My Journey to Gut Health: Overcoming Stomach Problems Naturally

Discover my personal journey towards improved gut health and the strategies I have explored for finding relief.

7/7/20237 min read

My Struggle with Digestive Issues

Welcome fellow gut and stomach problem readers out there! I wanted to write this blog towards the end of a very long journey related to my stomach/gut health. I believe I found some very useful information through a lot of trial and error over many years of pain. Through this, I sincerely hope it helps others out there who cannot find a clear answer to solve their issues.

This is also because I know how many diets are out there like KETO, gluten-free, sugar-free and I am sure so many other kinds of diets. What I experienced and have witnessed in others is these diets are very painful and difficult to keep up with in day-to-day life. Of course, I acknowledge few cases have true allergies to things like gluten and dairy. But I also found these diets are being recommended to those who don't have a diagnosed issue with these things. Then they seem to make some kind of difference but I feel that is just co-incidence related to potentially overdosing on those things.

In general, the biggest thing I found is what some sensible doctors tell you: we just need a balanced diet. This is the biggest suggestion I can make to anyone. Stop eating too much of anything. Even healthy, super foods (Quinoa for example), which I will be recommending a lot in this blog. Don't overdo anything.

Take it from me, at least try out what I say and see if it works for you. Because I just did a lot of trial and error and a lot of research. There is a lot of contradictory information out there and this is largely because everyone is different. I think there is no one-size-fits-all solution that will solve everything by just not eating carbs or not eating meat.

Of course, as I said if you are allergic that is what you need to cut out. But please unless you have been medically diagnosed with an allergy it isn't necessary to completely cut out certain foods. But drastically reducing certain things is a reasonable thing to do. You need to understand the balance of your body.

I am not 100% sure but so far I couldn't find any doctor that can fully understand your own body. You are the best one to know as long as you pay attention to what your body tells you when you eat and drink certain things.

Opening Up About My Journey

Now, I am sharing my story with you, hoping it can provide direction to those facing similar health challenges.

From a young age, I noticed, along with my concerned mother, that I had stomach problems. Symptoms can be closely likened to IBS. Very irregular bowel movements. Such as some days constipation and other days similar mild diarrhea. Like need to go to the toilet maybe 8 or 9 times in a day or even in half a day.

Of course, there were visits to the GP which was followed by a series of visits to the gastroenterologist. 1st conclusion from a long process of diagnosis was I needed to eat little rocks that acted like fiber at the end of my meal. You have to swallow them whole with water which was not easy to do. I did follow this advice and it seemed to work but as a teenager and going into my late high school years this was not easy to keep up. Of course, that is my fault! When I got older and ever so slightly wiser ;) I thought about it again and concluded that this is not a good permanent solution. It is an answer doctors give you because they have no answer. Which I am thankful for because it is at least a positive mind to give someone something instead of nothing.

For me, it was nothing as for a while I could ignore this issue while I was young. Into my early 20s as we all know our bodies can deal with more. For me, I could get over all these things, and in many ways drinking and smoking a lot caused me to be numb or blame that instead of underlying stomach problems.

At some point, I was getting very sick when I went to have a few drinks and I knew I couldn't continue ignoring my gut. So I stopped drinking, smoking and this kind of bad habit to see if it had any effect. Of course, it helped but I quickly realised this was not the issue and I still have the same problem as when I was at school but now as I approached 30 it was getting noticeably worse.

I started to feel way too full when I ate my meal then feeling nauseous afterwards. I also could feel nauseous very easily when there was smoke or a strong cleaning chemical smell in the air. Anything too strong would bring on my nausea.

Of course, the same very irregular bowel movement accompanied all this and it pushed me to look for an answer. I had at least one friend who said I should at least try to find an answer. So it motivated me to try again going to GP and then to a gastroenterologist one more time. As of course, this was 15 years or so later and my life and body had changed so who knows? They might find an answer.

Long story short .... they didn't. I reached the point of camera down the throat and still the conclusion was "I have a sensitive stomach so I just feel things more." I am not joking on that one, the gastro said something like that to me. I was gob-smacked that a specialist could come out with that kind of answer.

By now my nausea was getting so bad. Sometimes due to work or a busy schedule, I had only 4 hours of sleep and this kind of stress brought out my digestive problems. If I had a meat and bread roll for example after this kind of lack of sleep I could be up all night throwing up. It was extreme. Other people could do the same thing, even my wife, and have no problems. I knew it was going to be unlivable. Nausea could result. was up I would sit at home on the floor for hours and hours until I finally felt tired enough to sleep. extreme.

Identifying the Root Cause of Digestive Problems

So I decided to take matters into my own hands as I am used to using the internet to search all things technology-related since the internet began. I decided to find out if stomach and health problems can be searched online. I know very well you have to be very careful when using the internet for this kind of matter but it is a useful guide and something to help you in the right direction or at least give you something to test out.

Which is what I found. A multitude of different diets and ideas from so many people. I searched for those who had the same issue as me.

Things like stomach ulcers came up. People who had helicobacter pylori had the same symptoms as me. Solutions rolled around taking apple cider vinegar or eating those HCL tablets.

I tried all of it. I think I even re-visited eating the rocks which did nothing for me.

The acid seemed to help but I feel it was just endless and in the end I still had problems. So it was at best a band-aid solution.

But I seemed to be on the right track. It felt true that my body was not producing enough stomach acid by itself, things weren't going down. Another evidence of this was often I could have stomach gas and taste the food I had eaten for many many hours later. This seemed to be because it wasn't digesting. So of course in extreme cases, I might vomit it up as it was like indigestion. But through things like the acid tablets I could feel some relief.

Also, I went down the path of taking multivitamins. I would receive a very short temporary relief which made me think it was connected. Then I read due to poor digestion our body may not absorb vitamins and minerals which leads to other health issues. Another issue I experienced and had experienced my whole life was poor sleep. I could sleep a lot and always woke up tired. I am sure many people relate to this and it is caused by a huge list of different issues.

I always have a problem with being too skinny. So it felt related that my body was not absorbing things. I tried to eat specific vitamins too, like B complex or B12 as I had vitamin deficiency symptoms I felt. But in tests, they never showed up. This made it difficult because I felt like this helped but it also just seemed to be a sign of what the issue was rather than solving it.

Another doctor friend of my dad's suggested a gluten-free diet to me to see if it helped.

This was interesting because it helped a lot. The best thing I ever tried so far was the GF diet. At first, I had no idea what to eat so I had to eat at home only with lots of vegetables and fresh meat. It seemed everything was getting better. After this, I learnt about all the GF products out there so began to eat them and after this, my health improvement went down again. So I was stuck again. But in general, my health was better so I continued with this.

The Role of Diet in Gut Health

One day I had a conversation with a friend who was a nurse and had pursued good health.

He introduced me to the idea of alkaline/acid balance. Despite the controversy surrounding it, I decided to try it and noticed improvements.

He gave am an extreme version of this diet at first. I realised that behind it there is the concept of balance. I felt my and my wife's health improved. Her issues were always different from mine and whatever I tried before never helped her. But this did. This was mainly just introducing a lot of good fruits and vegetables into my diet.

Conclusion: Taking Control of Your Gut Health

Be careful not to have too much-processed food.

I realised that when I started the gluten-free diet I had done this without realising and that is what helped me most of all.

I hope you read my posts 1 by 1 as I will give a detailed answer of what helped the most and good tips and recipes that can help you. What I found is you don't need to cut out everything but it is good to watch it carefully and limit the bad stuff and have a majority of good stuff. At least according to your personal body situation. That's why I said from the beginning you know your body better than anyone so time to start listening and checking which thing works for you.