# New Year Resolutions



## yellow11 (May 14, 2011)

Hi all,
Well today is my birthday and as usual I'm massively depressed as I contemplate another year of my life wasted still living with this accursed condition. I'm 37 now and have had this problem to varying degrees since I was 12. Though I'm an optimist by nature and always felt one day I could live a normal life now I'm really not so sure. The idea of living with this for another 25 years well it doesn't bare thinking about. One good thing is after threatening to do it for a long time I've finally started going on an elemental diet (this is just my third day) which is a liquid formula diet which hopefully will give my intestines a rest and more importantly starve out the bad bacteria in my gut. I don't have much willpower but do hope to last on this for a few weeks at least to see if it will make much difference. Failing that and finances permitting there is a clinic near London offering feceal transplants which I would love to go to.
So those are my two goals for the new year I'm just wondering what other people on here aim to do this year to enable them to live normally?
Also I would love to hear if anybody has any suggestions as to what we as a community could do to help each other this year. Lets face it, looked on as a grouping are we any better off this year then we were over the last two to three years? Maybe this year we could organise ourselves better and make this a real breakthrough year for us.
Like could we try and form some sort of formal group perhaps through a website. On it each of us could list exactly what our symptoms are, what tests we've done, whether we've been diagnosed with sibo, tmau etc.,what supplements, diets etc we've tried and have they been of any help.
Perhaps we could nominate a person for an area to get in contact with lets say any relevant research institution (e.g. the microbiology departments of local universities) asking whether they could help us. 
Maybe we could organise some sort of fundraising (e.g. set up an ebay account selling the sort of supplements that are popular on here). 
I don't know these could be very lame ideas of mine but what I do know is that it is going to be very depressing if we're all on here again next year still in the same situation not having mde any real progress.


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## Brownish72 (Aug 26, 2012)

Good luck with your elemental diet.

I have done an elemental diet fast 2 separate times. Once for 16 days, another for 14 days

I am a firm believer in this method. It's changed my life from 10-15 bowel movements a day, to about 1 every morning.

Here is my elemental diet experience if you care to read it. Go to page 3 to read my day to day experience.

http://www.ibsgroup.org/forums/topic/156547-sibo-and-vivonex-plus-fast/

Good luck ,I hope you find some relief . When i get told IBS isnt that bad, I get so angry @ that person, they truly do not understand the misery IBS can cause on an individual.


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## yellow11 (May 14, 2011)

Hey Brownish, 
Thanks a million for all the information you've put on here about the elemental diet. I usually stick just to this section of the forum but I see now thats a mistake as I missed your thread when you first put it up. It must have taken ages so write all about your experience, thanks so much.
We're similar in some ways but not in others. I too have cramping and sometimes bloating but not diarrhoea, instead its the dreaded leaky gas thats my problem. However like you my hydrogen breath test did show that I had sibo so I guess it might be the same culprit manifesting in different ways for the both of us. Also antibiotics like rifaximin didn't help me either
I don't think the vivonex is available in Ireland, I'm on something called Elemental 028 Extra. There's a few flavours and it actually tastes pretty nice, also I'm not hungry at all though obviously i miss not having normal lunches and dinners. It's day four now so hopefully I can stick it out though my willpower usually isn't great.
Can I ask how are you feeling at the moment? Are you still feeling the benefit of the diet if you don't mind me asking? One thing I fear, obviously you know an awful lot more about this than me, is that the bacteria in our guts have an ability to kind of hibernate so if you use antibiotics or go on a diet they can lie dormant in your gut ready to spring back to life when the oppurtunity arises. Maybe that's just rubbish but I can't help notcing how many people seem to think they have gotten better only for their symptoms to come bakc a little while later.
Anyway thanks for the link, studying all you wrote will at least take my mind of food for a while haha.


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