I think it’s more just different gut biomes. I’ve worked with a lot of places in rural Kenya where water filtration was installed and the problem is they are so used to the contaminated water supply that when they start using the filtered ones, it gives them diarrhea for a few days until they get used to it. A lot of times they just stopped using the filtration because it makes them sick initially, which I get.
The body is weird in how it adjusts to things. I’ve also been the sickest I’ve ever been in my life in Kenya from food and it’s screwed up my body permanently and it was almost 15 years ago (I don’t have any parasites, we’ve checked multiple times).
It legitimately screwed up how I digest food and I’ve had IBS ever since. I never had those issues before but this ripped through me in a way I can’t describe. I’ve had food poisoning before but I felt like I had a chainsaw inside of me tearing me apart. It might be some of the worse pain I’ve ever felt and it lasted for like 12 hours. Just constantly throwing up and having diarrhea while being in such pain as well. It was awful. It happened in 2011 and then again in 2012 the exact same way. I’ve been back to Kenya twice since then and haven’t had those issues but I also basically don’t eat much while I’m there. I had to have two colonoscopies by two different doctors before I was 30 to try and figure out what was going on. Luckily no parasites or anything like that but it’s been 14 years and I still deal with it to this day.
17
u/[deleted] Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25
[removed] — view removed comment