekly subscription to an app-based program. A soothing British woman coaxes you in a Headspace way to think about food passing through your gut peacefully. I understand there’s a connection between the brain and the gut, but getting into a meditatively hypnotic state didn’t cure my hemorrhoids. (TMI?)
Waking Up: Sam Harris’s meditation app. I actually like this. No effect on my gut yet, but it definitely makes me calmer.
Arrae unbloat pills: Feminine-friendly brand that Instagram advertised to me. You’re supposed to take two after meals. No difference for me yet. I’ll probably return them.
Celiac/nut allergy tests: Nada.
Tums & Gas X: I eat these things like dessert. The candy coated versions are delicious. Shut up.
Etc: Relaxation. Massage. Peppermint oil. Peppermint tea. Ginger. Ginger tea. Stretching. Prebiotics. Probiotics. Not eating bread. Not eating eggs. Did I mention Gas-X? Processing past traumas. Exploring past lives. Meditation. Food sensitivity tests! (My results come back in a month, maybe THAT will save me…)
Wait, but Nat — What is a Colon?
How dare you waste my time.
It’s this:
It’s also the internet’s favorite way to misspell “cologne.” (see below)
God save us all.
Okay, So What’s a Colonoscopy?
Literally you guys, grow up.
It’s this:
…and in order to get one you have to empty your intestines of EVERYTHING. They give you a jug of laxatives to chug the day before. Here, I took a picture of the poop-torture-liquid for your viewing pleasure of my eventual pain:
Step 1 to ShitTown: A Liquid Fast.
Colonoscopy Prep Begins.
LIVE NEWS REPORT: I’m writing this in real time from my couch, barely into the day-before fasting process, already lightheaded enough to float into the next dimension. Why? Because, on this godforsaken day on which I must FAST (horrible) and then drink a gallon of LAXATIVES (yum) to clear out my F*CKING DIGESTIVE SYSTEM (the whole nine intestinal yards) so that the doctors can stick a camera up my butt (overshare?) I got my PERIOD.
*men start to back out of the room*
*men hesitate at the door, remembering—oh yeah, we’re not supposed to think that periods are gross anymore because of the Barbie movie*
But of course I got my period, because Satan himself loves to mess with me on a personal and daily basis. But we’re dealing, because we must, because we are strong independent women. Even you, boys. We’re all in this together. What am I saying? Gonna be honest: I have no clue. I’m losing it. I’m staring into Substack with double-vision.
How to cope with the fasting process:
Drink a lot of water.
Watch a lot of movies instead of watching the clock.
Eat hella sugar-free Jell-O’s, closing your eyes as you do so, infusing into the flaccid gelatinous excuse for sustenance the memory of a burger, slice of cake, entire pizza.
None of these will work that well. Bang my line with better tips.
The Drinking of the Laxatives doesn’t commence until 6PM. The jug awaits me patiently from its perch in the fridge, a threat and a promise. It’s 2:30 right now. I am but a wee young lass who is naive about what she is about to endure.
Anything can be deadly if you stress hard enough ;)
I’m not alone. I know. Most of my friends are taking probiotics of various intensities. Probiotics strong enough to, what? Birth a billion bacteria capable of warding off a lifetime of ever-present, effervescent stress. Effervescent. My blood is a sparkling wine. Tingling and mildly toxic. Poisoned by what? Curable how?
Maybe all of my friends are as disturbed as I am. Friends: I love you guys. But we’re fucked up. We’re so stressed. But we’re not any more stressed out than anyone else, right? So are we really that stressed out? Enough to impair digestion? No way. We’re fine. And so it must be what we’re eating. What we’re consuming—though in this day and age, a lot of what we consume isn’t food. News, TikTok, bills.
What’re the nutrition facts for overdue rent? For frantically searching for a freelance job? How many vitamins does that sap from our life force? What’s my recommended daily value of cortisol?
Give Me that Cheese Ball
Waiting for the laxatives to kick in, I watch the French season of Netflix’s culinary masterpiece, Chef’s Table—a visual, international smorgasbord of all things food and fine dining. It’s the most delicious docuseries you’ve ever seen; whenever I can’t taste my own life, the show feels like placing a cube of bouillon on my tongue. Every episode gives me the same goosebumps as Anthony’s Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, which I’ve read all the way through thrice.
With unblinking, glassy bauble eyes, I watch chefs balsamically-drizzle impossibly beautiful plates of confit vegetables, squeeze perfectly baked buns, pour hot butter over lamb chops, half-chickens, a half-chicken-half-duck Frankenbird that looks, surprisingly, sizzlingly irresistible—
Ugh. Straddling euphoria and dismay, I imagine the taste… and the resulting digestive pain. I used to get bloated after some meals, not every meal. My guts gurgle (yum). I’m envious of a hypothetical person, a faceless, care-free world traveler pulling apart the most voluptuous ball of burrata, dressing it simply with salt and olive oil and burying hrt face into it as if between open legs.
The blunt Pedialyte taste of the laxative solution films my mouth.
Dip me into Camembert like a skewer into fondue.
Update
I’m typing this onto my phone from the toilet because I can’t leave the toilet, because I’m halfway deep through this gallon of laxatives. Every middle school eating disordered girlie’s wet dream—I am being turned absolutely inside out, I am dissolving into a liquid, I am shedding this human form, I am becoming a weightless ball of floating light. The ultimate ideal-body.
Never will I worry about indigestion again! Light needs no sustenance!
Don’t listen to me.
I have no brain right now.
I’m too depleted.
I haven’t eaten in years (hours) (feels like an eternity).
These laxatives are so thorough, I’m going to start losing my childhood memories soon. They’re all I’ve got left to give. That’s fine. A fresh start. An unpressed blank. I am baby.
Pics or It Didn’t Happen!
Don’t worry, these aren’t screen-grabs of my colon. Though I did think about making an OnlyFans page of the images the doctors took. It’s my butt! From the inside!
Conclusion: Inconclusive :/
My colonoscopy (un)fortunately came back normal. I.e. I’ve got 99 problems and I don’t know one. I’m glad nothing is wrong but the mystery continues. So I guess I drank all that laxative for nothing, but you know what they say: what doesn’t kill you makes you nauseous.
If you have any tips n tricks to improve digestion let a girl know. Until then, I’ll be waited with bated breath for my food sensitivity results.
Have you tested for SIBO and had a gut microbiome test? It sounds like (like me) you might have bad bacteria in your small and/or large intestine - which is what causes allergies, bloating etc etc. Western medicine isn’t great at picking up on these things but I was referred by my gastroenterologist to a nutritionist and they tested and I was positive for both. I’m now taking herbal supplements and digestive enzymes for both and feeling better than I was before. I was vomiting after every meal at one point and now can eat even the dreaded hummus!
For my IBS, I found SSRIs helped me the most. I went through a psyllium husk phase too, which helped until I became dependent.