Tag: IBS Posts

Back in roughly 2007, I managed to acquire a clostridium difficile infection. It’s a really serious infection, usually preceded by antibiotic exposure, and it can often can lead to death if not treated. In my case, it mostly started out with flu symptoms, but gradually led to me being hospitalized for a few days due to loss of fluids. Once being discharged from the hospital, I was prescribed flagyl to combat the c. diff infection. I did one or two rounds of that over a month or two, but unfortunately still tested positive for c. diff. at the end of it. Since the c. diff wasn’t really responding to flagyl, I was prescribed vancomycin, which at the time was one of the last lines of defence for most bacterial infections. I did several rounds of that over the course of a few more months, and thankfully eventually tested negative for […]

As I mentioned a few days ago, I decided to try giving up Splenda to see if that helps my stomach out at all. Splenda is a sugar substitute (technically called Sucralose), and it’s chemically similar to sugar, although it has a few chlorine atoms added on which makes it mostly indigestible. Unfortunately, since most sugar substitutes essentially can’t be processed by the body, they can sometimes cause some distress as they pass through. At the top of that list are certain sugar alcohols (which are used in gum and lots of chocolates), which sometimes have a strong laxative affect. I came up with two working theories to my own stomach problems — one was that they may be caused by carbonated beverages (such as diet pepsi), and the other involves Splenda. My main reasoning was that in periods of time where both of those were reduced (such as when […]