Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | REALLY SCARED HAVEN'T HAD A BM IN ALMOST 5 DAYS!

Well, tell us what you eat for breakfast

Did you try oatmeal? It has IF (SF:IF = 1:1 is the ratio), but the oat bran is the most gentle kind of bran you can get... If you already eat oatmeal and your tummy likes it, continue. If you haven't tried, you might want to try.

I am C, I eat oatmeal every morning (religeously) and I think it helps my C.

About IF, well, did you try making smoothies? Some sort of milk alternative (or water) with bananas and/or peaches and add strawberies, blueberies, raspberies, pineapple... (sorry, that's what I put in my smoothies, can't think of anything else, but go crazy!)

I am not an advocate of adding IF before your stomach stabilized a little though. That's why I advocate getting a gentle laxative such as Natural Calm, because you can't possibly eat BTC without getting costipated (too much starch, you know, I don't know if anything of that starch ever makes it to the large intestine). When I did BTC, I was super C too, but I was taking a not-so-gentle laxative (Ex-Lax, later Miralax, Miralax was causing me to have gas, it sucked

) because I didn't know about Natural Calm. When I found it, it was GREAT!

So... if you feel better now, you might want to start adding IF. DO NOT ADD IF IN THE MORNING (that is, don't put random stuff in your oatmeal, no dried fruit, raisins, fresh fruit, etc). THe morning is when you are most vulnerable. So, start morning easy with as much SF as you like and add IF later in the day. What I did:
- mornings -- ate oatmeal with acacia and water or almond milk or rice milk (not good), and either a little jam, sugar or some cocoa (and marshmallows, LOL. The greatest invention of the US - cocoa with marshmallows!)
- started making smoothies in the evening, mixing acacia in them
- started (over-)cooking some vegies, like tomatoes, peppers, onions... SMALL amounts increasing them if I saw I was OK with the small amounts. I had to give up corn completely (I love corn) however, because it made me sick

- Ate brown rice instead of white, but soaked it before cooking. Basically soaking it for 30 minutes takes care of the roughness of it. Rice bran is also easier on IBS tummies than other brans.

Gradually I could eat as much IF as my body needed to be able to go. I don't take laxatives any more. The laxatives I was taking were doing great things for me though:
- they were taking away my anxiety of not having gone
- they were providing me with a way to very slowly introduce IF and not suffer from the increased amounts of gas and bloating a lot of people complain of when adding IF.

Those are both very important points and were crucial for my recovery. When I was first diagnosed with IBS, I thought was going to die. It would hit and leave me curled up, sobbing and scared when it would hit again. And I am not talking about D attacks, just pain (I am C as I said). The gentle diet and the slow introduction of IF did wonders for me.

Before Heather taught me how to eat (through her website and book), I would have times when I would eat TONS of IF and times when I would not eat any. I was super inconsistent... Now, I try to eat roughly the same amount of IF a day so my body doesn't forget how it is.

So, bottom line (sorry for the long post):
- try oatmeal
- try brown rice
- try to get some overcooked vegies in those potatoes/pasta. Start small.
- consider getting Natural Calm or generic Magnesium Citrate (from regular pharmacies in the US)

--J

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