HOW I F*CKED UP MY GUT
Dodgy diets and quick-fix pills to cheat the stomach system can cause more harm than you think. Jennifer George knows first-hand what it takes to get your belly back on track
Why dodgy diets and quickfix pills are never the answer – our beauty editor opens up
I feel I should start with a disclaimer: there will be talk of poo. Those who don’t want to hear about poo might want to move on. I know it’s still the last taboo, but it’s not talking about it that led to 2O years of fighting with my digestion and, well, fucking up my gut.
I’ve never been particularly kind to my stomach. As a child, I was fussy and sugarfuelled, throwing tantrums at the sight of anything green. In my teens, dieting worsened things (and when I say dieting, I mean irresponsible and not-very-happy extended periods of barely eating). The story doesn’t take a dark turn to eating disorders, thankfully, but I would say I teetered on the edge.
Those days are behind me – but the legacy is not. Denying myself food caused mayhem in my gut, and the lack of nutrients in my low-fibre, high-sugar diet created a toxic effect, ruining the chances of nurturing good bacteria. By the age of 17, I was feeling the effects: most evenings I’d find myself bloated and, yes, blocked up, with even a punnet of prunes unable to shift things for days on end.
Of course, what I should have done was turn my dietary habits around – eaten more regularly and filled my trolley with fibre-filled vegetables. But, I’m embarrassed to say, I didn’t. Why not? I was young, impatient and unwilling to address what were likely underlying issues with food. I wasn’t denying myself in the way I had as a teenager, but I was now a student who saw a carton of eggs and box of chicken dippers as my main sources of nutrients. My mother had taught me how to whip up delicious stir-fries and salads from scratch, but cooking those for one (on a shoestring budget) wasn’t appealing.
And so it was that, aged 19, after a day working in Miss Selfridge, I found myself sporting a bloat the size of a six-month baby
“I’D WAKE in THE DEAD OF NIGHT in a COLD SWEAT, DOUBLED OVER WITH CRAMPS”
“MY RELATIONSHIP WITH my BODY was HORRIBLY WARPED. I was PUTTING MY HEALTH at RISK ”
bump and standing in the Stomach & Bowel aisle in Boots, scrutinising the laxatives. I settled on the mild-looking, senna plant-based kind. This naturally occurring herb, containing sennosides to irritate the bowel lining, would gently move things along, apparently. My naive reasoning was that if it had leaves on the packet, it must be good for you.
Sure enough, 12 hours later, the pills worked as promised. I was thrilled by the physical feeling of emptiness. Deluded as it sounds, I saw these pills as a quick and painless fix to my tummy troubles. Plus, I reasoned, it meant I could basically eat what I wanted, right? Wrong.
Laxatives became the norm. For a year or so, I’d take a few per week to keep things moving. After a while, my body became accustomed to them, so I switched to a brand that looked more hardcore. These were riskier: they worked quickly – sometimes too quickly. I’d get caught short on outings and have to pre-plan any social activities so they were near a bathroom. But I was bloat-free and wrongly convinced myself that I was managing things – I couldn’t see any obvious side effects (I wasn’t dropping weight, just maintaining it).
Soon, I was loading up on laxatives. Most days I’d take two; some, up to four. Taking that many would mean waking in the dead of night in a cold sweat, doubled over with cramps, while my bowels twisted and turned.
What I didn’t realise was the internal damage it was causing. ‘Laxatives aggressively flush out your intestines, taking all the good flora and nutrients with them,’ says Margo Marrone, pharmacist, homeopath and co-founder of The Organic Pharmacy. ‘Taken on a regular basis, they create a lazy digestive tract, so the muscles that cause contractions and movement become dependent on laxatives triggering them.’
Looking back, I can see this was its own kind of disorder. My relationship with my body was horribly warped and I was putting my long-term health at risk. My addiction – that’s really what is was – continued for more than ten years. Friends who were party to my eating habits as a teenager voiced their concerns, as did my boyfriend. Plus, in my new job in beauty writing – and as an intelligent, grown woman – I knew what I was doing was unhealthy. I did try to wean myself off a few times. But when I went cold turkey, my digestion went on strike. On top of that, having dormant waste sitting there over time was releasing toxins into my body, causing headaches and triggering IBS.
Dr Harry König, lead doctor at cutting-edge medi-spa Villa Stéphanie (Victoria Beckham recently ’grammed her way through some R&R there), sees laxative abuse cause irritation and functional disorders in many patients – and worse. ‘Once the habituation effect [the inability to pass stools without laxatives] has occurred, the intestine only works to a limited extent. A reduction in intestinal activity and resulting mineral imbalances can disturb the functions of other organs, such as the kidneys and heart.’ The shit finally hit the fan – as it were – the December before last. My boyfriend and I were on our way to Christmas at Kew (very festive and jolly) and I got caught short (not festive, nor jolly). I’d planned our route via a pub for that reason. Only this time, there was blood. It was the wakeup call I needed.
With a history of cancer in my family, I went straight to my GP, who booked me in for a sigmoidoscopy (like a colonoscopy, but not as ‘far-reaching’) a few weeks later. It was at this point – lying on my side with a camera inserted 5Ocm inside me, wasting the NHS’s precious time, and my own – that the foolishness of my actions became clear. When the probable cause of the bleeding was diagnosed as a small tear in my colon rather than anything more serious, it felt like a second chance. It was time to kick the habit once and for all.
My next step was taking myself to Londonbased nutritionist Gabriela Peacock, who I’m pretty sure had a conniption as I listed my ‘diet habits’: ‘No breakfast, a sandwich around 2pm and, well, there’s this treat table at work, sooo… supper around 9pm and three glasses of water a day, if I remember.’
It was back-to-basics time. I needed to drink a lot more water (for flushing), have regular meals, especially breakfast (for nutrients), and – most importantly – take probiotics. Her ‘Clean Me’ supplement programme would also help support my liver, which would have been working overtime to deal with the toxins overloading my body.
A year later, and my tummy and I are in a much happier place. But the road to re-establishing a healthy relationship with my body isn’t quite pot-hole free. I am ever-impatient and always tempted to look for a quick fix, but I’ve ramped up my water intake (a genius, motion-activated light strapped to my water bottle reminds me to keep chugging it down) and have become a bona fide breakfast eater, carting Tupperware tubs full of yoghurt and granola into work. This alone has helped with my headaches, bloating and temptation to visit the treat table. After all-or-nothing stints of giving them up, I’ve made peace with the fact I’ll always love sugar, gluten and takeaways – and that’s OK. I just make sure my fridge is also stocked with a colourful array of vegetables and organic meat and fish for the nights I do cook, which, luckily, is something I love to do.
Exercising regularly – reformer pilates, barre and HIIT – has also helped. If I’m moving more, I’m drinking more, and I’m in more of a routine with my eating. But it’s the probiotics that have really turned things around. ‘The gut microbiome is central to virtually every bodily function, and is not only where we digest food, but where we absorb nutrients, eliminate toxins and house around 7O per cent of the immune system,’ says nutritional therapist Laura Ryan. ‘It’s the trillions of bacteria found in probiotics that keep it functioning.’ There are several good brands: OptiBac does affordable options (from ‘Every Day’ to a ‘Daily Immunity’ strain that’s boosted with Vitamin C), and BioKult’s pills can be popped open and mixed into your breakfast. The one that works best for me is by Symprove. It’s a ‘live’ probiotic and water-based, so your stomach doesn’t see it as food, letting it pass through the small intestine to the colon. Magnesium citrate tablets help, too (mine are from Solgar and are great, though if there are any others smaller than the size of a Lego block, I’d like to know), as the mineral helps with water absorption into our intestines.
I recently visited The Organic Pharmacy to take a health assessment (not cheap at £15O, but an investment, given my history), which involves being strapped into a sci-fisounding quantum machine. By sending low electric signals through the body, it measures imbalances of energy (we’re talking protons and neutrons, not crystals and chakras), which indicate how well things are functioning, giving profiles on vitamin deficiencies, organ functions, intolerances and imbalances. The overall results were ‘good to average’. I need more fruit, have good alkaline blood, and should possibly avoid beef – but my bowel flora levels? ‘A solid 9/1O!’ smiled my lovely therapist Flavia, who credits the probiotics for this star-pupil score.
Such shamefully simple changes in my life have meant an end to constipation, to bloating, to frantic sprints to the loo – and, most importantly, to depending on crampinducing, gut-ruining laxatives. In short, it’s a return to the normality I never knew existed.