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Hi I'm new so if this is not the right section to post this please let me know where would be good Welcome. You're in the right section.

I started this post 2 hours ago and my life story wasn't required for this post but if anyones intersted I put it at my mostly unused blog Oh, good, someone else who can spend endless time in cyber space. Nice to know I'm not alone wandering around out here.

I believe I have IBS that alternates D/C IBS-A; I'm an IBS-D.

I am facinated by triggers and want to know what people think about this:
Let's say I eat a trigger food. Soon after I go running to the bathroom. What comes out is not what went in. So then 12-16 hours later the "bad" food is actually digested too. Will it cause me a problem then too?

Interesting question. I've been thinking a lot about triggers versus irritants lately, so this is going to get pretty long-winded, but here's how I understand it.

Eating something starts or speeds up your gastrocolic reflex. In a normally functioning colon, this means gentle, smooth wavelike movements. In an IBS colon, eating Soluble Fiber foods mean gentle, smooth wavelike movements, also, However, when IBSers eats anything other than Soluble Fiber, this triggers violent, rough contractions. So your colon is just dumping whatever is nearest the exit (so to speak) and then back up the line until it runs out of stuff to dump or wears itself out. (If you have C, the violent spasms still happen, but the colon seizes up in a "charley-horse" effect, so nothing gets dumped.)

Some of the non-SF foods can be safely ingested by IBSers as long as we eat Soluble Fiber first to prime the pump and get our gastrocolic reflex running smoothly. Others (red meat, dark meat poultry and skin, egg yolks, dairy) produce particulary violent reactions and should be avoided. See this Web Page for a nice graphical representation of this unfortunate series of events.

I don't THINK the "bad" food will cause you a problem on the other end. Once it's triggered the reflex, the damage is done, your digestive system spasms until it wears itself out, then settles down and proceeds to grind up the offender with no further ado.

However - there's always a catch - foods that are GI irritants work a little differently. I think of these as sort of sand-papering the whole GI tract, making it more sensitive to just about everything. They may not cause you terrible trouble themselves when you eat them or even as they pass through, but they cause low-level problems and set you up for big misery later on. If you get a food that's both a trigger and an irritant, you'll suffer now and suffer later.

I'm a restarting my food/bathroom/emotion log Spreadsheets with different colors are cool. Seriously. but wanted to know if anyone had noticed how triggers affect them If I eat any food other than SF unsafely (no SF, too much fat, stomach too empty), it's a sprint to the bathroom. If I eat irritants infrequently (a glass of wine tonight), I'm fine. If I eat them too often (a glass of wine every night for a few days), I'll eventually find myself running for the bathroom after eating a food that's usually okay for me (for example, something with fat or IF). Interestingly for me, if I eat a little too much fat every day for a few days, it acts like an irritant, and my system eventually rebels.

thanks for your insight Thanks for giving me a chance to get some of my random thoughts down on paper (well, whatever this is - air, really, I guess. I hope some of this helps.

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