Archive for October, 2007
The Trouble with IBS or Irritable Bowel Syndrome
2 Comments Published by tummyblogger October 26th, 2007The social impact of disease names is variable, and sometimes immense. If you have one “pariah” or outcast disease, like athlete’s foot, suggests the following article excerpt, you just don’t rate.
What if illnesses, ailments and diseases were brands? You’d have your embarrassing, awkward ones like irritable bowel syndrome and athlete’s foot. Your once well-known, but obscure ones that you find only in history books or Delmas, like diptheria and typhoid and polio. The diseases that everyone’s heard of but nobody knows much about, like multiple sclerosis and cystic fibrosis (hey, that rhymes). There are the ones that fill us with dread, like Alzheimer’s. The cancers are in a category of their own. And there are the truly terrifying, faintly exotic ones like Ebola or mad cow disease, diseases you never want to catch but which have a certain dark glamour nonetheless.
See more of Sarah Britten’s musings, on the light side of disease names, at http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/britten/2007/10/24/if-diseases-were-brands-part-i/
If IBS had a different name, like Arugula — which always did sound like a disease name to me — we would still have to answer questions of “what does it mean?” Still, we might get away with using words like “tummy” in the definition, rather than “bowel.” I’m not a fan of baby words like tummy, most of the time, but “Irritable Bowel Syndrome?” Come ON! Can’t we say “I have been diagnosed with “Chronic Pain in the Tummy” (CPIT) or “Continual Runs, usually Diarrhea” (CRUD).
What difference would a change of name make in your life? Let us know with a comment.
Wow! Four Weeks of Digestive Advantage-IBS ™
6 Comments Published by tummyblogger October 19th, 2007 in Probiotics, Align, NSI Probiotics, Digestive Advantage - IBSReviewing Digestive Advantage-IBS and Align
After approximately ten weeks of using Align ™ probiotic caplets, and filing my objective reports of the experience, I thought it was a pretty good product with some real problems in pricing and supply. {See my Align reviews}
Four weeks ago this past Monday, I started Digestive Advantage-IBS ™ (DA) […]
“Food is a Weapon,” Environmental Action, and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) Behavior Change
0 Comments Published by tummyblogger October 16th, 2007 in Blog, general, IBSFood and Environmental Impact
Somehow the slogan “food is a weapon” makes me think of food fights. We are familiar with some kinds of food fights, the kind when someone tries to make you eat something you know is going to cause IBS symptoms like diarrhea, gas, cramps, constipation.
This arresting poster comes from World War II. […]
Irritable Bowel Syndrome: 7 Diet Principles
2 Comments Published by tummyblogger October 11th, 2007 in fiber, Probiotics, Soy Products, Prebiotics, IBS DietIntroduction
I would like to clarify the underlying principles to the IBS food recommendations that I make on ForMyTummy (FMT). When I first started ForMyTummy.com, over a year ago, I thought the principles were the same as, or similar to, those of Heather Van Vorous, of the HelpforIBS.com web site. Upon reflection, after a year of […]
Digestive Advantage-IBS: Second and Third Weeks
3 Comments Published by tummyblogger October 9th, 2007 in Probiotics, Food for IBS, IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Digestive Advantage - IBSreminder: In addition to using the following probiotic, I also follow a diet free of known triggers for IBS (except caffeine in small amounts), exercise, and especially important, take 20 grams/day of Heather’s Organic Acacia Tummy Fiber ™ and another 20-25 grams of fiber/day, most of it soluble fiber. This fiber is “prebiotic”–it supplies a […]
If you have been here before, there is a newer, bolder look to the Header and menu bar.
I was “working” (fooling around?) behind the scenes and changed a couple of things in the Header. The thing is, the changes I made did NOT promise to make the Name bolder, or to shift the menu down […]