I've seen stats which say something like 90% of people on the spectrum have problems with their gut. Sadly, I'm in that 90%. As a youngster I had chronic constipation - I often couldn't go for 2-3 weeks. In my late teens I sorted out my diet and started eating more fibre and things that were coloured green occasionally. That slowly cured my constipation, and for 5-6 glorious years I had the bowels of a god. One solid poop a day. I could forget I even had a stomach.
Then in my mid-20s, I developed diarrhoea shortly after Christmas Day. It wasn't severe at all, but it didn't clear up. My mum got me to make an appointment with a GP. Amazingly enough, I wasn't fobbed off with IBS or stress, and so after blood/stool tests, a colonoscopy, and a small bowel barium follow-thru, I was diagnosed a few months later with Crohn's disease. I still only had the very mild diarrhoea at this point - no pain, fevers, blood in stools, etc.
For a few years, my symptoms remained mild and I privately doubted my diagnosis. But my original doctors - although crap in every single other way - got
that much right. Anyway, I'm not going to bore you to tears with a 3000-word essay on my Crohn's history. Suffice to say, the predictable happened, I deteriorated, went through 8 years of misery, and finally 'chose' surgery. I say 'chose', like I had much of a choice - it was that, or staying on high doses of steroids continuously. Without steroids, I would have had emergency surgery 2 years earlier.
I couldn't have a resection, so I was given an ileostomy. I absolutely hated it, even though it wasn't a shock (both my GI and surgeon had warned me well in advance). I did very gradually get used to it, but when the opportunity for a reversal came up this year I took it - I'd had the ileostomy for 2½ years by that point and no sign of Crohn's anywhere. Why do I do it? Why am I such a moron? I'm in a miles worse state now than I was before: urgency, abdominal and rectal pain, going half a millon times a day, etc. It's beginning to seriously depress me.
If things aren't better in a year's time, I'll probably ask if I can go back to the ileostomy.
Anyway, what are your guts like? As far as I can make out, IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disorder - please,
please don't confuse it with IBS, which is Irritable Bowel Syndrome and
not the same thing as IBD) isn't any more common in the autistic population than the general one. But I'll soon find out with my highly scientific poll...
Edit: I was going to add a second IBS option, but the edit poll function doesn't really allow for that - it would mess up my nice, neat poll. IBS covers both diarrhoea and constipation; if you want to say which one you mainly have in the comments, that's fine.
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