Stomach Aches that Linger – Case of the Week

Talking about bathroom habits is often uncomfortable. Easier to talk about leg pain, or a back ache.

But with 26 feet of digestive tract, if it’s not working properly, you can be miserable.

And so it was with a patient this week.  Initially when I heard about his months of woe, of bloating, of diarrhoea multiple times per day, of abdominal pain, of being unable to risk going out because of an accident, I presumed, an imbalance of the bugs, the flora called Acidophilus that inhabit the gut.

They complete our normal digestion processes, or food ferments, rots and produces gas – the symptoms described above. And worse including blood in the stool – it can be scary.  With doses of these normal flora, often the digestive processes calm down and patients becomes more comfortable within days.

But not this case.  He was already sensitive to milk and avoided dairy products.  Two weeks into daily  Acidophilus doses, and Manuka honey from New Zealand, the patient was barely improving.

“What tests did they do?” The patient described various procedures including a colonoscopy.  I inquired about allergy testing, since he was already sensitive to milk.

“What about wheat?” I asked.  “I don’t know” was the reply.  Wheat or gluten allergies are becoming more prevalent so I encouraged the patient to stop wheat, read up on the internet all the products with wheat (the list will surprise you) and buy wheat free items from health stores.

“Its a miracle,” the patient said a few days later. It was for a couple of days until he had soup with noodles by accident. The wheat in the noodles irritated him again- part of the avoiding wheat learning curve.

Keep an eye out for Dr. Miller’s new site at millerfamilycare.com