Today, I'm going to talk about three key secrets you need to find relief from your IBS symptoms.
So stay tuned. If you're a returning viewer, welcome back, and if you're new here, my name is
Amanda Malachesky and I am a certified functional nutrition health coach and a digestive and allergy
detective. For weekly videos on how to find your personalized plan for IBS and SIBO relief,
please consider subscribing and be sure to hit the bell to be notified when I post a new video. Now,
if you have IBS, I suspect that you've been somewhat desperately seeking a workable
solution to your problem because I know that IBS can be very disruptive for people's lives.
But I also suspect that you might be focusing on some of the wrong things. One of the most
common things that I hear from IBS patients is that they feel really confused about what they
should be doing and when they should be doing it. So if you've ever felt confused about what to do
to find your IBS relief, would you leave a comment down below that just says, "I get it"? So, in
today's video, I want to share three secrets that I've learned from my own personal 10 year case of
IBS and also from coaching my clients about what really helps people find their personal IBS relief
plan versus what keeps them stuck with symptoms on an ongoing basis. So let's dive in. Now, I suspect
that if you're here, you probably already know what IBS is, but just in case you don't, really
briefly, IBS, or irritable bowel syndrome, is chronic digestive complaints like abdominal pain,
bloating, constipation, and diarrhea without a clear identifiable underlying cause. Now,
most people experiencing these symptoms will go to their doctor hoping that their
doctor will help them understand what's wrong with them and why it's happening.
So the first secret that I want to share with you is that these doctors are largely not going to be
able to help you find the root cause. Their job is generally to help you figure out what you have,
but not why you have it. And this is a really key distinction. The secret here is that you can save
yourself a lot of frustration by knowing what to expect and what not to expect. The
best use of their role in this situation is for them to help you figure out that,
yes, I have IBS and not some other more serious digestive condition like IBD or celiac disease.
Finding your IBS relief involves a lot more than simply defining the problem,
and this is what I help people with. Okay, next, what do you do once you're sure you
have IBS? Well, most of us are likely to sit down with our phone or a computer and start
Googling or searching here on YouTube to try and figure out, "Well, what should I do about it?"
Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this at all, of course, but there is a huge pitfall that's
possible, and I imagine you may have fallen prey to it once or twice, and that is that in the sea
of information that you gather, you're likely to feel overwhelmed, confused, or lost with all
of the various opinions and resources that you find. And this is also normal because all those
various people have their own perspectives about what works and what doesn't work and how they
think it should go. But here's the one piece that's usually missing from these resources,
and this is secret number two. There is often not any information about how to determine whether or
not this information is accurate or true for you or not. Each one of you is going to have
unique causes for your IBS, and so your unique IBS relief plan requires that you gain understanding
about what your unique underlying causes are. Not everything you read about from leaky gut
supplements to probiotics to testing or whatever is going to be appropriate or accurate for you.
I've met a lot of people with IBS at this point in my career, and I very commonly see people
falling prey to this situation where they're given information, but then that information
really isn't appropriate for them and they're applying it blindly without this assessment about
is this right information for me? I commonly hear from people that, "I think my problem's candida",
but then once we dive in and do some testing and evaluation their problem's not candida at all. It
might be something else like SIBO or a parasite or a food intolerance. Now these approaches may
be correct, but often they're just stabs in the dark without a reasonable expectation of
success. And once I talk through the details of a person's situation, I often find that whatever
they're doing actually isn't appropriate for them and we need to completely adjust course.
So, in your gut research, if the people that you're following and researching don't give
you the information about when and where what they're offering is appropriate and useful, I
advise some strong caution about that information and I encourage you to try and figure out,
when and where is this appropriate and when is it not? Because there usually are contraindications
to things when things should or shouldn't be used. Keeping this perspective is going to help you find
your IBS relief plan a lot faster than if you're not paying attention to this piece of information
because you may get misled to inappropriate solutions. Now that you've done all this research
and you've figured out some things that you want to try, the next thing you're likely to do is
actually want to get on with doing some things, changing your diet, adding some supplements, doing
some testing, doing some protocols or whatever. And there's certainly nothing wrong with
experimentation. It's absolutely the name of the game. That's how we find out what we need to do.
But the third key secret that you need to find your IBS relief plan is that you need to have
a strategy about how you will use all of these various tools. One of the most common mistakes
that I see people with IBS doing is trying too many things at once and also trying things without
understanding why they're trying things. If you try too many things all at once, you won't know
which thing made the difference if you see a positive result, and if you don't understand
why you're trying something, you miss out on the opportunity to get essential information about why
your symptoms are happening. This information is what's key for you to create the absolutely
right plan to resolve your root causes. So the core strategy that I teach my clients
inside my Calm Digestion Method Coaching Program is what I call the Iterative Action Method.
Now, whether you use my strategy or someone else's strategy doesn't really matter,
but the key thing is that you have a strategy that guides you about how to use the various
tools that you've learned about in your research phase. The Iterative Action Method that I teach my
clients helps them understand how to decide which things to use, and then once you've decided that,
how to use them appropriately so that you get really good, clear answers about your unique
underlying causes. By working this process, you build a personalized arsenal of things that you
know are effective at resolving or reducing your IBS symptoms. This information is the
bottom line key information for you to find your IBS relief. When you understand how your symptoms
are happening, then you understand how to address them, and you find the answers to this by applying
a strategic approach rather than applying random things and hoping for a good outcome.
So, again, having a clear understanding of the role your doctor is supposed to play in this
drama, understanding whether the things you're learning about are right or appropriate for
you or not, and having a strategy to direct the action that you're taking are three key
secrets that really help you get to your IBS relief plan faster. Now, if you'd like a more
fleshed out version of this strategy that I teach my clients, you can download a free copy of my
Roadmap To Gut Recovery. It's a short free guide that offers the same strategy that I teach my
clients inside my Calm Digestion Method Program. And you can grab a free copy of that by going to
confluencenutrition.com/roadmap. And I will leave a link for that below this video. All right,
let me know if this video was helpful for you by clicking like or leaving me a comment,
or ask me a question if there's something I didn't answer for you. And you might
want to check out this video about your IBS relief plan next. See you next time.