Bowel Disorders

Diet, Licorice Extract, Xylitol Cleanse
Posted by Sue (Santa Monica, CA) on 09/30/2008
★★★★★

I was having abdominal pain and burning last week just below the belly button to the right. I kept thinking it had to be muscle pain from doing stomach crunches at the gym, but then I had a repeating dream where the image of salad kept coming up and I woke up with the words "salad tongs" on my brain -- ha ha. So I realized duh, it was probably a partial food obstruction and my body was trying to get me to move it through. I usually avoid bread because of this issue (obstruction in the small intestine), but had eaten an entire thin-crusted pizza a few days before, thinking it would be okay. Not so!

First thing I did was start drinking a ton of water and eat salad (but of course) at every meal. Then I bought DGL (licorice extract) to help the inflammation and burning. The licorice extract stopped the burning in less than 12 hours (2 capsules, one morning one evening). Then I did my newly discovered "cleanse" which is basically to induce the runs by putting xylitol in my tea (see my previous post on xylitol's unexpected side effects!). 2 teaspoons later my system was cleaning itself out for the next 3 hours of everything in the bowels. Go xylitol! I am going to continue the easy to digest foods (chicken, salad, etc) and the licorice extract for a while but things appear to be back to normal.

I had a friend who also had been eating too much bread and was wondering why her uncomfortable bloated stomach wouldn't go away even though she was passing #2s just fine (no constipation). I told her it was probably an obstruction and to clean it out! She did some acupressure massage on her stomach and took a few teaspoons of flax seed oil and that did the trick. I wish more people would be aware that bread can cause this issue!



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