Free Tums!

Hi and welcome to my brand new blog I am launching on freedom from digestive disorders. My name is John, I'm 38. As I write this, I still suffer from chronic IBS, which I first recognised as an issue back in 2010. It's been seven long years of increasing famine, and since then I have lost almost 10kg. That's swinging between 60-61 kg. I am 187cm tall (over 6ft 1in). This condition, as anyone suffering from similar issues will know, can feel terrible, especially around times of social gatherings like Christmas which has such a focus on eating, drinking and shared pleasure.

Because life likes to throw just as many challenges, digestive-disorder sufferers can also have other unrelated problems which exacerbate the psychological challenge of staying positive and a pleasure to be around.

Because life also puts fellow sufferers on our route, we often hear a thousand-and-one titbits of advice and haphazardly (and expensively) try many of them, confused and lost between contradicting advice and even medical results and tests. In my experience, digestive disorders can be very, very confusing conundrums. The magical solution occasionally seems to break through like Spring morning after a long hard winter, only to plunge back straight into the winter of gastric discomfort, bloating and pain and realise that it was a mirage, and the darker reality of there being no silver bullet, not even a silver map. Gutting.

We need a map, but these are our own unchartered waters.

But all hope is not lost! On this blog, I will attempt to share my experiences, good and bad, and slowly build my "map" from the resources available online, books and articles, my own experience feedback, and I hope it also might contribute to others and their own map-making process. This will vary from the practical to the reflective. FODMAP-ping is my current investigation. More on that in the next post. Until then, may I please wish you either bon appetit or patient fasting.

John, for FreeTums