Please note: If you can’t handle talking about poop, don’t read this! But if you’ve ever dealt with digestion issues or know someone who has, please read on – and share my story with the buttons at the bottom of this post!

Imagine being 13 and having to ask to leave class for the bathroom nearly every day. Embarrassing, right?

That’s what I lived with for years – from middle school, through high school and college, into adulthood. Not just having to ask, but having to run to the restroom before my next episode of IBS hit. It would hit me at school, at home, out shopping, nearly every time we ate out at a restaurant – multiple times every week, often with multiple trips to the bathroom on the same day.

IBS is short for Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Most people with IBS tend to have constipation. I consider those people lucky. My IBS flare ups always resulted in diarrhea. It usually would not end until absolutely everything was out of my digestive track. It was awful!

A diagnosis of IBS basically means that something is wrong with your digestive track but the doctor can’t figure out exactly what. My IBS issues began in middle school. I dealt with flare ups with over the counter medicine. Immodium was my best friend! I never left home without it. In high school, my doctor prescribed a medicine to try. Instead of having almost daily diarrhea, I didn’t poop for over a week! My stomach *hurt* worse than ever, so I quit that medicine.

I had decided I was going to just have to live with IBS forever. The number of flare ups reduced in college, but I still occasionally missed some class time because of it. I learned some of the triggers for my IBS, but even eliminating those from my diet did not end my episodes.

The first significant progress in treating my IBS came after I got whiplash. How are my neck and my IBS related? Bear with me for this part of my story.

A few years ago, I suddenly had a severe headache. My doctor did an x-ray of my head and all kinds of blood work but found nothing wrong. After I spent 2 days in bed crying in pain even with heavy painkillers, my mother drug me kicking and screaming to her chiropractor. I always thought chiropractic care was a hoax, but Dr. Carson proved me wrong.

Within a few minutes of meeting me, even before taking an x-ray, he asked me if I had hurt my neck. I said no, knowing I hadn’t been in a wreck recently. Then he asked if I had ridden any roller coasters. On a school field trip about two weeks earlier, I rode with a child that wasn’t even my own because everyone in our group was scared of the roller coaster. The last turn slammed me into the bar between us, leaving huge bruises on my leg. Dr. Carson said he’d bet money that I got whiplash on that roller coaster, and sure enough his x-ray of my neck proved it. The medical doctors had looked only at my head. He easily figured out that the problem was in my neck!

He didn’t stop with my neck, either. He took a full medical history, and of course my IBS was at the top of my list of problems. His x-ray of my mid-back showed two vertebrae were out of place, and he said both of those can lead to digestion problems. I figured if he was going to pop my neck, he might as well try my back, too.

The adjustment to my neck reduced the headache pain by half within the next couple of hours. After a week and two more adjustments, the headache was gone! I of course continued going to Dr. Carson, still do every couple of months, just to keep everything in line. As long as my spine is stacked correctly, I don’t have headaches, and I rarely had IBS episodes. Chiropractic care cut my flare ups down from 2-3 a week to just 1-2 a month!

My IBS was so much better that it rarely affected my life. I wasn’t seeking any further treatment for it, but I happened upon a final nail in its coffin – Shakeology.

I started drinking Shakeology daily in July of 2013 when I began Focus T25 to get in shape and lose weight. I tried the shake mix in hopes of it speeding up my weight loss. I honestly don’t know if it had that effect, but the combination of the workouts with the shakes broke through a plateau in my weight loss and got me down to a healthy weight for my height.

I had been drinking Shakeology for over two months when it suddenly hit me – I hadn’t had an IBS episode in weeks! When I thought really hard about my last flare up, I realized it was before I started the shakes. Improved digestion is an often-reported effect of Shakeology. As of this writing, nearly two years into drinking Shakeology, I haven’t had a single episode of IBS since I added the shakes to my daily nutrition. I still keep an Immodium tablet with me, just in case, but I’m pretty sure it’s expired!

How do I know it’s the Shakeology and not just the adjustments to my spine or changes to my body from adulthood? I unintentionally tested it last fall. I went on a 4-day trip out of town, and I forgot to pack my Shakeology. Even though most of my foods on the trip weren’t anything I wasn’t used to eating, I was SO sick by the time we got home. My stomach hurt SO much, and I thought for sure I was going to be sick. I drank a shake when I got home, and another for breakfast the next morning. The diarrhea never hit me, and the stomach pains left. That test proved to me that Shakeology is having a profound effect on my digestion. I’ll never leave home without it again!

Shakeology does many great things for me – increased energy, reduced cravings, weight loss – but the one thing that matters most to me is what it does for my tummy. If you’ve never lived with IBS, you can’t appreciate how fantastic it is to have “normal poop.”  Trust me – being episode free, no longer having to worry about where to find a restroom and how fast I can get there, no longer having to leave meetings or classes to run to the bathroom – that is truly fantastic! I’m so glad my Coach, Joe, talked me into trying Shakeology! I feel amazing, especially because I no longer have IBS episodes!

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