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IBS????

About 10 years ago I was told I have acid reflux, IBS and anxiety, not a great combination.  I was taking Prilosec and Prosac but was taken off the prosac.  I never had any severe issues until a few weeks ago.  My anxiety got the better of me and I started the prosac again.  Then last week I had diarrhea all week about twice a day.  Now three days ago I woke up with bad gas pains that now have gone into gas pains with diarrhea.  I was worried about an obstruction but don't think that is it either. Could it just be the IBS or the meds?
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Avatar universal
What have you been eating lately?  What is your ethnic background?  I have IBS and for the first 26 years of my life the diarrhea was mostly stress related.  However, I am lactose intolerant (as it turns out, not that any of the Doctors I saw at the time ever tested me for it), and that defiitely didn't help.  My tolerance for lactose went from "some" to "none" when I was 26, I'm not sure why, and ever since the tiniest bit of cheese or milk will cause severe problems.  For years after that I thought it was stress, like it had always been before, but finally figured it out for myself.  Once one is that lactose intolerant a typical American diet will make you sick pretty much all the time, and being sick all the time will cause you plenty of anxiety, which is a vicious circle if you have IBS.

Try restricting your diet to rice, potatoes, fruit, vegetables, and meat for a while and see if you feel better.   (Avoiding wheat will also help if you happen to have Celiac disease.)  Keep the fiber content pretty high but don't eat a ton of Cauliflower, Bok Choy, or other gas inducing plants.  For store bought food read the labels and avoid anything with a milk product in it or with Sorbitol (diet candies, some gum, Japanese fish cakes...)  Eating like that will not keep you from having problems when you are really stressed, but it will lower your overall level of stomach distress on a day to day basis.  I went from being sick 3 times a week to only about once a month, which is a big improvement.

As for Prozac, well, sadly I have been through pretty much every SSRI and other antianxiety drug on the market and NONE of them stop stress from giving me diarrhea. It was frankly amazing how calm and cool I could feel when loaded up with Atavin (to the point where I was one pill short of blotto) on a stressful occasion, and still get sick to my stomach.  I do take a low dose of Prozac (10mg/day) because it decreases the frequency of diarrhea slightly, but I'm some sort of mutant for that drug, as twice that dose is totally constipating, and it isn't for most people.  

The most effective thing is to not be nervous.  Ha ha, right, good luck with that.  But seriously, it is possible to reduce your stress response to some stimuli by forcing yourself to do whatever it is that makes you nervous   That works better for simple phobias than it does for others.  Claustrophobia yes, performance anxiety no.
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Avatar universal
Yes, you could have strained something but it could also be that the anxiety and stress is causing muscle pains.
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Now that I think everything is under control it is like I have sore muscles.  but it is under my waist almost like menstral cramps but a little different.  If I take an ibuproferin it seems to take the edge off.  Is it possible I strained something in there with this entire mess.
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Avatar universal
Welcome to the gastroenterology community!  It doesn't sound like anything serious to me.  It is probably the anxiety flaring up the IBS, which is common.  If it doesn't go away when the anxiety improves, I would recommend seeing a doctor.
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