Thanks for the support, ladies!
I wanted to update with a couple of things... First was a great article I came across that explains the IBS symptoms (constipation) that occurs with hormone changes.
http://www.weillcornell.org/pdf/ibs...troHORMONES.pdf
This was of particular interest to me, because it explains WHY I'm both bloated and constipated all at once...
"This estrogen-dominant environment
can occur even in the presence of hot flushes, and
leads to irritability, breast tenderness, and bloating.
Bloating can occur when estrogen induces nitric oxide
synthetase, which relaxes the smooth muscle in the gut.
This nitrogen oxide synthetase induced smooth muscle
relaxation clinically results in bloating."
My gut basically goes to sleep from the nitric oxide!! And then water seeps out of the gut and into surrounding tissue, and voila you are bloated AND constipated. And no amount of cutting salt helps, in fact, cutting salt can make it worse (Dr. Peat has a great article on salt).
Salt is needed for thyroid function, and if you don't have enough salt in your blood stream - - - it can't draw in the excess fluid from your body tissues and send it off to the kidneys!
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/salt.shtml
So I have added a bit of salt and find it helps some with the bloat. Fitday tracks my normal sodium intake at around 1300-1500 mg per day, and I find a pinch of salt here or there actually helps more than it hurts. It's exactly backwards of what I expected!
And next, I started reading up on IBS-C in Pubmed (I like to read
) and found an obscure study on Yakult probiotic drink and how it helps senior citizens who are bedridden to have more normal bathroom habits (they tend to be constipated).
So I read a bit more and decided to try mixing the sugarfree version of Yakult in to my smoothie. Yakult contains l. casei sharota as the culture. Studies link it to increased water volume in stools and it stimulates the colon to MOVE.
I have used it for just a couple of days and OMG, FINALLY regular and comfortable bathroom habits AND I have shifted off about 3# of water weight! WHOOSH.
The cool thing about l. casei sharota is that if you are a home yogurt maker, you can reculture it and make your own (it prefers 99 deg., a bit cooler than normal yogurt cultures). So I brewed up a batch of it in whole raw goats milk and will be trying that tomorrow instead of the bottled stuff. I am inclined to make myself a batch of yogurt with activia cultures and l. casei sharota together and that may be very very helpful in managing the GI symptoms. I already consume kefir on a daily basis, so this would simply be an add-in.
I know it's possibly TMI, but seriously I thought this is information that might really help someone else who is going through the same thing.
The last thing is Dr. Peat has a lot of info about thyroid function being better if there is some sugar in your body, so I have resumed my previous eating habits of ~50-100 g. of healthy carbs per day, and I have to say I do feel a lot better physically.
I am tracking calories and not going crazy with it, will just have to eat mindfully and see if this works in the longer term or not and be ready to adjust.
Anyway, hope that was interesting or helpful, even if it's waaaay TMI!