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The long road home involved driving on a stress-inducing freeway where drivers have zero-tolerance for speed limits and tailgating is a regular occurrence. I still had about 10 minutes left until I was able to grace the porcelain throne, but my gut had other plans.
As I drove up to the final set of lights, I broke into a sweat, my stomach cramps felt like an earthquake rumbling within my lower extremities and I braced myself for an apocalypse. Anxiously staring at the lights, I looked to my left and noticed a young, flirtatious-looking driver locking eyes and cracking a smile at me without a hint in the world that the woman next to him was about to experience a boo-boo in her pants. ‘Yep, it’s happening,’ I thought to myself as I awkwardly smiled back…. Yes, it happened. The lights turned green, foot on pedal and off I drove back home with the most uncomfortable and revolting feeling of having pooed my pants, in my car, as I smiled back at a stranger.
My passion for gut health was definitely born of a mix of being the daughter of a gastroenterologist and experiencing the unpredictable and painful symptoms of IBS. This three-letter acronym stands for ‘irritable bowel syndrome’ and, for those who are still not familiar with the term, it is a glitch in something we’ll be covering in detail called the ‘gut-brain axis’, causing a disturbance in the functioning of the digestive tract (i.e. intestines). Bloating, gas, irregular bowel movements, abdominal pain and urgency to use the loo are some common symptoms many sufferers describe (ah, the joy). Some people with IBS complain of constipation, others have diarrhoea and some experience both.
To cut a story spanning over a year short, I started experiencing symptoms on and off after suffering a horrible stomach infection. That also happened to coincide with my moving from Australia to Dubai. So, change of environment? Food? Weather? Who knows. Following a course (and mix) of antibiotics, my guts of steel transformed into the weakest link. My symptoms could only be described as an abdominal roller-coaster: stomach pain then diarrhoea for a few days followed by no intestinal movement whatsoever. Everything I ate seemed to go straight through me or create the perfect pregnancy illusion, where feeling bloated was simply an understatement. After endless trips to t