[Guest]

I was diagnosed with IBS in 1977, when I was about 17 years old. My history of GI problems actually started 3 years earlier, when I got sick on a cross country teen bus trip. Though I never felt that sick, I lost about 40 of my then 170 pounds from seemingly untreatable D.About 15 years ago I moved to California. I started hiking a bit and was warned about drinking even clean stream water due to Giardia.When I went cross country in 1974 I had never heard of Giardia and I drank from running water frequently in the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. When I got home to New Jersey they ran all sorts of tests, but never discovered any sort of bug.I have subsequently read that back then Giardia was unknown East of the Rockies, and that physicians back east did not know much about it or test for it.Based on my experience and my symptoms back then, I have concluded that in fact I had Giardiosis (sp?) I am pretty certain I am correct about this.So, my question is obviously whether there is any known association between bad cases of Giardiosis and subsequent onset of IBS.I'd love to hear from anyone who knows about this. Thanks.HLB

 

[Kathleen M.]

There is an association between other GI infections and the onset of IBS.Most of that work was done in the UK (they have better databases for data mining than we have in the US and what they looked at was diagnosed GI infection diagnosed IBS and matched GI infected vs non-GI infected and found that infection increased the frequency of IBS something on the order of 10X during the year following a GI infection) where Giardia, I believe, isn't much of an issue.However, I have no reason to suspect that Giardia would behave differently than other GI infections as the problem appears to be the damage from the inflamation which is a genral thing seen in most infections rather than something that is specific to a particular species.K.------------------I have no financial, academic, or any other stake in any commercial product mentioned by me.My story and what worked for me in greatly easing my IBS: http://www.ibsgroup.org/ubb/Forum17/HTML/000015.html

 

[ilovehockey]

Ever since I had a bad case of food poisoning several years ago, I've had IBS and seem to catch every stomach bug that comes around. I've always wondered if the food poisoning somehow weakened my GI tract. Looks like that's a possibility!

 

[JennT]

I first was diagnosed with IBS about a month after my honeymoon, after they had treated the giardia (with metronidazole) that I picked up *on* my honeymoon. We suspect it was from a swimming pool in Orange County, that being the only place I went that my bridegroon did not. There were ten reported cases of giardia in Orange County that week.------------------JennT

 

[drewstone]

HL...Do you know that you do not have Giardia now???!!! If not, do a stool sample at a good lab that also uses the "Giardia specific antigen" protocol. If you want to know what Girdia can do and how it can cause all kinds of IBS problems - look no further. It can!!! Even once you do not have it any more. You can also have it at a low level 'forever' if you do not treat for it and/or have a slightly weakened GI immune response etc. My whole symptom picture started thanks to Giardia; if you are bored, do a search under my user name and you will see plenty on it! Good luck; take care...Drew.