York Test experiences from Sports Greatests

Denise Lewis: My Secret Torment

Denise Lewis, 32, is one of Britain’s best-known athletes, winning gold in the heptathlon at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and starring in the hit TV show Strictly Come Dancing last year. What no one knew was that for the past 13 years she has suffered from Irritable Bowel Syndrome - a painful and debilitating condition which affects one in five people in Britain. Here, Denise, who lives in Birmingham with her three-year-old daughter Lauren, speaks to ISLA WHITCROFT about her illness.
Standing at the side of the dance floor with my dancing partner Ian Waite, I was so petrified that I could literally feel my stomach churning. We were about to perform the quickstep on the hit BBC TV show Strictly Come Dancing and I was desperately trying to visualise the steps in my head.
I’m sure that my nervousness was evident to those around me. But there was another reason I was so worried. For 13 years I’ve suffered from an excruciating and incurable stomach disorder called Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
At times it’s left me curled up in agony, feeling as if someone was wringing out my guts by hand, and there is nothing I can do - not standing, sitting or lying down - that can make the pain go away.
Suddenly, I’ll get a desperate urge to go to the loo and only then do I feel any relief.
The only cause that experts have ever given for IBS is stress, so as I waited to perform the complicated steps of the dance in front of millions of viewers, I was sure that if ever an attack was about to happen, it would be now.
We stepped onto the dance floor, the music began, and - nothing.
Just my own fast heartbeat as we raced through the manoeuvres, the sequins of my dress sparkling under the spotlights. Did this mean I’d finally overcome my illness? I first started getting the symptoms of IBS in 1992 - bloating, constipation and wind, followed by terrible stomach pains. Like most sufferers, I wrote off the attacks as isolated incidents because they occurred months apart.
Then, in the summer of 1993, at an athletics competition in Birmingham, I had a particularly bad attack. I knew it was coming. For a few days I’d felt bloated and been off my food. Even water made me feel full and uncomfortable. The timing was particularly bad.
It was the morning of my javelin event and the attack lasted more than two hours. I spent the run-up to the event trying every which way to get comfortable and praying for it to be over. Finally, the pain went, and somehow I managed to get out there and win.
My mum, Joan, had been worried sick about me since she witnessed one of my attacks at home in Wolverhampton, and my coach was also pushing me to see a doctor. I’d always been reluctant, though. I was just too embarrassed.
But after that attack I went to my GP, who referred me to a gastric specialist in Birmingham. He carried out an endoscopy - a procedure in which a tube with a tiny camera on the end is fed down the throat into the top half of the stomach to look for any sign of irritation. It felt very uncomfortable and afterwards I wished I’d had the anaesthetic offered.

When the specialist didn’t find anything, I was sent away with some anti-acid pills and Fybrogel, a medicine to help with my constipation. At that time, Irritable Bowel Syndrome was almost unheard of and the doctor had no real idea of what could be wrong. In essence, I was told that I just had to learn to live
with it. So for four years that is more or less what I did - putting up with attacks while making a name for myself as a top-class athlete. But although I was starting to win more and more competitions, the condition was getting worse.
Looking back, it seems amazing that I put up with the pain for so long, but I have found out since that suffering in silence is typical of people with IBS.
First, there is the embarrassment: it is hard for anyone to discuss their bowel movements or flatulence - even with a doctor. Then, if you are told there is no physical sign of a problem, you think that because doctors can’t help you, it will be with you forever. Eventually, I decided I couldn’t live like that any longer. At times I was having to cut short training sessions because my stomach was just too sore. I started keeping a food diary to see if anything I was eating was triggering the attacks, but there seemed to be no real pattern. Then I looked at my menstrual cycle; but again there was no link. I cut out coffee and rich foods, including my favourite ice cream, but if anything the attacks seemed more frequent. By 1998, I was
having around one attack a month. Most occurred at home, but there were times when I was out training and suddenly found myself making a mad dash off the track to the loo.
Finally, in 1998, after an attack during which I vomited, I knew it was time to look for help again.
This time, I was referred by my GP to a private clinic in London’s Devonshire Place, where I had an endoscopy and a colonoscopy, which is where a tube with a camera on the end is inserted into the rectum to have a good look at the lower intestines. This time, I had a mild sedative and it was far less painful. The doctor could see some irritation, but, overall, my stomach, intestines and bowels were pretty healthy.
However, while he couldn’t see a reason for the spasms, he was the first person to give my problem a name - Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which was a disorder of not just the bowel but the entire intestines. He said it could be stress-related, but the truth was that no one really knew why IBS occurred. Worst of all, there was no medical idea of how to cure it. I left that doctor with nothing more than a name for my problem, an offer of regular monitoring, and a new prescription of Fybrogel. Not to mention a nasty feeling that I might have this pain for the rest of my life.
At that time, I had no option but to learn to live with it. It was the run-up to the Sydney Olympics and I didn’t have time to worry about being ill or in pain. I had attacks every couple of months, mostly at home in the evenings, but I just had to sweat through it and carry on with my rigorous training routine.
Sometimes it got me down, but I was determined that it wasn’t going to affect my chances of winning. I also refused to let it affect my social life.
If I had an attack at a restaurant, I would just get up, find somewhere quiet and wait until it had passed.
Although I wouldn’t let IBS ruin my chance of gold, I was nervous about having an attack out in Sydney.
Funnily enough, when I finally went out there, I didn’t suffer once - even though it was probably the most stressful time of my life. I won gold for the heptathlon without anyone knowing what I’d been through and I hoped that I’d seen the last of the attacks.

But almost as soon as I returned, they started again. I had no idea why. At the athletics World
Championships at Edmonton, Canada, in 2001, when I was at the peak of physical fitness, I had one of my worst attacks yet. I’d just finished training when I suddenly felt so helpless with pain that I had to lie down on the changing-room floor. Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead, my breathing was laboured and I felt nauseous. No one else was in the room and it took about an hour for the pain to pass. Then I got the urge to go to the loo - fast. I made it only just in time.
The attacks continued throughout the championships, leaving me weak and exhausted. In the end, I had to withdraw from the event because of a foot injury, but the IBS didn’t help matters. Just a year after my Sydney victory, it was a bitter disappointment for everyone.
Nothing seemed to alleviate the symptoms, and even when I fell pregnant later that year by my then partner, fellow athlete Patrick Stevens, the attacks continued. I felt terribly guilty that I might be harming my daughter Lauren, who is now three, and I was worried there might be problems with her birth.
Thankfully, she was fine. There seemed nothing that I could do to help myself, so I continued to put up with the IBS in silence. Then, in October last year, I heard about blood tests that could be done to establish if you were suffering from food allergies. I’d never really considered it before, because my own food diary had proved so inconclusive, but now I felt I had nothing to lose. The test cost £250 with a specialist food allergy firm called YorkTest Laboratories. All I had to do was prick my finger with a pin, let the blood collect in a special container and then send off the sample.
About a week later, I received the results of the tests. The report said I was very intolerant of cow’s milk, moderately intolerant of yeast and egg white, and mildly intolerant of egg yolk, garlic and cashew nuts.
I wasn’t surprised about the cow’s milk. I regularly felt uncomfortable after drinking it, and had often drunk soya milk and eaten dairy-free products.
But the yeast, eggs and garlic would be difficult to do without. I love bread, and one of the best things about training is having lots of protein-rich omelettes. I put garlic in just about everything. I was warned by the company that it would take a least a month before I felt the effects of cutting out those foods, because they had to leave my system completely. But I was desperate enough for a cure to give it a go.
 
Winter is always the worst time of year for my IBS, and the next month, November, I was due to begin my stint on Strictly Come Dancing, so it was going to be an extremely stressful time. Filming started and I was very on edge - watching for the first feeling of bloating or constipation that would herald the start of another attack. All through Christmas and into January after filming finished, I was waiting for the symptoms to return. But they didn’t. Now it’s spring and, although it’s still early days, I’m hoping that I may have beaten IBS at last.
I realise that saying you have a food allergy or food intolerance has become a bit of a trend, and I’m sure it’s not the cause of all IBS. But I can only go by my own experience - and it seems to be the cause of mine. I wish I could have worked it out for myself years ago, but it’s hard to monitor every morsel of food that passes your lips.
Now, I stick quite strictly to my new eating plan, but I do occasionally slip up. I try to eat pitta bread, which is made without yeast, but I often crave a nice slice of fresh brown bread. And when I smell garlic in food, I sometimes give in and taste a bit. So far, it hasn’t done any harm. Perhaps, after nearly 13 years of misery, I may have cracked it at last.

IBS: THE FACTS
Dr Alix Daniel has a clinic in Harley Street, London, and specialises in nutritional related diseases such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and diabetes. She says: IBS is a syndrome, not a disease, because it’s a mixture of symptoms - stomach bloating and stomach ache, diarrhoea, constipation and heartburn.
Sufferers can also complain of headaches and fatigue. The term IBS came into use in the mid-Nineties. Before then, doctors had tended to treat the symptoms individually. IBS is diagnosed using techniques such as endoscopy and colonoscopy. Often as clinicians we are simply eliminating other stomach diseases and disorders before, finally, we diagnose IBS.
It’s difficult to put an exact figure on the number of people who suffer from IBS, because many suffer in silence through embarrassment. We estimate there are 500,000 sufferers in the UK, with up to 80 per cent of them under 40.

Mark Loftus Profile
Bloating and IBS Case study


Following a glittering amateur career, which saw Mark ranked as high as 2nd in Britain’s amateur rankings at the end of 1999 and collect 23 caps for Scotland and 2 caps for Great Britain & Ireland, Mark turned pro at the end of 2001 in an unsuccessful bid to securing a place on the European tour along with some of his GB&I team mates such as Luke Donald, Paul Casey and Nick Dougherty.

Since then Mark has been competing on the Challenge Tour, South African Sunshine Tour, PGA Europro Tour and the Tartan Tour in his Native Scotland.

With 5 wins on the Tartan Tour and a 3rd place finish in the 2005 Scottish PGA championship behind eventual winner Paul Lawrie, the 1999 Open Champion, Mark’s progression in professional golf is gradual if not spectacular and he maintains his belief that a permanent place on the European Tour is not too distant a prospect.

For the last 10 years Mark has been accompanied on his journey through the ranks with a mysterious stomach complaint, which has never been used as an excuse for performance but has been a constant distraction to Marks training routine and tournament scheduling. "The uncertainty as to how I was going to feel physically from day to day was very unnerving mentally, not only with golf but with my whole life in general"

After many visits to private hospitals for tests and exploratory operations, severe inflammation was noticed but no route cause could be established and the complaint was dismissed as stress, relating to the pressures of competing in top-level sport. "As a pretty laid back person this diagnosis was hard to take and I thought there had to be more to this, however having exhausted what I thought was every avenue I resigned myself to coping with the aggravated stomach and extreme Nausea indefinitely"

Following a trip to the Vitality Show in Glasgow, Mark was introduced to Les Rowley from York Test, and became intrigued by the allergy angle that could have been the cause of his problems.

"I had nothing to loose and sent a small blood sample to the YorkTest Laboratory for allergy analysis and was amazed when it was found that I am severely allergic to Cows milk and Yeast, two major aspects of my diet. Eliminating these two food types from my diet has been a challenge but has totally cleared up my stomach complaint and its effects."

"It remains to be seen if my allergy was a contributor to my slower than anticipated progress through the professional ranks, but regardless of the effect this will have on my future performances YorkTest has improved my standard of life on and off the golf course immeasurably which I was starting to doubt would ever happen."