During the past week I experienced some lower right quadrant cramping pain and constipation. I initially attributed the constipation to having a cold and not drinking enough water. I didn't want to consider that I had another intestinal infection. However, as the cold improved, my gut pain intensified. Rather than localized sharp pain, I experienced widespread intestinal cramps, similar to menstrual cramps. This morning I also experienced left sided cramping pain.
So I now suspect a food allergy reaction. My dairy reaction usually includes constipation and menstrual like cramping pain. However, I don't often experience localized pain after consuming dairy. Also dairy reaction pain is very severe and lasts about 10 days with a intensity peak after 5 days. Similar to dairy, soy causes some widespread menstrual like cramping pain, but more localized pain that travels through my intestines and less constipation.
I didn't experience as much constipation during the past 2 days, but the cramping pain seems to have moved and increased in intensity. So I suspect I unknowingly consumed soy. If so, pain will slowly decrease.
I'm less inclined to believe I have another gut bug, because the pain moved through my intestines, came on rather suddenly and rapidly increased in intensity. However, I'm obsessively careful about avoiding my food allergens. So I wonder whether I have another gut bug. I never did a followup stool test after treating achromobacter. I still have that lingering cough, which may be related to achromobacter, which can also infect the respiratory system. I could even have a c-diff recurrence from spores which evaded vancomycin treatment.
Meanwhile I emailed my doc to request another DNA Microbial stool test for bacteria, parasites and yeast. I had believed that taking daily high dose probiotics would prevent bacterial dysbiosis (too many bad gut bacteria overwhelming my good bacteria). However, I also discontinued taking HCl supplements, which increased my stomach acid enough to kill food born bacteria. So for the past 2 months I had increased risk of developing an intestinal infection from food born bacteria.
I just need to wait and see how I'm doing tomorrow morning. If my symptoms intensify or decrease, I may decide I just have a food allergy reaction. However, if my cramping pain stays the same or I experience diarrhea, I will pick up another stool test at my doc's clinic and do the test the following morning. I hate not knowing, but I realize I know more about my own body that any docs could tell me. They do the same 'wait and see' guessing game, which I do.
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2 comments:
Oh... I hope it's the soy contamination. Sigh. That must be incredibly frustrating... not to mention painful. I hope you get some good news tomorrow... or feel better tomorrow and know it's passing through your system.
I got a contact phone number for L'Oreal Paris, which makes my shampoo, which contains tocopherol. Sometimes that ingredient is soy based. I know I swallowed some shampoo this morning and maybe previously last week when I washed my hair. That would certainly explain my symptoms, which really feel like a soy reaction.
I'll call L'Oreal in the morning to confirm my suspicions. If that shampoo has soy which caused my reaction, I won't get better for another few days. Soy causes a 5 day reaction with an intensity peak on day 3.
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