Question about health

In 2015 I took a test and found out I am soy intolerant. Issue with that is, it's in EVERYTHING. Literally unless it's a fresh picked fruit/veggie/meat, it has soya in it.

I don't see this as being the culprit, as I could never follow a soya-free diet in the States either. I was munching on some pumpkin seeds earlier and the "allergen warning" said "may contain traces of soya"

That being said, the food here might have a *different* type of soya? I really don't know.

It's so frustrating. All I've eaten today was eggs/bacon, hummus/cucumber and some pumpkin seeds.

I am already bloated and kind of crampy. -sigh-

One day I started bloating at work and I had to run to Primark and buy a new pair of trousers... 2 sizes bigger.

Before the antibiotics, I would look 9 months pregnant some days.

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Thoughts of a non-medical-professional person and not meant to be medical advice, but things I've encountered and done:

Stress - Yes, stress can do that to you. I went through that on and off for years when I was in a stressful situation. At one point I remember having a plate on my stomach/midsection while I was laying down and everyone in the room could see my heartbeat by how much the plate was moving. Until you take care of the stress - good stress, bad stress, it's still stress - it can play havoc with your body. You've had a major upheaval in your life recently. While it's a good thing, it's still stress!

Probiotics - a lot of them are destroyed by stomach acid, and don't even get to your gut. So if you go that route you'll want to find something that's coated and will actually make it to where it needs to be. Apparently having them in a dairy food can help buffer the effect of the acid, too. The Placebo Effect is well documented with some  people who improve suddenly who are popping non-coated pills.

Bugs - you may have picked up a bacteria you're not used to, and have a case of gastritis.  Sometimes that can take quite a while to settle down.

Other things - Could be IBS. Could be GERD. Could have something to do with your gallbladder or bile ducts. God forbid, it could be the start of ulcers. There's a lot of exotic and less exotic things that could be going on. And very little way to know what they are without some testing - and even then you might not know!

Food Sensitivity - Could be a food intolerance or sensitivity you've developed. For example, there are proteins in cow's milk that some people are allergic to, but they can drink milk from cows that have a slightly different protein - I think it's Type A1 v Type A2. Perhaps the dairy cows here are different from what you're used to (or they're fed something different) and you're just now running into the problem? If you have milk products at every meal... then again, if it happens when you've not had dairy, that particular example would be ruled out.  They use a lot of beet sugar here rather than cane sugar or corn sugar as in the States. Sugar is sugar, chemically, but there may be some hitchhiking molecules.... My point is, if it's a prepared food, it could be almost anything in it.

The EU has stricter regulations about keeping a lot of the nastier stuff that you still find in processed food in the States out of the food here, but there's still a lot of "stuff" in processed food. So, it could well be that there's something here - maybe a sugar substitute (one of the sugar alcohols) that's causing you trouble. (I personally have hell with those.)

Maybe, try:  In the past, what I'd do in these situations is go on the BRAT diet for a while to see if I could weed some obvious things out. Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and plain toast is the BRAT. I have, a few times, dropped it down to just the white rice and chicken broth for a couple of days, then added the other things in over time, one at a time. It's hard to live on that if you're working and away from home, though, so the whole BRAT might be more sustaining. Drinking nothing but water or maybe a clear broth is good.  I'd do it for a few days to see if things settle down with the tummy. If it did, I'd then slowly add more foods into my diet, no more than one a day.  Absolutely no alcohol or caffeinated drinks until it sorts out. Probably no fizzy drinks, too. I'd not go for a lot of hours without something in my stomach - dry toast, rice, crackers, something. With a strategy like this, as you add more foods in, if you're sensitive to something hopefully you'd get a pretty quick reaction and could then know (or check the ingredient list for possible suspects) what your body doesn't like.  If you don't feel better after a few days on the really restricted diet, or if it got worse, I would assume it's not food-related. (Unless the culprit is Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, or something in the bread.)

Time - Sometimes I found that my stomach had gotten irritated for unknown reasons and just giving it a bit of a rest was enough to reset things and heal up. If you had a new virus or a new bacteria introduced to your system, it may take a while for things to balance back out again. Sometimes waiting is all you can do. But I would add that absolutely if you are in pain or it's getting worse rather than better, see a medical professional sooner rather than waiting. If you can do a bullet-point list of your symptoms and how long each has been going on, it might be useful to bring along.

Best of luck - I hope you feel better soon!

PS - Worrying about it is not good, though. Adds to stress! So don't let it go on too long.

I was wondering if it was IBS. I've also considered that my BC might be the culprit, but I've been on it for 8 months now and this has been going on for about 2. So, I'm leaning toward no? I have an appointment with the GP on 13 June! Hopefully he/she will put me on track. If I have to change my diet I will. It's just about....what the issue is. I tried avoiding soya (see in previous post about my soy intolerance), I've tried cutting out dairy, sugary foods, carbs, etc.

To be honest, last year when I went on my diet and cut out all carbs (except for natural ones in fruit/veg and the occasional tortilla) I felt fine. It's harder to be on a no carb diet here than it was in the US, I'm finding. The British love their carbs...

As for the stress thing, I can say that I am stressed 24/7 and not as happy as I was before moving. I only say that because of my constant job search/working in retail while I search for a job in my career again. Our living situation is kind of stuck like this until I get a well paying job which is making me feel miserable.

I've been feeling self conscious about this extra 10ibs...so when I get bloated it makes it worse. Then I feel bad about myself, add more stress etc, cycle.

Forgot to say to try taking buscopan


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Ooo, I was soy free for a year while nursing (dairy and soya) and it was hard.  I feel you there.

I managed to find all the "good stuff" though and gained lots of weight while dairy and soya free. 

Because you felt fine on a low processed food/lower carb diet I'm going to guess SIBO honestly. I have a lot of food intolerances and every time I visited the UK and went home I had to visit my GI specialist because things were out of whack. Going back to processed food the bad bacteria tend to go nuts. It can be incredibly painful! Increasing good fermented foods like kefir and kombucha can help, and following a low fodmap diet for a bit if your GP isn't supportive in prescribing the right antibiotics for it (it's barely recognised among doctors and even GI specialists, and the low fodmap diet is generally the prescribed method of dealing with it). IBS is a catchall and doesn't really address the underlying problem, but a lot of research is happening on the microbiome that's super interesting. I also have to drink bottled water, tap water makes me sick.

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Ya know, that's interesting. When we went back to the States, we started eating more processed and "fast" food. And our guts when nuts. It took a few weeks, once we got back home here, of eating properly before things settled down!

Gastroenterology and autoimmune research scientist here....

I generally tell folks to stay off the interwebs for health advice because people are hideously ill-informed and will feed you ALL KINDS of BS, but as you're sensible and already have a GP appointment....it could be several things- what it is almost 100% NOT is an 'adjustment to UK food'....have your GP test for the following:

1. Hypothyroidism- basic blood test for TSH, T3 and T4 (they usually just do the TSH, which is enough to get you started)-if TSH is high (above 3) they'll give you replacement hormone, but also push for Hashimoto's antibody test...all hashi's is hypothyroid, but not all hypothyroid is hashi's.

2. Celiac disease(basic blood test-if positive, you win an intestinal biopsy, yay!)

If #1 is positive, you have your answer (it will be a lifelong endeavour to sort your hormone level but that's another post)...if #2 is positive, you'll be referred to a gastroenterologist. If you're in or near Oxford, that specialist will be at the John Radcliffe and do come round and say hello

If neither of those things, ask for a referral to a gastroenterologist anyway...who will then investigate lots of more complicated things and determine if you have 'run of the mill' IBS- for which diet is key (FODMAPs...ginormous pain in the ars*, but it works)- or what could be a mild form of Crohn's or colitis.

Would highly recommend not introducing anything new (i.e. supplements or probiotics) until you chat with your GP. Changing things with over the counter drugs, well, changes things...and makes it much much harder to figure out where your symptoms are coming from.

An aside regarding the posts re: fibre...a low fibre diet is strongly correlated with obesity and subsequent colorectal cancer. Eat your leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables people.

Good luck! This stuff is no fun...I both research it and live it (I've got hashi's and my husband has crohn's)...but solutions do exist!

I was wondering if it was IBS. I've also considered that my BC might be the culprit, but I've been on it for 8 months now and this has been going on for about 2. So, I'm leaning toward no? I have an appointment with the GP on 13 June! Hopefully he/she will put me on track. If I have to change my diet I will. It's just about....what the issue is. I tried avoiding soya (see in previous post about my soy intolerance), I've tried cutting out dairy, sugary foods, carbs, etc.

To be honest, last year when I went on my diet and cut out all carbs (except for natural ones in fruit/veg and the occasional tortilla) I felt fine. It's harder to be on a no carb diet here than it was in the US, I'm finding. The British love their carbs...

As for the stress thing, I can say that I am stressed 24/7 and not as happy as I was before moving. I only say that because of my constant job search/working in retail while I search for a job in my career again. Our living situation is kind of stuck like this until I get a well paying job which is making me feel miserable.

I've been feeling self conscious about this extra 10ibs...so when I get bloated it makes it worse. Then I feel bad about myself, add more stress etc, cycle.

BC can do strange things to you. From experience, and from the Daughter's experience, just  a change from one formulation to another similar (but not identical) one has caused us everything from weight gain to mood swings to brain fogs to acne-like breakouts (in one's thirties, that's just.... not fair!), to constipation to a change in cramps/no cramps to bloating before periods... all sorts of things. When you diddle with the body's systems, it doesn't always go well.

And yeah, it's tough to go low-carb. It's doable, but if you have to eat away from home very often it's pretty tough.

Hope you sort it out and feel better, soon!

Gastroenterology and autoimmune research scientist here....

I generally tell folks to stay off the interwebs for health advice because people are hideously ill-informed and will feed you ALL KINDS of BS, but as you're sensible and already have a GP appointment....it could be several things- what it is almost 100% NOT is an 'adjustment to UK food'....have your GP test for the following:

1. Hypothyroidism- basic blood test for TSH, T3 and T4 (they usually just do the TSH, which is enough to get you started)-if TSH is high (above 3) they'll give you replacement hormone, but also push for Hashimoto's antibody test...all hashi's is hypothyroid, but not all hypothyroid is hashi's.

2. Celiac disease(basic blood test-if positive, you win an intestinal biopsy, yay!)

If #1 is positive, you have your answer (it will be a lifelong endeavour to sort your hormone level but that's another post)...if #2 is positive, you'll be referred to a gastroenterologist. If you're in or near Oxford, that specialist will be at the John Radcliffe and do come round and say hello

If neither of those things, ask for a referral to a gastroenterologist anyway...who will then investigate lots of more complicated things and determine if you have 'run of the mill' IBS- for which diet is key (FODMAPs...ginormous pain in the ars*, but it works)- or what could be a mild form of Crohn's or colitis.

Would highly recommend not introducing anything new (i.e. supplements or probiotics) until you chat with your GP. Changing things with over the counter drugs, well, changes things...and makes it much much harder to figure out where your symptoms are coming from.

An aside regarding the posts re: fibre...a low fibre diet is strongly correlated with obesity and subsequent colorectal cancer. Eat your leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables people.

Good luck! This stuff is no fun...I both research it and live it (I've got hashi's and my husband has crohn's)...but solutions do exist!

Really curious (and you'd be the best person to ask - so sorry! haha), can you just develop something like Coeliac or Hypothyroidism? Would there have been some type of change in environment that would trigger something like that? I genuinely always just assumed it was a change in diet as that was quite literally the only real thing changing (for me) from the US to the UK (and when visiting other locations) but would be interested to know if there was something that could trigger a person to develop what you mentioned above (though I know my symptoms don't really seem to mirror Coeliac's much and they tend to present more like IBS if I'm honest which obviously, as you mentioned, can be impacted by diet so could explain why it felt - for me - like it was diet induced.

Really curious (and you'd be the best person to ask - so sorry! haha), can you just develop something like Coeliac or Hypothyroidism? Would there have been some type of change in environment that would trigger something like that? I genuinely always just assumed it was a change in diet as that was quite literally the only real thing changing (for me) from the US to the UK (and when visiting other locations) but would be interested to know if there was something that could trigger a person to develop what you mentioned above (though I know my symptoms don't really seem to mirror Coeliac's much and they tend to present more like IBS if I'm honest which obviously, as you mentioned, can be impacted by diet so could explain why it felt - for me - like it was diet induced.

I have Hashimoto's as well. I was first dx'd with hypothyroidism in 2006 but I suspected it went further than that. I had to order my own antibodies labs and they  were sky high... over 20,000.

I was able to get an appointment with an endo who would prescribe me a NDT.

My body went haywire once I got over here pretty much due to a lack of meds. All of my joint pain and swelling I can contribute to my unmedicated hashimoto's.

I've not had one blip of a RA like symptom since I started back on Armour.

When I run out of Armour, I may need to make a new medication run.

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I have Hashimoto's as well. I was first dx'd with hypothyroidism in 2006 but I suspected it went further than that. I had to order my own antibodies labs and they  were sky high... over 20,000.

I was able to get an appointment with an endo who would prescribe me a NDT.

My body went haywire once I got over here pretty much due to a lack of meds. All of my joint pain and swelling I can contribute to my unmedicated hashimoto's.

I've not had one blip of a RA like symptom since I started back on Armour.

When I run out of Armour, I may need to make a new medication run.

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Yeah so that would make sense to me as I can imagine lack of meds would make things go haywire (seriously, after seeing how bad it can be for you,  you DEFINITELY have my sympathies). I didn't (to my knowledge) have any thyroid related issues nor change in meds and the only thing I could attribute to feeling bloaty and gross to (again, just for me) is the change in diet/the way food is processed in the UK vs the US, but that is obviously coming from a place of ignorance based on rdoherty's post so now I'm curious if there is an ability to either develop something like Coeliac's or if something like that could've been there and it was only through something linked to a move that it could "come out" so-to-speak.

My husbands Coeliac diagnosis was triggered when he was 37.  We all had a vomiting bug and he was never right again after that.  He lost over 30 pounds in a few months, was extremely lethargic, and looked like death.  Turns out his body was attacking itself and not absorbing nutrients.

Thankfully due to his skeletal frame, he was put on an urgent path so had blood work the same day as the endoscopy.  The blood work came back negative!  But the biopsy was very conclusive Coeliac, which makes sense as it’s in his family.

Really curious (and you'd be the best person to ask - so sorry! haha), can you just develop something like Coeliac or Hypothyroidism? Would there have been some type of change in environment that would trigger something like that? I genuinely always just assumed it was a change in diet as that was quite literally the only real thing changing (for me) from the US to the UK (and when visiting other locations) but would be interested to know if there was something that could trigger a person to develop what you mentioned above (though I know my symptoms don't really seem to mirror Coeliac's much and they tend to present more like IBS if I'm honest which obviously, as you mentioned, can be impacted by diet so could explain why it felt - for me - like it was diet induced.

Yep, celiac, hypothyroidism, Crohn's, and any other autoimmune disease can come on seemingly suddenly. There's a lot of work being done by me and about a thousand other people to try to work out the how and why of this, but it is linked or strongly correlated thus far to epigenetic changes often brought on by hormone imbalances. It is, for example, ridiculously common for women to come up with celiac's or hypothyroid disease following pregnancy or during menopause or perimenopause. The trick with the latter two is of course its hard to know when that actually starts. Very very few people are diagnosed with this stuff at a young age-the bulk develop 'sudden symptoms'...which of course aren't sudden if we knew what the hell we were looking for...but we don't...as least not completely....yet.

Regarding factors that contribute to symptoms, it's all correlation and clinical observation. Stress is a biggie, as is diet...but what that means varies HUGELY from patient to patient....and that may be due to the fact that epigenetic factors vary with environmental inputs that we haven't fully characterised yet.

Regarding the thyroid conversation and synthetic hormone vs. NDT like Armour...I was on Armour too, before I came to the UK...but honestly, from a scientific point of view, the case for Armour is really weak, and I get why they don't prescribe it here. That said, levothyroxine wasn't enough to keep me controlled (often true for Hashi's folks....less often true for those with non-autoimmune thyroid disease) and I negotiated with my GP and endo to add synthetic T3 (known as cytomel in the US). This has worked fairly well and saves me having to smuggle meds from the US every time I need an Rx...and also, the NHS pays for them, so that's great.

The truth is that you will never really know the root cause of whatever your problem is...unless it's a pathogen. Autoimmune diseases are not like infections...we know HIV leads to AIDS and we know Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection leads to TB disease....it isn't like that when your body attacks itself. It's much, much, MUCH more complicated. The best thing you can do now is get a diagnosis and then work to manage your symptoms once you're armed with enough information to make it clear what should come next.

Just as an aside, is your garden-variety MD up-to-date on this?