If you’re finding this site for the first time, here’s a heads up about my gut health. I’ve been documenting my gut health for a couple of years now since I started getting problems when I moved to Australia.
If you’re finding this site for the first time, here’s a heads up about my gut health. I’ve been documenting my gut health for a couple of years now since I started getting problems when I moved to Australia.
If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you might remember when I wrote a blog and video diary about when I did The Elemental Diet for 26 days here. This did pretty well on You Tube and I got a lot of emails and support from other people around the world that they were going through something similar.
So, I’m going to give you an update about what’s been happening since I did The Elemental Diet back in October 2017.
More interestingly I’m going to talk about how I’ve recently discovered that there are many expats living in Australia with the exact same condition as me. To me, this is not a co-incidence, so we’ll talk more about it in this post.
If you’re moving to Australia and worried this might happen to you, it probably won’t. The reason I’ve written this article is to help support others going through similar gut issues like me. There could be a million different reasons why we’re all sick with our gut health, but I think there might be more in it.
Let’s recap about why I am bloated
I started getting gut health problems about a year into living in Australia. When I really think about it, I started getting IBS when I was in my early twenties back home in England. But you know, IBS isn’t something I really ever thought about much, like it didn’t take over my life or anything and I knew it came on when I ate a lot of bread.
When I got the gut health problems in Australia, I must admit, I had come back from travelling the world for a year and I had dramatically changed my diet. I spent about 18 months on a new healthy diet where I had cut out processed foods pretty much altogether and lived off a high fruit diet with steamed chicken or fish and steamed veggies for dinner. I felt AMAZING with this lifestyle until I got a stressful job that lead to long work hours and crap eating.
I also got food poisoning at this time, and not long after the severe gut problems started. When I say severe I mean that it literally felt like someone was stabbing me in the stomach and lower back continuously that I had to leave work early many a times. I started to get severe bloating that wouldn’t go away, to the point that I looked heavily pregnant.
When I spent too much money on doctors
I then went to every doctor I could find and eventually spent a lot of money getting a gastroscopy and an endoscopy procedure done in Sydney. The specialist left me in the hospital bed before I even woke up and just told Steve on his way out that I was fine (I know, really?!).
It turned out I had H Pylori, something I might have contracted after spending six months travelling through Africa. He just sent me a prescription to take which I did. To be honest, I left that there and didn’t do anything about it later (something that may well be the root cause of what I have been going through all this time).
After spending an insane amount of money on doctors, scans, naturopaths, different types of herbal pills, intolerance tests (you name it, I did it) I eventually found out I was borderline SIBO.
So I did The Elemental Diet – a liquid based diet for 26 days without eating a single piece of food. I did this as I thought it would be the best possible thing for me to eradicate the problem before we went on our 12 months trip around the world. Turns out it didn’t work.
See the most confronting video I’ve ever made about my experience on The Elemental Diet below.
What happened after I did the Elemental Diet to treat SIBO?
Since I finished the diet, I felt really good although the diet didn’t actually eradicate SIBO. Shortly afterwards, as soon as we left Australia on our trip, I felt instantly better in Maldives and onto other countries.
I took some Doxycycline with me for the just incase moments of flare ups, because the travel doctor we went to see before we left Australia seemed to think it might work for me. Bare in mind Doxycycline is actually an anti-malarial, I then took a small dosage of it when I needed to over the next 12 months which was great. I did become dependant on it and bought loads over the counter in Mexico before we returned to Australia in Feb 2019 for the future just incase moments, something which I have since stopped taking altogether now.
What happens whenever I leave Australia?
Now I’ve had this gut health problem since 2015, I’ve actually realised it’s something to do with the food and/or water in Australia (which is gutting because I’ve always said Australia has the best food in the world!). This is quite a big statement to make but you know how I know? Here’s why…Back in 2016 in Iceland I was completely fine.
Back in 2016 I went back to England & Iceland for a visit. Within two days of being back, the bloating, swelling (I’m talking whole body swelling) and pain had completely disappeared that I had lost like two dress sizes. I couldn’t believe it.
The interesting thing is that I started to eat more out of convenience, you know eating those Pret sandwiches and food I wouldn’t be able to touch in Australia without curling over in pain. And I felt fine!
Mind you, I was still cooking veggies and getting the fibre I was eating in Australia too. I say this because most people I’ve spoken to have agreed that when they eat badly, they felt fine whilst away on holidays. When eating healthier in Australia like eating vegetables, they’ve felt worse. I too am the same. I have a feeling the chemicals sprayed on Aussie food might be the cause.
When I returned to Australia after that trip, after four weeks I was back to looking pregnant again.
2017 was a really hard year for me. I tried every possible diet to get rid of this bloating that I got really ill, I mean I looked it for sure. I had aged about 20 years and it wasn’t pretty.
I had this feeling that it was the food in Australia and I wanted to desperately move back to England as I just couldn’t go through it anymore. I was at the point where Steve couldn’t even hug me because I was in so much pain all the time so you can imagine I had no idea how I was going to do this around-the-world trip.
The funny thing is as soon as we left Australia and went to Maldives, I was completely fine. I couldn’t believe it. As time went on I had a few instances where I’d flare up in India from eating so much rice but the main thing is, I wasn’t in anymore pain at all. I
also did a month long yoga course in India with the hope to eradicate it for good, which it didn’t do but it definitely made my back much stronger than it was.
By the time we got back to England in June 2018 when we moved there for six months, I must admit the pain came back at the beginning but within two months, I was fine. I couldn’t believe I was back to normal again.
When we left England and went to Georgia (the country) and Spain, again I was fine. But, when we arrived into Mexico, it started up again within a day or two. So I stayed off the tacos and corn based products as I had a feeling it could be that, or maybe it was the humidity, who knows?! The main thing is, it wasn’t aggressive like in Australia.
What happened when we moved back to Australia in 2019?
When we arrived back in Australia in Feb 2019, on the very first day I started eating and drinking Australian food and water, the pain, the swelling and the bloating all came back straight away, but only when I started eating and drinking (I still had water from Mexico for the first night back when we arrived back late).
I hadn’t even been obsessing about whether it might come back, it just did out of the blue. Within a week of being back in Australia I couldn’t fit into any of my clothes I wore in Mexico.
I had to go back onto Doxycycline to help with the pain and I realised that when I came off it, I actually couldn’t go to the toilet. I was at the point that I had to take Doxy to go to the bloomin toilet (alarm bells ringing!). I can admit that I have been off Doxy completely for a couple of months now and won’t be resorting to it again now as doing a year on-and-off of antibiotics is not good for anyone. Slowly my body adjusted and what really has helped has been staying off the carbs in Aus for me.
When I found out I wasn’t alone
One day on Instagram I decided to talk about my gut problems and I shared a recent photo about my current stomach situation that I asked if anyone else was going through it too. It turns out, I’m not alone, like actually far from it.
I then started to receive message after message from other expats who are experiencing the exact same thing as me that when they sent me their stomach photos, I couldn’t believe it.
I had a message from two French girls who spent a year in Australia and got the same gut health problems within days of coming to Australia and as soon as they returned home, they were fine.
Other women and men emailed me to say they thought it was various things such as bakeries in Australia put more gluten in their bread here, or how one person found it easier if they didn’t eat meat (I’ve found it to be the opposite for me).
Many people started eating better when they moved to Australia and have since got it, and others eat exactly the same in both England and Australia and still have massive flare ups only in Aus.
Many recommended peppermint oil to be a good supplement to take to help with the bloating, something I haven’t personally tried yet even though I mainly drink peppermint tea.
(On a side not I’ve started taking Atrantil over the last few days after watching this video by SIBO Survivor [check out his site, it’s brilliant BTW]. You can buy it on Amazon but I’ll let you know how I get on with it first before you think about buying more pills. @tr_eat_urself has a similar story to me and ate anything and everything in England. When she moved to Australia, she started to eat properly and now has extreme bloating.
When Australia is such an outdoorsy country and you want to go to the beach but have this to deal with, it becomes more mentally concerning for most people. Just as an FYI – I have heard that excessive exercising can make it worse.
I even had Australian people email me to say that they have the same problems in Australia and when they moved to Europe they were fine.Interestingly @poooliinka has had this gut problem since she moved from Poland to England for the last two years, and no one can get to the bottom of what’s going on.
When I mentioned all of this to a new gut-naturopath I went to visit, they just dismissed the idea that there must be something that people can’t tolerate in Aussie food or water. I told them I had at least 50 people email me saying that had the same problems since moving to Australia.
I decided I’m not spending any more money on any naturopath’s going forward, because to me, it’s a bit too obvious there’s something going on whether it’s in the water or the chemicals they spray on food here, I’m not sure what but it’s definitely something.
Mollie’s Story
I met up with Mollie, a British women who has been living in Sydney. To me this was a huge breakthrough that I was actually meeting someone else in person who has been suffering from the same as well. You’ll know that it’s a very lonely experience that unless others are going through the same, no one will understand what it’s like.
Mollie was at the point where she needed to leave Australia because she just couldn’t go through with having this problem anymore. She had been living in between England and Australia for about 15 years and knew that when she went back to England she was fine. When she read I was fine when I went back too, I think she sort of grabbed hold of the possibility that it wasn’t in her head (as easy as that is to think at the time, I’ve been through it too).
Mollie has kept in touch with me since she moved back to England just over a month ago now and it turns out, her gut health is completely fine. She’s got no gut problems whatsoever as you can see in the photos above.
I was however sent this article by one reader which suggests that it’s normal to have gut problems when you travel the world or move to a new country. They did a study about Asian people moving to America. Obviously I can 100% say that American food is not the best because of all of the corn syrup, palm oil and other preservatives in the food, that it makes you wonder if anything you’re eating is actually real food.
Something in the water in NSW
Interestingly, I remember Mollie telling me that her work colleague had the same as well. But she was from Perth and had moved to Sydney. Was there something going on with Sydney food and water specifically?
I thought it was the water at one stage as it happens to me straight away. So I did a test and drank only bottled water which didn’t have fluoride in it (you must check the label) for a couple of weeks to see if it had anything to do with it. Within days my jeans that were so tight on me that they became baggy once again.
I know people will argue that fluoride is in your toothpaste but surely that’s not on the same level as drinking at least two litres of water a day? I think you end up thinking about every scenario possible to understand this condition. I can’t actually believe I took this photo but I was so surprised how much I sweated after a run when I switched from tap water to bottled water.
I also sweated massively when I tried to go on a run, way more than usual that I think all of the swelling and bloating started to come out of me and my skin started to look clearer.
When I went back to drinking tap water, I must admit nothing really changed. When we can afford it, we will get a a Big Berkey Water Filter from here.
A reader emailed me to say that she had to change all of her taps and even shower in her home with filtered water because Aussie water gives her terrible skin conditions. I have read on the SIBO discussion page (this is a good page to join) that a lot of people with gut problems will only drink from the Big Berkey Water Filter.
What happened when we came to America recently?
We’re currently in USA for five weeks for Steve’s job and interestingly when we arrived we both felt back to normal. My swelling and bloating calmed down instantly and I finally didn’t have any problems at all.
We’ve been eating a mixture of foods, mainly cooking no carb meals but also at the same time eating absolutely rubbish. Honestly, big tubs of Haagan Dazs has been eaten by me daily (I’m not even joking). I’ve even been able to drink alcohol again, something I rarely touch in Australia as I just swell up even more. When I talk about swelling I mean swelling on my whole body that I can’t do my bra up kinda swelling.
We did bring some Aussie gluten free muesli, you know the expensive one from Brookfarm and that instantly bloated us out. We can eat bread that’s the gross sweet cake here in America and be fine, but gluten free muesli from Australia is the worst for our gut health. I have no idea what is going on!
Let’s talk about periods
Also I wanted to discuss the topic of periods. Mine have been irregular since this stomach thing started. I would usually not have one for about three months and then it would come back.
But since we moved back to Australia in February, I didn’t have one for five months. It got worrying so I went to the doctor. They did the tests because they thought I might be going through early menopause, and it turns out I’m not (phewww!).
When they did a scan, they said they could see I was about to have my period but it never came. We noticed I’d have the pre-menstrual moods each month but nothing else would happen.
But, I knew it would come back as soon as I left Australia, and what do you know? After being in America for four weeks, I got it back. It was very light, but at least something is happening which is a good sign as we want to have a family.
Future plans with my gut health
When we go back to Australia on Monday, I’m going to follow this very closely and start by not consuming any water from the tap at all so I can properly see if it’s got anything to do with it.
I’ll only be back in Australia for two weeks before I head over to England for a couple of weeks. This is going to be an interesting experiment to see what happens in both countries with my gut health.
In America I’ve been cooking the same no carb food (usually eggs, avo, mushrooms and tomato for late breakfast and chicken or steak and veggies for dinner) as well as I would do in Australia so I’ll be interested to see what happens when I go back to Australia and cook the exact same foods. More interestingly when I go back to England again it will be a good experiment to see what happens there.
To be honest, everyone is totally different and what might work for me, doesn’t necessarily work for anyone else. Like I know that if I go to South East Asia, the water gives me the runs every single time I go there. For most, I’m assuming, probably won’t have these kind of issues.
I’ve finally set up a Facebook support group
I’ve also finally set up a Facebook Gut Health Support Group you can join here. I plan to do meet ups in the coming months in Sydney, so anyone who has gut issues can come along and we can support each other in person and talk about any breakthroughs you’ve had to get through this bizarre condition.
I’ve written this post to not only share my gut health story but to raise awareness that you are not alone with what you are going through and that it’s not in your head like many might suggest.
I also want to make sure that gut health is talked about more and that expats aren’t leaving their dream of living in Australia because of this. Let’s work together to find out what is going on.
If you have had gut issues in Australia, comment below and make sure you join my new Facebook support group here.
And don’t forget to watch the video below!
Read more about my gut issues here
⇒ What’s wrong with my stomach? I have SIBO >
⇒ My experience on the Elemental Diet to treat SIBO >
⇒ SIBO Update: Did the Elemental Diet work? >
Gut Health in Australia
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