Dear anonymous03:

Welcome back. I re-read much of our previous communication so to be better prepared to answer your new thread, a new thread on an old topic, and an unfortunate one: your IBS-C, which stands for constipation-predominant irritable bowel syndrome, a subtype of irritable bowel syndrome, a condition characterized by chronic constipation with associated abdominal pain.

The following is information you can find in Wikipedia on the topic of IBS, I will include quotes and paraphrase some of the information: IBS is one of the Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders (FGID), also  known as disorders of gut-brain interaction, or axis. There are two major kinds of FGID: (1) dyspepsia, also known as indigestion, and (2) IBS.

These are idiopathic disorders, that is, they are of unknown cause or mechanism, but what is known is that there are nerve cells (neurons) that are located in the walls of the stomach and the intestines, neurons called nociceptors, that are pain receptors. I will now focus on what happens specifically in the walls of the large intestines: the nociceptors “are highly sensitive to distension (stretch)”. They sense the stretching of the intestinal walls due to feces (solid/ semisolid waste matter) and gas stretching those walls. The nociceptors perceive this stretching as “damaging or potentially damaging stimuli”. Next, they send “‘possible threat’ signals to the spinal cord and the brain”. Next, “if the brain perceives the threat as credible, it creates the sensation of pain to direct attention to the body part, so the threat can hopefully be mitigated”. Sometimes the pain is “accompanied by symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, changes in vital signs as well as emotional manifestations”.

Wikipedia reads in its entry on IBS under Cause: “childhood physical and psychological abuse is often associated with the development of IBS. It is believed that psychological stress may trigger IBS in predisposed individuals”.

Last you shared, April 2020, you were living with your mother who inflicted on you severe stress since the time you were a very young child, all your life, practically. It so happens that there are a lot of parallels between your mother and mine, and it so happens that the two of us significantly suffer from, and have been diagnosed with IBS-C.

This is my understanding of how it happened, these are my words, simplifying the matter much, I am sure. I will be referring to myself but suggesting that some of the same is true to you too:

The intense and repeated distress that I experienced as a child living with my mother overwhelmed my nerve cells (neurons), repeatedly overly exciting, for so long, that they ended up being overly-sensitive/ overly reactive to stimuli. The light from the sun bothered me too much, noise from neighbors troubled me, the feel of sweat on my skin and the feel of tight clothing made me feel very, very uncomfortable, and the sensations in my intestines, from one point on,  also made me feel very, very uncomfortable.

Other people with calmer neurons are way less bothered by external (light, noise, sweat, etc.) and internal (sensations inside internal organs) stimuli. For them, it would take a whole lot of sunlight and noise and intestinal distress to get their attention, but for me, it took way lesser amounts of sunlight and noise and intestinal distress to get my attention and to cause me much distress.

The discomfort and distress that I feel in regard to my large intestines is due to the stretching of the intestinal walls caused by waste material and gas being there. The nociceptors in the walls of my large intestines sense the stretching and proceed to send alarm signals to my brain, the alarm signals are interpreted in my brain as danger, and the result: anxiety and great discomfort, my attention is on my intestines, my muscles almost everywhere contract, including the muscles responsible for my breathing and I take in less oxygen. In other words, my IBS was caused by distress/ anxiety and it continues to generate distress/ anxiety: it’s a loop.

I don’t remember suffering from IBS at an early age. What I read today indicates that a stressor later in life, such as an intestinal infection, can start the IBS. This makes sense to me because I know that anxiety is like wildfire, it starts someplace and then it spreads. So, let’s say my anxiety was not focused on my intestines, but following a painful intestinal infection, my anxiety spread into my intestines, a new location.

Like you, I saw a doctor for my IBS-C, a reputable clinic where I was diagnosed. I was given probiotics as well and it helped a lot, for a while, but not for long. Later on I changed my diet to include less vegetables of the gas causing type, and that helped, but it didn’t cure my IBS. The reason probiotics and other measures partly work for a while is (this is again, my understanding) is that those intestinal neurons are overly sensitive/ overly reactive, so the lesser stimuli to overly-react to, the less the discomfort. It is similar to a person being bothered by sunlight, the person wears sunglasses and feels a great relief. Over time, as his eyes get adjusted to the sunglasses, he then gets distressed again and needs darker sun glasses.

Like you, I feel a relief “when something presses onto my belly”, the relief happens because the pressure applied to the intestines from the outside of the body distracts from the pressure in the insides of the intestines (that stretching from the inside).

“You asked, “What should I do?”. My suggestions at this point:

1) Consider sleeping on your belly or side having a baseball or such item under your belly, to create that external pressure on your intestines while in bed, so to distract you from the internal pressure/ stretching.

2) Repeatedly throughout the day, pause and relax your muscles, including your diaphragm, so to allow natural, easier breathing. Lessen your daily anxiety in other ways, such as having a daily aerobic exercise routine.

3) No longer living with your mother will help long-term, if you leave her and then embark on the long, difficult healing process, healing from what she did to you.

anita