Hi Stacy,It's amazing how correlational my IBS issues have been with my twitching/BFS/anxiety symptoms. I'll give you a quick rundown of my history, and I bet it will sound very familiar to you.2004 - My mom died of lung cancer. And it wasn't one of those long drawn out fights, it was a "She was stage 4 when we diagnosed her. It was already basically over." I have been a hypochondriac and a firm believer in "early testing" and catching diseases ever since. Prior to my mom dying, I hadn't been to a doctor or even cared about going to see a doctor in more than 10 years.2004 - I had 6 moles removed because I was positive they were all cancer. None of them were.2005 - I had 4 more moles removed.2005 - My 5 year old daughter developed a black stripe on her fingernail and I unfortunately googled the disease "subungual melanoma." I spent about four months in a near panic as she had her fingernail biopsied and removed and everything. All came back normal. My wife told me I need to chill out about this stuff.2005 - Rushed myself to the Urgent Care one night because I thought I had heart problems. Came back perfectly normal.2005 - Between stress at my job, and my constant health anxiety issues, I started developing some really nasty IBS problems. I couldn't so much as drink things like apple juice or even a sip of milk without my system seizing up and me spending the next 10 painful minutes on the toilet. And good luck eating anything greasy, like fast food. I developed a warm throb in my gut that seemed to settle around my hipbones. It got so bad and lasted for so long that I eventually had to go to a GI doctor and go through a battery of tests. It was ridiculous. I spent so much time kneeling over the toilet, examing my stools for blood, that I might as well have been a plumber. I was convinced I had some sort of intestinal cancer.2006 - I had a colonoscopy, barium tests, through and through x-rays, an endoscopy, you name it. And what was the verdict? The doctors didn't know. They said I "might" be lactose intolerant. My GI doctor said she "thinks" I have very minor Crohn's disease. But no one could say anything for sure. Things got bad and then they mysteriously went away. My official diagnosis was "nothing."2008 - I had been IBS free for nearly a year and a half, and that's when the twitching started. Ah yes, I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I was in a training class at work, and my right nostril started to flutter. Then the next day, it was my lip. A few weeks later, the back of my neck had little twitches and tingles. My balance seemed to be a little bit off. I did a little research online, and guess what. Now I was convinced I had MS. Yippee. God bless the internet.2008 - The very next day, my IBS flared up again.2009 - 7 months later, my IBS and my twitching are still here. In fact a couple of nights ago, my stomach cramped up so bad at 3 AM that it actually woke me up. I have been through the works in regards to testing just about everything. I have had a brain MRI (normal), a colonoscopy (normal), an endoscopy (normal), blood tests (normal), physical exams (normal), x-rays (normal), you name it. The only thing I haven't had is an EMG, and that's only because my neurologist said that me having an EMG is ridiculous. He said my problem is completely caused by anxiety and/or intestinal issues. And obviously, looking at my history, I think you have to agree with him. It can't be a coincidence that I have self-diagnosed myself with nearly six fatal diseases in the past five years, and have gone on to have exactly none of them.In any case, I would say there is a definite 100% correlational link between IBS and BFS in a lot of cases. The only problem is, what do I do about it? I could go back to my GI doctor and ask her to pursue some sort of Crohn's medication, but that just violates my rule of pursuing doctors past a reasonable limit. I don't want to be one of those patients who insists and insists that something is wrong, when nothing actually is.Obviously I would love to hear what anyone else has to say about the IBS/BFS connection. The only suggestion my GI doctor ever made to me is to take Asacol and Folic Acid. Has anyone tried either one of those? I took both for a while, but my symptoms went away altogether during that time period so I just sort of stopped taking them. I was off all medications altogether for nearly 2 years.
