Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: Very curious-Could it be daily patterns? rather than what you eat?

I went through this for 45 years until I finally understood I had IBS and discovered Heather's website. Up until then I was struggling to figure out what the triggers were.

Here is what I've learned. The trigger foods indeed do trigger attacks! But if you avoid all trigger foods, you can still get attacks ... for a number of reasons. For example, I'm absolutely amazed at how many people on this website, who claim to follow Heather's diet but complain about not feeling well, are eating prepared foods with additives/chemicals and are eating conventional foods that are not organic. Depending on how sensitive you are, additives and non-organic food may trigger IBS attacks. They do in my case. So, for example, even if you ate an IBS-safe food such as a boiled potato, you might get an attack if it was a conventional potato, not organic.

Unfortunately, even if you were to avoid all trigger foods, additives and non-organic food, you are still going to get attacks because... that's the nature of IBS. All you can do, as best you can, is follow a diet and lifestyle that minimizes the attacks and allows you to lead as normal a life as possible. This probably should include exercise and stress-reducing things like yoga. Heather's books best explain this.

As a side note, I view Heather's trigger foods as a guideline. We are all different so we all have varying levels of sensitivity to those foods. You have to figure out which of those foods cause you grief and which ones you can tolerate even if it's just in small quantities or in certain forms (for example, pureed or ground).

Unfortunately, you won't find these things out overnight. As I say, it took me 45 years to know exactly what triggers the attacks, and even so I often get sick for no apparent reason. However, the difference now is I don't unknowingly provoke an attack by eating something that will bother me. I am now educated through Heather's website and books (and through my own personal experience) to know what is likely to cause me grief and I stay away from it. Interestingly, I can sometimes eat a potential trigger food for several days before it bothers me. As I say, we are all different. However, we are joined by the common demonimator of having IBS, and Heather's diet provides an excellent, universal guide for the do's and don'ts of IBS.

Belinda

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