# Vivonex Saved My Life...



## Seika Tanden (Sep 9, 2010)

This is my first post. I joined this forum to talk with a woman that uses "Grumbly Tummy" as her name, if you know her please let her know I'm out here. I was hoping to support her finding a cure for her IBS and wanted to know how she is. I am a professional nature photographer for major magazines in the US and overseas. I spent over a month in the deepest parts of the Amazon jungle back in 1995. I picked up a bad case of "tourista" but I treated it myself with a broad spectrum antibiotic I had the wisdom to bring with me. Somehow my system changed or was damaged by this experience and I developed SIBO or just IBS as I knew it at the time. OMG, this sucks. I am very athletic, hold high belts in two martial arts and I've always been on the go. This made me feel like an old man, 4-6 urgent runs to the bathroom everyday for well over five years.I was one of the very earliest successes in the S.F. Bay Area using Dr. Mark Pimentel's discovery of the elemental diet cure for IBS. We started with the breath test for hydrogen and it was positive. We first tried antibiotics with no success. This does work for some people so try it first. We then went to Vivonex. Yes, its a real culinary experience but for god sake, what are you living with? I hear all these people complain, I don't get it, its a possible cure and that was enough for me. I guess some people have gotten use to their bathroom habit but I would do anything to be free. Vivonex is not that bad compared to aging ten or twenty years in your lifestyle and behavior! The packs are 300 calories so I would add two to a quart sized plastic jar and mix with hot tap water. You add a small amount of sweetener (too much makes you feel funky but none is hard to take). I used the Vivonex sweetener but there are other diet drinks with aspartame you can add. Make sure there is NOTHING else in the sweetener that will feed the bad guys in your gut or its all for nothing and you will need to start over! Chill three of these overnight and you have breakfast lunch and dinner with 1800 calories. I am 6' and wanted to lose ten pounds so I went with this. If you need to continue to exercise or you are smaller you can adjust up or down. Have a COLD glass of water as a chaser and don't mix the Vivonex with too much water! The calories will be the same and you will have much more of the this unpleasant medicine (yes this is a medicine in this case) to consume. At about day three to seven you will have a bacterial "die off" which is a good thing and you will have a lot of gas. After that all will be quiet for the rest of the week. Slowly go back on food after that (white rice, cream of wheat etc.) and you may very well be back to normal with all those trips to the bathroom in the past! I normally don't use Aspartame in my life but for this you need it. Only use the smallest amount to make the Vivonex go down, you will be off it soon! If you're worried about it being some kind of poison go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy So here I am after five years of feeling great, totally normal again. No gas, no runs nothing. I'm at a four star restaurant down in Carmel and have a bad seafood meal and voila, its back! I tried antibiotics again (a twenty one day regiment) but at fifteen days I could tell its not working so I told my doc I wanted Vivonex again. I'm now just two days into Vivonex WITH antibiotics and bingo, I feel great. So, consider talking to your doctor about Vivonex with antibiotics. I doubt I will need to go the full two weeks at this rate. My doctor thinks a week should do it! If you have questions I will check here for awhile and try to answer them.Good luck!


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## jeffiam (Nov 22, 2010)

On your first go-round with Vivonex, how long did you take it? Two weeks?


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## Jennifer JIll (Mar 18, 2011)

Seika Tanden said:


> This is my first post. I joined this forum to talk with a woman that uses "Grumbly Tummy" as her name, if you know her please let her know I'm out here. I was hoping to support her finding a cure for her IBS and wanted to know how she is. I am a professional nature photographer for major magazines in the US and overseas. I spent over a month in the deepest parts of the Amazon jungle back in 1995. I picked up a bad case of "tourista" but I treated it myself with a broad spectrum antibiotic I had the wisdom to bring with me. Somehow my system changed or was damaged by this experience and I developed SIBO or just IBS as I knew it at the time. OMG, this sucks. I am very athletic, hold high belts in two martial arts and I've always been on the go. This made me feel like an old man, 4-6 urgent runs to the bathroom everyday for well over five years.I was one of the very earliest successes in the S.F. Bay Area using Dr. Mark Pimentel's discovery of the elemental diet cure for IBS. We started with the breath test for hydrogen and it was positive. We first tried antibiotics with no success. This does work for some people so try it first. We then went to Vivonex. Yes, its a real culinary experience but for god sake, what are you living with? I hear all these people complain, I don't get it, its a possible cure and that was enough for me. I guess some people have gotten use to their bathroom habit but I would do anything to be free. Vivonex is not that bad compared to aging ten or twenty years in your lifestyle and behavior! The packs are 300 calories so I would add two to a quart sized plastic jar and mix with hot tap water. You add a small amount of sweetener (too much makes you feel funky but none is hard to take). I used the Vivonex sweetener but there are other diet drinks with aspartame you can add. Make sure there is NOTHING else in the sweetener that will feed the bad guys in your gut or its all for nothing and you will need to start over! Chill three of these overnight and you have breakfast lunch and dinner with 1800 calories. I am 6' and wanted to lose ten pounds so I went with this. If you need to continue to exercise or you are smaller you can adjust up or down. Have a COLD glass of water as a chaser and don't mix the Vivonex with too much water! The calories will be the same and you will have much more of the this unpleasant medicine (yes this is a medicine in this case) to consume. At about day three to seven you will have a bacterial "die off" which is a good thing and you will have a lot of gas. After that all will be quiet for the rest of the week. Slowly go back on food after that (white rice, cream of wheat etc.) and you may very well be back to normal with all those trips to the bathroom in the past! I normally don't use Aspartame in my life but for this you need it. Only use the smallest amount to make the Vivonex go down, you will be off it soon! If you're worried about it being some kind of poison go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy So here I am after five years of feeling great, totally normal again. No gas, no runs nothing. I'm at a four star restaurant down in Carmel and have a bad seafood meal and voila, its back! I tried antibiotics again (a twenty one day regiment) but at fifteen days I could tell its not working so I told my doc I wanted Vivonex again. I'm now just two days into Vivonex WITH antibiotics and bingo, I feel great. So, consider talking to your doctor about Vivonex with antibiotics. I doubt I will need to go the full two weeks at this rate. My doctor thinks a week should do it! If you have questions I will check here for awhile and try to answer them.Good luck!


Thanks for posting this. I'm on the fifth day of vivonex and seem to be worse as far as gas and diarrhea is concerned. I'm hoping that's just all the bugs dying off. Like you I had a "heralding event" of drinking some bad water while traveling and never really recovered. I'm praying this will work. I tried all the antibiotics and nothing worked. The only aspartame I could find has dextrose in it so I'm not using it. The vivonex flavor packs aren't even available anymore.


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## jmc09 (Oct 5, 2009)

You mention the product plus broad spectrum antibiotics.Broad spectrum antibiotics can help manage diarrhoea symptoms so how do you know its not the antibiotics working rather than the product?I get a little suspicious of long posts and people who claim to be olympic athletes who get struck down and find a miracle cure.My IBS specialist wont even let me use the word cure,it has to be about control and management of the disease.


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