The 5 Major Obstacles to Solving Your IBS

We’ve probably had more interactions with more IBS sufferers than most people can possibly imagine. But when that’s your focus over two decades, and when there are at least 30 million people in the U.S. alone who suffer from IBS, it’s not that difficult to start adding up big numbers in this area.

And during all of that time I’ve discovered that there are 5 major obstacles that prevent people from solving their IBS. The first 4 are these:

1. You’ve seen doctors and had tests, and it hasn’t been very helpful.
2. You feel like you’re on your own searching for answers in the sea of information on the internet and you don’t know what to trust.
3. You feel like your IBS is inevitable due to genetics or age or something like that.
4. You’ve found the cause of your IBS, but the treatment isn’t working.

Do any of those sound like you?

Let’s look at each of these closer and explore why they happen and what you can do about them.

1. The first and probably the biggest issue by far is that most people go to their doctor, and often go to many doctors, and have lots of tests done, and then they are told that there is nothing more that can be done. And once this idea is planted in your head, it can be difficult to get past or to believe otherwise. Because you’ve seen lots of smart people and not gotten any answers.

And that is not only frustrating, is exhausting, and it’s enough for you to give up hope. So you end up doing nothing. I hope that you haven’t given up, because I I’ve heard that a thousand times, and I KNOW that there is more that there is a LOT more that can be done, regardless of how many people you’ve seen or what you’ve done. There is always an answer. We just have to look somewhere they haven’t looked.

2. The 2^nd group is another large group of people who have been through the first challenge and haven’t completely given up, but now they feel that they are on their own figuring out this problem. Because it’s obvious that your doctor isn’t going to figure it out. And when that happens, it’s only natural to search for answers online.

You probably wouldn’t do that for most health problems because most people don’t expect to be able to solve their major health issues by watching videos and reading about them online. Generally, we look online when we want to understand the condition that our doctor diagnosed, not solve it. But when you’ve already tried seeing doctors and that has failed, what do you have left?

So here you are. And most of the information online says what your doctor told you, that there is no cure for IBS. But you at least hope to manage it better.

3. The third group of people are those who believe that their IBS is inevitable and that there isn’t much they can do about it. Maybe you’ve been told that it’s all due to stress, or maybe you feel like it’s because of your age, or maybe you know other people in your family who have digestive problems and you figure that it must be your inescapable genetics, or maybe you feel like you have done too much damage to your digestive system and now it’s too late.

Can you relate to any of that? I know that many of you can because I’ve heard that hundreds of times from patients.  I’ve also found that all of these people were just as capable of getting better as everyone else, regardless of their age, or the stress in their lives, or their genetics, or their history of issues that has impacted their digestive system.

4. The fourth group of people are those of you who have already found the cause, but the treatment for it isn’t working. And you want to figure out how to treat it better. Maybe you have been diagnosed with SIBO, or Candida, or parasites, or a gluten intolerance, or a dairy allergy, or a long list of other possibilities that can cause IBS. All of these are legit concerns, but not a lot of doctors understand them well, and the treatments or diets don’t always work as advertised.

We’ve seen a lot of people like this, and there are at least two major reasons why you aren’t getting better. One is that it’s certainly possible that you now understand the cause of your symptoms and that you need a different treatment for it than most people, or your diet hasn’t been sorted out yet or you are getting contaminated. That can and does happen all the time, and we help people figure these things out.

But there is also another reason that the treatment may not be working that I strongly encourage you to consider, and it is this.  The issue that you’ve discovered and have been working on treating may not be the only cause of your symptoms. It may be only one piece of a larger puzzle. I’ve seen this happen to a lot of people.  If you get too locked in on that one issue that you’ve discovered, you may get stuck there and never figure out the rest of the puzzle.  In my experience IBS is often like this, and many people aren’t getting the results that they want because they only have part of the picture. I’ve seen this happen A LOT.

Those are the four major obstacles to solving IBS. And the good news is that none of them is insurmountable. So don’t give up, because you can still figure this out. But I’m also not going to lie to you and tell you that the answer is simple, which is the impression that a lot of people online give. It’s going to take effort to figure out.

And don’t let the 5^th obstacle get in your way, and that is thinking that you can’t find or get access to the kind of expertise that can help you with all of this. It’s out there, and we are leading the way.  Too many people continue to suffer because they don’t believe that telemedicine can actually solve IBS (even though in-person medicine hasn’t been working for you) , or they think that they can’t afford this kind of care. We have demonstrated over the past 20 years that neither of those is true.

At the IBS Treatment Center, we’ve successfully worked with thousands of people via telemedicine, and you can probably afford a payment plan of a little over $100 a month if you really want to do it. If solving IBS is your priority, then you’ve finally found the right place.  And we’d love to work with you. Work With the IBS Experts Via Zoom and Telemedicine by Calling: 206-264-1111.

Related Content:

How I Built My Expert Health Care Team
Why Healthcare for IBS Is BS
5 Simple Steps to Cure IBS Without Drugs – Reaction Video
Can I Have IBS and IBD?
How Do I Know If I Have IBS?

Dr. Wangen

Dr. Wangen is the founder and medical director of the IBS Treatment Center, the award winning author of two books, and a nationally recognized speaker on digestive disorders. He has been on ABC, NBC, and Fox as well as public radio, and was named one of Seattle’s Top Doctors by Seattle Magazine.