[thefelixcat]

Cheers!

I'm new to the forum.

Here's a bit of my story...

When I was in high school, I had a fairly severe bout with acne. My mother took me off to the dermatologist for treatment. He promptly started me on a series of antibiotics. It started with Minocycline for several weeks. Then, it moved down to Doxycycline for a longer duration. Tetracycline followed for maybe two years after that as a maintenance.

I was foolish in trusting the doctor's advice for so long, but my face was clear and I was no longer being made fun of in school. During the early course I remember some stomach upsets, but they were not all that common. I counted them as having eaten something bad or maybe a passing germ. Looking back, I can bet what I was experiencing.

Near the end of my freshman year in college I didn't notice too much out of the ordinary. I had one stomach bug in the spring semester that year, but it passed.

That summer, however, my stomach went haywire. I started experiencing extreme pain and loose stools. They were becoming more frequent, but I wrote it off to the change of pace during summer, a different diet, etc.

One day, however, the pain was particularly severe. It was bad enough that I went to the ER in the middle of the night. They ran tests and sent me home with some pain killers, with a warning to come back the next day for further examination if things did not improve. The next night they ran CT scan and a long list of blood tests. Everything came back normal.

I had an appointment later with my regular doctor, who tried again to diagnose a problem, running even more tests, and putting me on a course of anti-viral drugs. Nothing worked.

Constipation followed. The pain was so intense I was could not sleep. Prune juice washed everything out, but the problem came back a few more times that summer. The opposite end of the spectrum was also a very frequent issue after this. I first eliminated green peas from my diet, and then salads. This seemed to help a bit, but even the small green bits of parsley on food would send me running for the restroom.

I made it through sophomore year without much impact on my studies, but was frequently in the bathroom most of the night.

My junior year, I was again stuck by a major episode. Like previous instances, it started with constipation, but ended in long months of loose stools and pain. I had to miss class from lack of sleep so much this year that I effectively crashed my GPA to a point that my grad school plans were off the table.

After this episode, I decided to eliminate all greens and most spices from my diet. I would even go so far as to pick off pieces of parsley from prepared foods, much to the amusement of my friends.

I have been with this diet ever since. I try to get enough fruits to cover for the lost vegetable intake.

For the most part, this diet and a probiotic on a daily basis have allowed me to reclaim my life.

That being said, I would love nothing more than some broccoli dipped in ranch dressing. That was one of my old favorites.


With all of that out, if you are still reading, I am curious to know of others who have developed IBS after an extended course of antibiotics... Are there others out there?

[blondeoverblue24]

There are several hypotheses out there that suggest that IBS can stem from alterations of bacteria in the colon. I've heard of several people whose IBS seemed to be "triggered" by antibiotics, but they typically had effects more immediately. Interestingly enough, there have also been reports of people who have had symptom improvement following antibiotic treatment (they're believed to have small intestine bacterial overgrowth).