What to eat if you have IBS
#187213 - 06/18/05 11:26 PM
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I've come to the conclusion that after seeing countless doctors and specialist about my constant constipation/excess gas/ abdominal pain issues that I probably have IBS. I'm a 20 year old male, I exercise on a daily bases, and I've tried many different gas/fiber pills. I have had an enema and a colonoscopy done before, and nothing was wrong that they could confirm. My next step is going to be eliminating food sources; because that's the only thing I can think of left that could possibly be bothering me. My main question is: If I went for two to three weeks with nothing but fruits and vegetables would that be enough to see if symptoms get better? I haven't been tested for celiac or dairy intolerance yet, but I think this may be the case. I have the will power to completely cut those out of my diet and live off of just fruits/veggies, so please if someone could inform me if that might be effective.
Thanks
Chris
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Hi! And welcome to the boards  Obviously you can eat some fruit a bit later. I'd start with the what to eat when you can't eat anything diet (found in Heather's diet info if you click the links at the home page of the website). Read all Heather's info thouroughly. I actually printed most of it off so I could look at it whenever I needed to. This mostly consists of bread, pasta, plain vanilla cake etc. It's a bit boring but only for a couple of days to stop all the dreadful attacks. Then when you're feeling better you can start to add stuff in and try some of the recipies in the recipie board. Fruit while generally good for us is mostly insoluable fibre which causes us IBS'ers a lot of problems if we don't eat it with a soluable fibre base. Apple sauce if you can't give up the fruit altogether is probably the safest. Hope this helps and get really well acquainted with Heather's information. At the top of this board is also a sticky post with info on safe brands of food to buy at the shops.
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Amy
Edited by doubletrouble (06/19/05 02:57 AM)
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thanks for the info! I'm having a difficult time doing this at the moment if I need to eat bread/pasta because I am trying to get tested for celiac and lactose intolerance first. If nothing good comes from that, then I'll try what you said Immediately.
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...just make sure you cut dairy and gluten COMPLETELY (if you slip up you have to start again) out of your diet for about a month, then introduce them one at a time (you HAVE to do this)...I'd do lactose, dairy, gluten and wheat seperately in that order. Oh and you need to leave 3-4 weeks in between re-intoducing each food.
It's a bore but pretty reliable if you do it properly. Good luck!
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I'm aware that it may take weeks for the digestive system to come back to a normal, healthy state if you take out a main food ingredient, but since I'd like to do a celiac test, doesn't that only take 1 week? I was told by my naturalist that I would see an improvement in several days if I lay off of gluten. Is that jumping the gun? I can go for a whole month if it will mean seeing a significant difference. I'm a little concerned that if my celiac results come back negative, does that mean that there is still a possibility I do have a gluten/wheat problem? Or would they be able to tell regardless of IBS?
Thanks again. 
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For celiac you should have a blood test and a colonoscopy, NOT just an exclusion diet. You need to see your doc about this. You should never get diagnosed with IBS w/out having had these tests.
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I've been through the whole coeliac testing regime and will describe what they do here in Australia. I imagine it is similar everywhere. You can have a anti-gliadin blood test which INDICATES if you may have a reaction to gluten....indicates only. The only sure way to tell though is to have a colonoscopy with biopsies to test your intestinal villi (small finger-like projections that absorb nutrients). If your villi are flattened, this qualifies as coeliac (celiac in the US) disease. Gluten is not only found in breads and wheat. Rye, triticale, and even oats are suspect. Gluten is found in many seasonings and sauces (anti-caking agents for example), processed meats, barley, malt (yes- beer), and many more foods (even toothpaste...), and there is the ever present possiblity of cross-contamination, so just 'cutting out' obvious wheat products, despite your best intentions, may not eliminate gluten from your diet. You need to keep up a normal wheat diet (even if you suspect you have coeliac) and get tested for it. That way the results will be most accurate. The villi do recover temporarily in some people who go off gluten for awhile, but will damage again later when they go back on. If you do have coeliac then you need to contact your ceoliac society and get an ingredients list etc. to learn what you can and cannot have. A coeliac diet is for life and you cannot cheat. Often people test themselves later (cheat) and find there is no reaction, but that does not mean that damage to your health is not occuring, and that serious health problems later will not occur. Some people with coeliac have very little obvious digestive distress, but their health is affected by the lack of absorption of nutrients. The good news is that once on the diet you will not have serious life-threatening health problems later (unlike undiagnosed or diagnosed coeliacs who are still eating gluten), and most people get better (as villi recover) on the diet (I'm an exception as I'm still struggling with IBS-D seven years later and believe me I NEVER cheat on the gf diet- I don't even eat out much because of the cross-contamination fear). I'm trying this diet to see if I can stabalise. One final thing; if it does turn out you have the disease, cut out lactose as well as often you cannot digest that when the villi are flat. I hope that helps.
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Welcome to the boards from a fellow Aussie . I've been tested extensively including 2 gastroscopies (sp?) to check for coeliac. I tried this diet however I got a lot worse which led me to believe that maybe I was wheat intolerant. I am currently trying a GF diet (very hard thing to do in Australia I've discovered if you don't have a lot of time to cook from scratch  and also if you can't stomach the GF bread at all!). I've been on it now for a week and surprisingly to myself am feeling a whole lot better! If nothing else this diet has made me really admire people who HAVE to be GF for life. It's really not an easy task. Good luck with this diet (I'm now pretty much following it GF). I hope it helps you stabilise and thank you for sharing all this GF info
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Amy
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A lot of people are finding gluten-free to be good for their stomach issues, even if they aren't coeliac like me. Apparently, especially in Australia, things are mostly wheat based, whereas in some countries, like Canada, a lot of things are also corn based. From my research, wheat has a lot to do with gut permeability problems...well too much wheat anyway.
Being gluten-free in Australia is actually not as hard as you may first think. Our food labelling laws are among the best in the world. The new food laws say that if an item has wheat or gluten in it, it MUST state it in the ingredients list on the product. Finding gluten-free items has become easier (believe me...7 years ago I really struggled). You can find great Orgran products in Coles or Woolworths, and there are often gf bickies etc. The hard part for me (and you) is that we don't want dairy either. Natural Health shops often have products that are good and there are more and more products out there (including gf apple pies that are pretty safe for the IBS diet too). Two ways to find out what is out there if you can't find the stuff in the health shops: 1) do a google search (Australia pages) for gluten-free and you should get a lot of online gf grocery stores. Some have higher ship rates than others and you may have to ask about the ingredients for IBS-issues. 2) subscribe to the coeliac society magazine (which isn't too expensive) as it gets a lot of advertising of gf products with phone numbers of the manufacturers. If they won't let you subscibe because you haven't been diagnosed as a coeliac, then I'd be happy to give you some information, just let me know what you are iterested in. By the way, I don't like to bake, but the gf muffins listed on this site are pretty good. If you are after a gf pasta the Orgran "ris 'o mais" is pretty good. I can get it at Coles, Action and Woolies in Queensland. There are Eskal gf pretzels, but they seem to give me nausea, even though the ingredients seem safe. Can't work that out. Rice thins, rice crackers...lots of rice bickies...Orgran has a new chocolate chip cookie that hasn't got egg or dairy as well as gluten that are nice. There are even gf cakes and muffins (pre-made). I have rice noodles for breakfast.
I still haven't really found a safe soluble fibre supplement here....what do you use? I tried one and got d more, even at lower doses.
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Hi again. I've found most of the basics (thank you for the help though, there were quite a few things there I had no idea about). I just find it frustrating that most quick and easy meals (like my favourite pasta sauces and anything I can just throw in the oven and heat) all use wheat as thickeners and flavours etc. I can't handle the bread at all (yuck!) so have been eating a lot of rice crackers for lunch. I called the Coeliac Society who were pretty helpful. I've only been eating GF for a week and am just trialling to see if wheat and/or gluten are a problem for me (which it would seem so far they likely are). Once I know for sure in about 6 weeks I'll pay the membership fees and become a member of the foundation, apparantly I just need a note from my GP explaining that while I don't have CD I do need to follow a GF diet, although he also said I may be able to tolerate small amounts of wheat in the future once my body has had a rest from it, maybe not though.
I'm pretty lucky with dairy. You've probably heard of it being in QLD, I drink the A2 milk. I'm not lactose intolerant but get terrible pain from normal milk. I happened to find the A2 milk at my local HFS down here and tried it and can drink a whole glass without a problem. I'm also lucky in that I can tolerate milk additives in food just not whole glasses or in tea etc unless it's the A2. Mind you I didn't drink milk for about 3 months when starting the diet and then found it made no difference between drinking the A2 milk or avoiding milk altogether. It does depend on the person though. Maybe once you are stable you'll be able to handle small amounts of milk or maybe try the A2 milk?
Thank you for the internet tip. I'll do a search and see what I come up with. And thank you too for your help. It's kinda hard on the boards sometimes as we just don't stock the same things as America does (I think in a lot of ways we are much more limited).
Edited to add: Oops sorry didn't mention SFS. I've tried almost all of them. Benefibre, psyllium, metamucil, those granule things and I always get more D from them too. The safest one to try is probably Benefibre, it's just an over the counter from the chemist. I had problems with it too though and was only taking 1/8 of a teaspoon. Now I pretty much do without but I do take the Lifestream Aloe Vera Juice (or the other brand from the HFS that has Manuka honey in it) twice a day, morning and night (however it's a little frowned upon by a lot of people but I find it makes me feel a LOT better), I also take 2 Slippery Elm tablets with breakfast and again with dinner and they've been the best "sfs" I've ever taken, they help me go without giving me D however they aren't a fibre. I also take 1 dairy free inner health plus capsule every night which has also done wonders for the belly. Hope this helps and sorry I couldn't help with a fibre supplement.
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Amy
Edited by doubletrouble (06/30/05 07:05 PM)
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