For My Tummy

Amazon

What does Amazon have to do with Irritable Bowel Syndrome? Everything and anything you can’t reliably get at your neighborhood supermarket. House Foods Tofu Shirataki Noodles –but yes, expensive. Hazelnut Beverage–also expensive, yes. Five boxes of individual packets of organic Arrowhead Mills Instant Oatmeal, Original Plain, 1-Ounce Packets, 10-Count Box (Pack of 5) with no flavoring or sugar added–far cheaper than at the neighborhood health food store.

I have various links to providers on these pages, mostly as a result of shopping online for my own IBS dietary needs. A lot of items can be found at Amazon.com. What I order from Amazon itself always comes in a timely fashion, and the one or two times I’ve had a problem, their Customer Service has always been great to deal with. So to me it makes sense to link to Amazon as a source for a lot of items for the IBS diet I follow and talk about on these pages.

I grant that if you want Heather’s products–Acacia powder and Fennel tea are ones I use–you will get them from her website by USPS Priority Mail, across the country from Seattle to Philadelphia in two days, with Saturday delivery. Ordering her Heather’s Tummy Fiber Can and Pouch or Heather’s Tummy Teas Organic Fennel Teabags (45 Jumbo Teabags) from a link to Amazon takes a little longer, even if, like me, you pay a yearly fee for Amazon Prime and free two-day service, with a flat $3.99 for one-day delivery.

This seems to me to be a disconcerting element in a blog, but also handy element to have in the kind of blog I’m writing, about living with IBS, resolving the symptoms by changing one’s diet, and doing so without spending a lot of time in the kitchen, or going from supermarket to supermaket to hunt down different items. In other words, the “fast food” IBS diet.

The point, after all, is that in what ever way works for you, your IBS gets controlled, not that you “buy Amazon.”

I say that, knowing full well that the next thing I’m planning to do tonight is to add a specialized Amazon “A” Store with whatever I can find that bypasses all the many triggers for IBS. Some of these items may not work for you, and I don’t mean to tempt you in that way. Some other items may be “safe,” but come in amounts and sizes that are meant to be economical but are too much for your budget.

If you are planning ahead for a day that you begin to do without triggers for IBS in your diet, to see what happens, then the cost of getting started has to be figured in. I would suggest that you plant the idea that you would really love to have Amazon gift certificates rather than presents, for any occasions coming up.

And now, after constructing and deconstructing the case for Amazon, I will present what Amazon calls its “A-Stores.” These are specialized collections of STUFF found on Amazon that serve a particular purpose. Stuff that I talk about on this blog, that you wonder where you can find, is here. Useful stuff that I never talk about anywhere else–well, you may find that it strikes you as something to try. And then if you are just beginning to get your head around changing your diet and lifestyle because of IBS, looking at the For My Tummy Store may be a way of window-shopping.

So, here it is.

July 4th, 2007 Posted by tummyblogger | general | one comment