At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 when everyone was taking part in the TikTok dance craze, I swore I would never download the app. However, once 2021 started and there was no quarantine ed in sight, I fell into the trap and downloaded the app. Never did I think that this social networking platform would help answer health questions I had for months.
All my life I’ve had stomach issues that eventually dwindled in college when I became a vegetarian and began to exercise more. However, for much of my early twenties, the stomach pain kept coming back. Bloatedness, irregularity, and abdominal pain were everyday issues that I thought were normal, especially for my high-stress lifestyle of being a grad student and social worker.
However, at some point, I started noticing that on certain days my stomach issues got worse depending on what I ate. The feeling of discomfort, fullness even when I hadn’t eaten that much, and extreme bloatedness became apparent that something was going on.
Every other day I was battling with a stomach that looked like I was five months pregnant.
I began to document the level of bloatedness so I could show a doctor if things didn’t get better.
So as I was scrolling through the app, I decided to look up “bloated” on TikTok to see if there were any videos out there. That’s where I found various videos of people with the same issues as me, with stomachs just as crazy as mine. Words I kept seeing were “IBS”, “leaky gut”, and “celiacs disease”. Watching these videos helped me realize that it was time to schedule an appointment with a gastroenterologist.
This wasn’t the first time I took a step into figuring out what was going on. About a year prior during my first physical in years, I had spoken to my primary care doctor and had an H. Pylori test done where I had to drink a clear liquid and blow into a bag. The test came out negative but was told to make an appointment with a specialist if problems continued.
There I was almost a year later at the gastro doctor’s office explaining my symptoms and showing pictures of my inflated stomach, which he reassured was not normal bloating. I had blood drawn to test for celiacs disease, was scheduled for a breath test for small intestine bacterial overgrowth, and was put on a low fodmap diet for the next six weeks.
The low fodmap diet has got to be one of the most difficult diets to be on. It is important to understand that this diet is NOT for weight loss, but instead is an elimination diet that helps people understand which high fodmap foods cause discomfort.
Some foods I was restricted from eating were food like gluten, apples, soft cheeses, garlic, onions, and almost all legumes. At the end of the day, I had to make the decision of changing my diet from vegetarian to adding seafood and eggs, since I now couldn’t eat half the things in a vegetarian diet. Again, TikTok helped me out, as I continue to gain information and delicious recipes from accounts like @claudiakathryn.
A few days later I received the results for celiac disease- negative. However, after a couple of hours of drinking an orange liquid and blowing into a bag every 20 minutes, I tested positive for hydrogen predominant small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It felt so good to finally know what was going on and get treatment for it. For 14 days I took Xifaxan, an antibiotic, three times a week, and I continued the low fodmap diet, eventually reintroducing some foods.
I know that my stomach issues are nowhere near ending and still struggle. Sadly, I can’t drink that much alcohol or eat a whole fluffy bagel slathered with cream cheese without paying the consequences.
TikTok shouldn’t be used to self-diagnose, but it can definitely help you to understand what may be going on and assure you that you’re not the only one going through it.
If you’ve been struggling with any type of health issue, this is your sign to seek help. If you don’t have health insurance, you can find low-cost, sliding-scale medical services in your area here.
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