This is such an important topic, because eating disorders are often blamed on mental health expectations related to weight and image. But what if that isn’t always the case? What if you have physical symptoms that are bad enough that you don’t want to eat? This can and does happen in IBS, so let’s get it into it.

During my career as an IBS specialist, I’ve seen a lot of different conditions related to IBS, and one significant one that has not received much attention is the relationship between IBS and eating disorders.

Imagine having severe pain or other digestive symptoms almost every time you eat. How would you feel about eating? Would you want to put more food into your body, or less?

Naturally, some people who feel very sick when they eat, begin to avoid eating. And if the symptoms don’t change and you continue to avoid food, it starts to affect your health. Sooner or later, you end up at your doctor.  

You admit that you’re avoiding eating, but mostly because it causes so much discomfort. And you might also have weight or image issues on top of that, but all of the tests and exams that your doctors do are normal. So, you are labelled as having anorexia.

Which is technically accurate, the but the reasoning and therefore the treatment might not the right treatment for you.

(By the way, I’m confident that your tests would not be normal here at my clinic, because we are IBS experts and dig way deeper than even gastroenterologists, but that’s not what this video is about.)

Now once you receive the diagnosis of anorexia, you are then referred to an eating disorder specialist. And that eating disorder specialist is trained to tell you to do what? Eat! Eat whatever you want, and eat a lot of it. Because no one believes that your symptoms are real, because all of the lab work was fine. They think that it’s all in your head. Because your doctor couldn’t find anything wrong.

And even if the symptoms are real, no one understands them, but they do understand that you need to gain weight, and they believe that the solution to that is to eat.

Does that sound familiar?

By this point you are questioning yourself and everything you know. Because you assume that the experts are right, and that it must just be in your head, and that you just need to eat, and your pain or other digestive symptoms must be some kind of psychological manifestation.

I’ve had patients like this, and it is such a sad and frustrating experience. Because if we tell them otherwise, they don’t know what to do or who to trust.

And once they get to this stage, they definitely have a mental health crisis, even if they didn’t have one originally. Because nothing makes sense. Unfortunately, your doctors and your mental health professional don’t understand the IBS symptoms, and they only know to tell you to eat anything and everything.

Which of course is only going to make your IBS worse. So, you still don’t want to eat. But you know that you do need to eat and you try, only to get sick again.

And so it goes, round and round this maddening cycle.

That’s the frustrating news. But I do have good news.

There is definitely a reason why you are experiencing IBS, whether it’s abdominal pain, or diarrhea, or any of the potential symptoms of IBS. And we can help you figure out why you are experiencing it. That is our area of expertise.

That’s the good news. But we are not mental health experts in the area of anorexia. You’ll need other support for that.

And combining the two can be challenging. Because once we figure out what is causing your pain, we’re likely going to want you to restrict your diet, not your calories, but something in your diet in some form or fashion, which of course is counter to what others are telling you.

How your diet will change varies a lot from person to person. We offer highly customized IBS care. Our treatments are completely different from one patient to the next.

That’s why we have so much success treating IBS pain, but it also means that I can’t hazard a guess as to what that treatment will be.

But we’ll be able to help you understand the physical side of the problem, and our dietary counselors will support you, but you’ll have to balance that with your anorexia care.

In some cases that is easy, and in some cases it’s very challenging. Unfortunately, many eating disorder counselors cannot balance the idea of restricting one food and eating others, even if you are getting lots of calories and nutrients. They feel it’s a mixed message that you can’t handle. I’ve seen this happen several times in my career. And it’s really confusing for the patient.

Therefore, you may have to stand up to a mental health professional who’s telling you that what my team telling you is wrong. And you’ll need to be strong in order to that.

And my guess is that by this point you don’t feel strong. You feel depleted, both physically and emotionally.

But I want to give you hope. There is a solution, and you are getting very close to it. So don’t give up!

Because once you are armed with all of the facts, you’ll be in a much better position to get your health back. ALL of your health, both mental and physical.

IBS and anorexia a very special and unique topic that no one is talking about. If you’ve experience this, I suspect many others would love to hear your stories in the comment section below. And I believe that this is a story that needs to be told and shared by those who have experienced it or are experiencing it now, so that you can draw support from other.

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