Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Hi Leanne - For many years, the standard dietary advice given to people with IBS was "eat more fiber". No one bothered to distinguish between soluble/insoluble. Unfortunately, a lot of doctors (and even dietitians) are still giving that advice.

At this point, there are so many clinical studies pointing up that insoluble fiber (usually wheat bran) doesn't help, and can even hurt IBS, that I think it's pretty inexcusable for any health professional to still be giving that advice. There are also great studies directly comparing soluble and insoluble fiber on patients with IBS, and the results are dramatically different. Why all the gastroenterologists aren't following these studies, which are published in medical journals in their own field, is a mystery to me. You can find a good number of articles at pubmed.com - just do a search for "fiber and IBS" or something similar - the site is Pub Med.

Best,
Heather

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Heather is the Administrator of the IBS Message Boards. She is the author of Eating for IBS and The First Year: IBS, and the CEO of Heather's Tummy Care. Join her IBS Newsletter. Meet Heather on Facebook!

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