It was always the same. The doctor would cast a jaded glance in my direction and then frown down at the prescription pad as he scrawled a few lines.
'Hmmmm. Spastic colon,' he'd mumble. 'Irritable bowel syndrome - IBS, it's called now. It's due to tension. Emotional problems,' he'd look up wearily - not at me - through me. 'You'll have to learn to relax.' He'd hand me the script. 'Best I can do, I'm afraid - a course of tranquillisers. See how you go with this - oh, unless you'd like some counselling... a stress management course...?'
Once again I would be struck dumb with disappointment. I didn't blame the doctor. I'd heard it so many times before, that I knew he was repeating the only information available to medical science - but I didn't believe it. Sure, I had problems and stress... who didn't? But why was it that friends, whose lives were just as stressful, didn't also have IBS? What was the cause of those awful symptoms of pain and bloating after eating? Why, after a modest meal, did I begin to feel as if I'd eaten a huge Christmas dinner, followed by a disquieting ache or small nagging jabs of pain, which, before the night was out, would turn into waves of agony, surging through my distended stomach - often worse than labour pains? If this was IBS, it was more stressful than the stress that was supposed to have caused it!
If you're an IBS sufferer, you'll have been through all this many times. Even to have one's condition diagnosed - given a name - is a relief. That is, until you discover that no one can offer a cure for IBS.
'Think of it as migraine in the gut,' one doctor said to me. 'It's as if you're crying inside...' But I knew I wasn't. I went through the whole gambit of being asked leading questions about my private life... how did I get on with my husband? Was I under too much tension at work? Sometimes for a change, doctors would make vague refences to 'modern living' or 'all those chemical sprays'. But usually it was the stress factor they believed was the cause of the agonising bouts of pain and bloating that mysteriously struck me down again and again. Their explanations were always vague, but determined: it was as a result of early childhood experiences - as unhappy marriage - psychological factors - all in the mind.
None of it rang true to me, because no matter what they said was the cause, when they began offering their explanations, my memory would flash back to the image of a little girl, no more than four years old, lying on the kitchen floor doubled up with pain, while her mother looked down with baffled exasperation, saying to a friend standing beside her that the doctor had told her that some people had a lower pain threshold!
That was nearly 50 years ago, before 'modern living' and the use of chemical sprays on food. The 'lower pain threshold' theory always irritated me, even as a child, because I knew it meant I was a wimp. But in other ways I was a happy, well adjusted child, living a normal family life. So I tried not to make too much fuss about the bouts of pain and bloating. I assumed my no-nonsense mother and the various doctors she'd taken me to were right and I was abnormally sensitive.
There was one contributing factor: I had always been constipated, even as a baby, and my mother assumed, as did everyone else, that the pain was part of the constipation. She was advised to fill me up with what we now call fibre. Fruit, vegetables, brown bread, bran muffins, prunes and dried apricots were part of my daily diet. It probably helped my constipation, but as I discovered years later, it didn't do anything for the IBS agony. In fact all that bran and whole-wheat bread just made it worse.
As I got older, the pain didn't really interfere with my life - it was my life. Although I didn't have it every day, at least every couple of weeks I would have a bad bout, usually in the evening after the main meal. It didn't matter so much when I could go to bed and curl up with a hot-water bottle, but when I started dating, the spectre of the pain and bloating would begin to haunt me. The evening would end with me gritting my teeth in agony and going home early when I should have been dancing the night away.
For years during which I had a successful career, married and became a mother, I plodded on, some days in pain, some days all right, but no days, I now realise, feeling really well. But if you've never experienced feeling really well, you don't know what you're missing.
In my early-thirties after a number of unhappy years, my marrage ended in divorce and life began to get very much better. My career in advertising was blooming. I began to feel more confident and financially secure than I had for a long time. But despite this new era of happiness, I was experiencing more and more frequent bouts of IBS pain. Finally a friend became concerned when, during a dinner party, I was so obviously in pain that he had to take me home. He persuaded me to consult a specialist and after a series of barium X-rays, I was told I had a congenitally deformed bowel and that I must stay 'regular'. This advice seemed easy enough to follow. I started on Dulcolax and Picolax, but was then prescribed products such as Normacol (which I loathed) and finally switched to Sennacot under the impression that it was a safer, herbal remedy.
A few years later I remarried and, with my daughter, came to live in Britain. At a time when I was happier than ever before, I began having more pain, more frequently than ever before. In an effort to keep 'regular', this being the only advice I had ever been given, I was now taking 35 Sennacot a night - and every morning I felt dreadful. To this, I added various herbal remedies, all of which promised to aid the digestion. My daily intake of greenish, strange-smelling pills was enormous! My daughter remembers a trip we took to the Continent together when I had to take a separate small suitcase for my pills and potions. She's never forgotten the nuisance of dragging this bag, embrrassingly clanking with pill bottles, all over Europe.
I consulted more doctors and tried everything and anything that might help. I drank copious pints of water every day, consumed litres of live yoghurt, pounds of slippery elm, evening primrose oil, lecithin, vitamin supplements and any other remedy that promised the magic goal of better health. I tried relaxation excises, massage, Zen, meditation, homepathy - but nothing worked for me. My private life had never been happier, but no one would have believed it - I was taking on all the hallmarks of a miserable neurotic.
And then my luck changed. One night I happened to see a documentary on television about Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where doctors were beginning to believe that irritable bowel syndome, among other chronic conditions, was caused by food intolerance. As I listened to the symptoms described, I realised it was my pain and bloating they were talking about - and they said they believed that eliminating wheat flour from the diet could eliminate the symptoms.
So begins chapter 1. Carol Sinclair goes on to tell how the next day she began eliminating wheat flour, with immediate relief of her symptoms. For about a year she was completely free of pain and bloating - and then the symptoms returned. Her eventual discovery that starch was the cause of her IBS symptoms, her many years of researching and refining her diet, during which time she has been 'a walking laboratory', is fascinating. She tells how anyone with IBS can easily and safely find out whether starch is the cause and how to test for starch in your food. With over 200 delicious, healthy recipes and clear instructions of how to cook and eat out without starch, the book is a complete guide to a starch-free lifestyle. If you've experienced similar IBS symptoms and been told it's all due to stress, this book could change your life. This site my be downloaded for personal use only. No text or images, still or animated, my be used in any form, digital or otherwise, (except for publicity of the 'IBS Starch-Free Diet' by Carol Sinclair or this internet site) without written permission of the copyright owner. For more details please click here.