My name is Sarah, and I wanted to share my story of overcoming chronic GI distress as a result of Dr. McDougall’s work and, of course, Mary’s recipes. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I was 16 the first time I drove myself to the pediatrician because I hadn’t had a bowel movement in over two weeks. The man who stood in front of me began questioning me about my mental health status. “Have you had any recent trauma?”, “What’s going on in your life?”, “Have you been feeling down or stressed?”. He was desperately trying to convince me I was depressed and that the result was my constipation. I proceeded to explain to him that of course, I was moody, I was 16! But the main thing that was causing me to feel “down” was the fact that I couldn’t poop. He prescribed MiraLax and said it would be fine just to take the rest of my life. 

This cycle continued for the next 10 years. Doctors always assumed stress or depression and then proceeded to tell me to take MiraLAX or they would prescribe supposed “miracle drugs” that ran around $400-$500 a month. I even once had a nurse tell me to eat lemons. I could’ve fallen over in laughter at that moment. However, she was probably more correct than any of the doctors I’d seen so far. Overall, the shared idea among all of the physicians was this; I would be lucky if I could go every three days, and that was their goal for me.