Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

I doubt you're dense, but you may be starting in the wrong part of this Website. The Message Boards are a great source of support and a wonderful place to ask questions, but if you're trying to learn the basics of Heather's Eating For IBS (EFI) approach I think the Message Boards are more confusing than helpful. You really need to do the reading outside the Boards in the rest of the Website to get a handle on the basics.

Here is a link to a post I did about a month ago for someone else. Follow the links in that - and the other links you get led to - and you should end up with a good idea of the basics of the EFI approach. It's a fair amount of reading and you'll end up going down several levels, but hang in there and you'll come out the other end with a pretty clear idea of what's going on.

There are a couple of points I want to re-emphasize. First, it is extremely important that your daughter be correctly diagnosed. In the reading I send you to there is a discussion of what conditions need to be ruled out and what tests need to be done before IBS can be diagnosed. Since I'm sending you off to do a lot of reading and since you should do that part of the reading before the GI appointment tomorrow, here's the direct link to that information.

You don't say where you're located, but if you're not happy with your daughter's GI guy, here's a link to good GIs in various areas. If you don't see your area there, you can post and ask if anyone knows a good doc in your area. Of course, if you're happy with your daughter's doctors, by all means stick with them. There is no cure for IBS, so I rely on my GI guy simply for diagnostic tests, prescriptions, and updates on anything new happening in the world of IBS.

Second, in the information I'm sending you to there's a link to let you start reading Heather's books, including "The First Year: IBS". I think it's super helpful to actually have a copy of the book. I'm very linear and find I do better with information in a step by step way and that's what the book provides. Your local library may have it (mine did) or you can order it from this Website or from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. I wouldn't wait until you get the book to try the EFI principles, but I do think it will make things clearer.

I assume your daughter will be doing the EFI reading as well if she is well enough, so here's one more page of reading for her. This doesn't have any specific how-to information, but when I read this for the first time I finally had hope that I could feel better.

Okay, on the "I don't cook" front, here are a couple of links you might find useful:

I Don't Cook Part 1

I Don't Cook Part 2

And a couple of miscellaneous thoughts. There are some college students on the Boards and occasionally threads start up about how to cope with IBS while at college. You can do a Search on the Diet Board with no time limit for college and another one for university and you'll probably hit those threads.

There is a lot to absorb so please do feel free to ask questions. This Board (the Recipe Board) is mostly about cooking, so that might not be the best place for your questions.

The Diet Board is where most of the general questions about the EFI Diet and about IBS in general get asked and it seem to get more traffic than the Recipe Board, so you'll probably get more responses to future questions if you post them there. The more descriptive you make your Subject line, the better help you'll get. And, as hohoyumyum says, the more info you give on your daughter's symptoms - especially whether her primary problem is diarrhea, constipation, an alternation of the two, or pain - the better people can help you.

As I say in one - or more - of the links I'm sending you to, the EFI approach has worked wonders for me. I hope it does the same for your daughter. The Diet Board will be a great help once you've got the basics down pat, but I know this can be overwhelming at first, so feel free to email me if you'd like. My email address is in my profile.

HTH. Take care.

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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]

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