Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Well, I totally disagree with conventional wisdom when it comes to diet and IBS. First of all, I think it's completely unhelpful to tell someone that everyone's triggers are different, so just find your own. That gives them no starting point whatsoever. "Conventional wisdom" for many years held that IBS was a mental problem - then it held that diet had no bearing on IBS whatsoever. Then it was that people needed a "high fiber" diet. Now (finally!) conventional wisdom, at least what's coming out in the actual research studies, recognizes the vast difference in how IBS folks respond to soluble fiber supplements (good) vs. insoluble fiber supplements (not good).

IBS is a defined medical disorder - anyone who has this diagnosis is considered, by definition, to have a dysfunctional GI nervous system. If we have the same underlying disorder, and we're given the same drugs and medical treatments, then to me it is ludicrous to say that our diets will all just be an individual thing. Either we have a gut problem (and thus solution) in common, or we don't.

Even more opposed to the conventional wisdom of diet and IBS is the fact that EVERYBODY'S gut responds the same way to several categories of food - soluble fiber, insoluble fiber, and fat. Fats and insoluble fibers are GI tract stimulants. Coffee is a stimulant and irritant. Alcohol and tobacco are irritants. Soluble fiber regulates gut muscle contractions and normalizes water content in the bowel, resolving both diarrhea and constipation. This is just basic human biology - it's simply playing a much more important role if you have a dysfunctional gut (and will have more extreme effects) than if you have a normal gut.

So...when a food is extremely difficult to digest, due to saturated fats and animal proteins the body has one hell of a time breaking down, and when the food has zero fiber and a very low water content, and when it's so clearly unfriendly to the gut that it actually raises your colon cancer risk...then I say conventional wisdom is pretty frickin' stupid if it STILL says that hey, this food (red meat) may or may not be a problem for you if you have IBS. I think that in this case, and with the vast majority of dietary concerns overall with IBS, triggers are not just an individual thing at all. They'll fall pretty clearly into the same categories for everyone. There may be some shades of gray betweeen one person and another, but there's also one hell of a lot of black and white.

My two cents....

- H

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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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