www.incontinentsupport.org

I have IBS like symptoms. I have diarrhea like every day. I wasn't diagnosed with it by my GI doc, but thats what my PCP has me down as. My GI doc thinks my lithium medication is what is causing my diarrhea. Either way, I have occasional fecal incontinence like a couple times a week. I get a real strong urge to pass stool and there is just no way to hold it back. Does this happen to anyone else with IBS?

Hello, I am a woman who found this forum recently because I am experiencing increasing partial bladder incontinence as a secondary effect of the onset of IBS a few years ago. Fortunately, for me, bowel incontinence is a rare problem, although I have many other IBS related issues.

If your issues are caused by lithium, then it's a different issue than IBS. The current international standard for diagnosing IBS is the Rome criteria (Rome III) If your PCP is using that, then according to experts in the field, the chances that the diagnosis is accurate are about 98%, but there is a lot of outdated and inaccurate information out there in the media, general public and even many medical professionals who do not study it in depth, even though it is one of the most common chronic medical conditions worldwide.

I own an IBS website and a small related self advocacy listserv. We have a lot of reputable information there, with more to come as we are relatively new. Moderators, is it permissible to post the link here for Don and others? My fellow members and I are mostly people with IBS, plus a few relatives of people with IBS and supportive professionals in the field interested in accurate public awareness and advocacy. We are not a commercial business or charity and do not deal in quacks.

Hello Zenute,

Welcome to our Forum!

Based on your statement: <We are not a commercial business or charity and do not deal in quacks.> I welcome you to post your link and I am sure Schoppy, the Owner who also suffers from fecal incon, would say the same thing.

Providing more resources, opinions and help is always a good thing for all of us in the incontinence community!

JoeK

Thank you, JoeK, for the welcome and permission to post the link. The website is:

http://www.ibsimpact.com

Links to the listserv are on the site. The listserv is intentionally self-advocacy and awareness- focused, not for general information and support, since that's an unmet need in the IBS community, but for those interested in the type of forum similar to this one or other things, we have plenty of links all over the site to reputable resources in 4 countries so far, There's no point in reinventing the wheel for what already exists, just putting together the best ones in a central place. We will have more information and links soon as volunteer time, and site users' needs and interests allow.

If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to answer them here or at the contact link on the IBS Impact site. If you like what you see, please feel free to pass the link along to others. As I said, we're relatively new and small so welcome getting the word out.

As for this site, I have been browsing what you have here and have already learned some useful things. I don't have specific questions or other comments yet, but will post if I do. Thanks.

Thank you Zenute for posting the link.

Fecal incontinence can be (and IS) a real pain in the A$$ at times.

Hi, I posted this before, but it was lost in the server crash, so I am reposting. In addition to the website and group, IBS Impact now has a blog. It's at http://ibsimpact.wordpress.com

For those of you who are U.S. citizens, a major piece of legislation called the Functional Gastrointestinal and Motility Disorders Research Enhancement Act of 2011 is currently being considered in the House of Representatives. This affects IBS and any other GI disorder in the "functional" category, including bowel incontinence.(i.e., not inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) like Crohn's or colitis)

If this affects you or somebody close to you, click on the HR 2239 category tag on the right side of the blog. That's the bill number.

Please feel free to pass along the link to either the blog or the website or both, but please ask permission before reposting or repurposing our original content. Thanks.

Zenute,
I was diagnosed with IBS by a very successful GI research clinic in Florida. They care for thousands of patients with gastrointestinal illnesses and perform surgeries every day. They did my colonscopy and endoscopy and all my GI research tests. My priimary care doc also has me down as having IBS. But it was my psychiatrist who narrowed it down and said that I have IBS as a result of taking Lithium. Lithium is known to cause gastrointestinal distress, diarrhea, and nausea. I don't get the nausea, just the diarrhea like every day. The primary and the GI docs both accepted my psychiatrists expertise on the drug Lithium and listed that as the cause.

Don, if all of your medical providers accept that as the diagnosis, then I am not questioning it, but I'm also posting for the benefit of others who visit this forum. As I said, even though it's very common, there's a lot of stuff that gets lumped into "IBS" that isn't, it gets confused with IBD, etc. For example, I saw a post on here a while ago that mentioned colon surgery for IBS, which is sometimes necessary for IBD but which, for several reasons, no legitimate GI specialist or surgeon would do for IBS.

I guess what I was trying to say in the original post is if you (or anyone) only get diarrhea as a side effect of lithium and it does (or theoretically would) stop if you stopped taking lithium, then that's not Rome Criteria IBS, which also involves chronic or recurring abdominal pain by definition(and potentially a lot of other things that are not in the definition, but vary from person to person) If the functioning of your (or anyone's) colon was damaged by the use of lithium, thus causing IBS, then that's a different matter.

True IBS is very complex and still not completely understood, but science has known for quite some time that it's not completely a gut problem. It's also a problem with communication between the gut and the brain, neurotransmitter issues-- serotonin mostly, but others too, perhaps damaged nerves, changes in pain perception in the brain, apparent immune system isssues that are not the same as IBD. As an educated person with IBS, but a layperson, I can see the possibility that long term use of lithium or perhaps other drugs might cause those changes in some people's systems.

For a long time, researchers did not know all that and everything that caused diarrhea, abdominal pain or constipation and couldn't be otherwise diagnosed got an IBS label on it. And a lot of doctors, people with GI conditions and the public are 10-20 years behind on that. It makes it harder for people with true IBS to be taken seriously as well as people who have been misdiagnosed with IBS but really have something else to get the correct medical attention for their actual condition.

This is where I am coming from. I hope this clarifies things. I mean no offense.

I know it does not fit the Rome criteria for IBS. For like 6 months, my GI doc did not give me a diagnosis. He just documented frequent Diarrhea occuring daily. He did not know what was wrong. I have had all kinds of tests ruling out many possible things. I think they call it IBS becuase they don't know what else to call it. They call it that because insurance needs a diagnosis to keep paying. In fact, It wasn't until I described my symptoms to my psychiatrist (Pdoc) that she narrowed it down as to what was wrong with me. She took all my tests into account and examined the medication I was on and came to a conclusion. I don't think the GI doc knew enough about the meds I was on to make that call. But this was like 6 months after my colonscopy that it was determined. When people ask me whats wrong, I don't tell them I have IBS, I tell them that my medication upsets my stomach. I do get severe abdominal cramps frequently before I have a bowel movement. And I also get bowel incontinence quite often. I am quite sure and agree with my Pdoc that my Lithium is making me sick. I don't know if it would stop if I quit taking it. Since this med makes me the most stable, I have no hope of coming off it unless it effected my kidneys. If this happens, I could end up on dialysis. What a life!

Just wanted to post a quick note, as there seem to be a lot of veterans on here. If you have a functional GI disorder (IBS, functional dyspepsia, gastroparesis, CIP, cyclic vomiting, etc.) and served in the Persian Gulf anytime after August 1990, and believe it is related, as of next week, the VA is recognizing functional GI disorders as presumptively service connected. Functional GI disorders are already very common in the general population, but studies have shown they're even more common in Gulf veterans and active duty personnel.

See my IBS blog, August 12, 2011 post.

http://ibsimpact.wordpress.com

Hope this helps somebody.