Akron Food Not Bombs newsletter II : Cleveland IMC (((i)))

The second newsletter from the Akron Food Not Bombs' collective, Free Soup, includes stories on Iran and Dick Cheney, guerrilla gardening, the radical history of Akron's Grace Park and the Wobblies, veggie of the week, and news on other Food Not Bombs groups. It also includes a poem and comic!

My experience with Food not Bombs

I am a 20 year old female and this problem started a year agoeating at food not bombs. I have no personal or family history of any kind of related conditions. About a year ago I noticed a few days would go by before I would go to the bathroom, I use to go everday. It went from three days to a week. Once a week my stomach would get upset and I would go the the bathroom and the stools were not as solid as they use to be. It has been the same since. I will not usually go to the bathroom unless I drink coffee in the morning (no other hot drink seems to work) and even then it is a small amoutn. I have severe gas and it cramps my stomach badly. My stools are loose, and when I do go to the bathroom or relieve gas it smells like rotting food (vulgar). I have tried a high fiber diet, even drinking the fiber drinks (citricil) and they do not work. When it has been a few days since I have gone to the bathroom my stomach begins to bloat and cramp. And during those times I seem to retain more water than usual (and I do drink a lot of water). As I mentioned sometimes when it has been about a week I will go naturally, and it is diareaha. After that my stomach will go down again and the cramping will stop, but the gas is still there and it all starts again. This really started with Food not Bombs, I did not change anything in my diet. I have not lost any weight because of it, lacatives do work, I have had no bleeding and I am not sick or nausiated. I do not know how else to describe it and I hope that was enough information, every time I eat at a food not bombs event my condition gets worse! do you have any idea what this could be?

I am a 21 year old female and I am having similar problems, although I am not constipated. Shortly after I started eating with Food not Bombs for a few months I started getting loose, sometimes watery stools once a day with lots of gas. This was also after I had finished taking 7 days of tetracycline and I figured that may have been the cause. Pepto Bismol helped firm up stools and the problem seemed to be going away after a couple months. I also experienced nausea after eating for two weeks (right after I started taking birth control pills, which I thought was a possible cause). Then recently I got the flu for a week and didn't eat much and consequently didn't pass stools. Since I have resumed eating with Food not Bombs, the daily soft stools have returned. I have not experienced any weightloss. However, I am worried that these may be symptoms of a more serious problem and I am concerned that bowel trouble is listed as a cause of chronic diarrhea.

Cleveland Indy Media Center