When Caitlin came to see me, she was frustrated. Almost every day she dealt with gas, bloating, pain and cramping in her abdominal region. She never knew whether she would wake up dealing with diarrhea or be completely unable to have a bowel movement.
“It’s not just the pain, ” she told me. “It’s the roller coaster. ”
She described how on certain days she felt fine—but that made waking up the next day with painful constipation almost more upsetting.
Caitlin had spoken with her physician several times about these uncomfortable symptoms and the way they seemed to be ruling her life. Her doctor had done a number of tests to rule out serious health conditions, and when they came up empty, he had finally diagnosed her with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
But what did that really mean?
He offered her a few medication options to manage the symptoms but no real guidance about how to find or eliminate the underlying root cause. He seemed to be telling her she just had to learn to live with it.
Caitlin isn ’t the first client to come to me because the only solutions they’ve been offered are to take medications and learn to manage their symptoms. But that simply wasn’t good enough for her. She knew there had to be something behind the problem, and she wasn’t willing to endure these
