It's understandable if you haven't encountered this issue in your own life yet. It's relatively rare, but I know a ton of people (including family in the area) coming down with digestive problems like IBS and various autoimmune diseases, even as serious as multiple sclerosis (MS) in middle age.
There might be a few scientific reasons behind it. The background radiation after Fukushima was 80 times normal where I live, but that info has mostly been erased by revisionist history. But that could have injured everyone's thyroid, among other things.
To play devil's advocate, I'm also seeing more articles that IBS is caused by stress, affecting the vagus nerve and disrupting serotonin pathways in the gut and brain. That would make sense too, because western medicine can't seem to isolate a specific cause. It seems to work more like cancer, where 2 or more triggers sensitize the immune system. The closest thing I've found is the whole grain connection, where the husk gets past stomach acid and injures the lining of the small intestine, eventually leading to leaky gut and flattening of the cells in severe cases like Crohn's disease and eventually inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Once a person has leaky gut, food molecules pass through the gut lining into the blood. Then it's a roll of the dice as to how the immune system will react to molecules it's never seen before. I believe this happens in all people, but they get lucky and avoid reactions in youth.
In my case around the time I turned 40, it was sudden sensitivity to ALL of the foods I had been eating previously: wheat, milk, almonds, legumes (beans, etc), nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, etc). For other people, the proteins in wheat get confused for the ones in the thyroid, so the body starts attacking it and it goes hypo or hyper. Or they get confused with ones on the nerves, causing neuropathy and even MS. I feel that my health problems were caused by acute, unending stress over 25 years until my body made the decision to stop working for me. The main pathways were probably sleep apnea, dehydration, too much alcohol, and not knowing the inflammatory effects of food-like substances from fast food chains like Taco Baloney. All I had to do was modify my lifestyle in any way, but like you, I was unaware of the risks or in denial about the severity of the consequences, so just kept going until I crashed. That's why I keep ranting about this stuff, because our sector is at high risk, but we'll never see this on the news.
There might be a few scientific reasons behind it. The background radiation after Fukushima was 80 times normal where I live, but that info has mostly been erased by revisionist history. But that could have injured everyone's thyroid, among other things.
To play devil's advocate, I'm also seeing more articles that IBS is caused by stress, affecting the vagus nerve and disrupting serotonin pathways in the gut and brain. That would make sense too, because western medicine can't seem to isolate a specific cause. It seems to work more like cancer, where 2 or more triggers sensitize the immune system. The closest thing I've found is the whole grain connection, where the husk gets past stomach acid and injures the lining of the small intestine, eventually leading to leaky gut and flattening of the cells in severe cases like Crohn's disease and eventually inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Once a person has leaky gut, food molecules pass through the gut lining into the blood. Then it's a roll of the dice as to how the immune system will react to molecules it's never seen before. I believe this happens in all people, but they get lucky and avoid reactions in youth.
In my case around the time I turned 40, it was sudden sensitivity to ALL of the foods I had been eating previously: wheat, milk, almonds, legumes (beans, etc), nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, etc). For other people, the proteins in wheat get confused for the ones in the thyroid, so the body starts attacking it and it goes hypo or hyper. Or they get confused with ones on the nerves, causing neuropathy and even MS. I feel that my health problems were caused by acute, unending stress over 25 years until my body made the decision to stop working for me. The main pathways were probably sleep apnea, dehydration, too much alcohol, and not knowing the inflammatory effects of food-like substances from fast food chains like Taco Baloney. All I had to do was modify my lifestyle in any way, but like you, I was unaware of the risks or in denial about the severity of the consequences, so just kept going until I crashed. That's why I keep ranting about this stuff, because our sector is at high risk, but we'll never see this on the news.