Most medical treatments begin in the consulting room, where a doctor uses the patients’ experiences to settle upon a diagnosis. My journey was much more personal. I was my own first patient. I had begun to suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and found that the standard treatments just did not work. So I became my own doctor and started to develop the vitality diet.
I have always enjoyed travel, and my medical career has also taken me to some fascinating places. One of the downsides of these adventures is that the hygiene and food standards are not the same as what your body is used to. Bowel upsets can vary from the famous ‘Dehli belly” to the much more serious giardiasis. I had normally managed to avoid most types of stomach upset, but in 1992 work took me to Bermuda and Russia. In the same year, my best friend had somehow persuaded me to join him trekking in Nepal as I turned 40. Three very different countries, yet all linked by having high rates of giardiasis.
It sounds a bit odd including Bermuda in a list of countries with a high risk of contracting giardiasis, because it is a very wealthy island with North American hygiene standards. It must be one of the few countries where wealth has not protected against waterborne disease. The reason for this is the lack of natural water on the island. To overcome this shortage of fresh drinking water, houses collect rain water on the roof and store it in large tanks in the cellar under the house. In the meantime, birds defecate on the roof and spread the giardiasis parasite. Even filters in the system fail to eradicate it.
The symptoms of giardaisis are vague, ranging from nothing to debilitating abdominal bloating with diarrhea to vomiting and reflux oesophagitis with general lethargy. After having visiting these three countries, I contracted the condition, which resulted in huge amounts of very smelly gas. I cannot fully express how embarrassing this became when treating patients and I tired everything to get treatment. It took about 1 year for this to clear up despite the use of several courses of medication. In keeping with about 18% of IBS patients, my bowels never really settled down after this episode. Over time, I developed a diet which worked for me and controlled the symptoms. From this personal start point, I began to notice similar stories in some of my patients and so began to gain experience in diagnosis and treatment using diet alone. In a way, I am glad had that personal experience, because IBS is poorly taught in Medical School and the profession is generally pretty poor at recognising the condition and how much it can affect patients’ lives. But because of my own condition, I knew to really listen in detail to my patients and I knew that prescribing pills were not the answer. I prescribed the vitality diet.
I urge anyone with IBS-type symptoms to try this diet. It really works. It isn’t easy to do with modern foods, but it really, really works. Since I started treating my patients with changes to their diet, I have received a wall of criticism from some other doctors. Some have called me a quack, a charlatan and a whole lot more. Some think pills are the answer, some don’t even believe IBS exists. But I know it works, my patients know it works, and that is all that counts.