Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: Can Somebody PLEASE help me? End of rope slipping!

Since you never get constipated, it sound like you're IBS-D with cramping. I was too and Heather's approach has worked wonders for me. I followed it to the letter when I first started out and the results were amazing. In her post Heather refers you to the Break The Cycle Diet and I heartily second this. It's incredibly boring but it's only for 3 days.

Chamomile tea is on Heather's list of soothing digestive teas, so if you love it, by all means drink it.

As for the ice cream, before I found this Website, I used to eat cream soups for lunch, convinced I was calming my tummy. It wasn't until I gave up dairy - and the other trigger foods and irritants - that I started feeling better. For myself, I've found that sometimes trigger foods mean an immediate attack, but sometimes they just act like sandpaper, keeping my tummy in a constant uproar with actual attacks happening apparently randomly.

My advice would be to do what you've already decided to do and follow this site to the letter. Start with the Break The Cycle Diet for 2-3 days, then gradually add other safe foods carefully. If you're D rather than C you can stay more on the SF side for a while. For me, the trick was being very, very careful for as long as possible. If I wasn't sure something was okay for me, I didn't eat it. Once you're stable you can start pushing the envelope - a little.

You can get all the diet information you need from this Website, but there are two things to consider. First, you can't learn about the Diet from the Message Boards. As wonderful as they are, people here talk about the Diet at the margins. You need to rely on the information you find in the main part of the Website, outside the Boards. Second, you might check and see if your library has Heather's "The First Year - IBS" or even consider ordering it from this Website or Amazon or Barnes and Noble. I found it very helpful - and reassuring - to actually have all the information laid out in step by step form.

Taking an SFS has made a world of difference for me. Heather's Diet took care of the cramping and much of the urgency, but the SFS helped with the last of the urgency and the frequency. I use Acacia and love it, but there are a lot of them out there. Assuming you are D, though, avoid any with IF and stick with the pure SF ones.

As for meds, I use Imodium and Donnatol and find both helpful now, but until I got somewhat stable on the Diet nothing really helped - it was like trying to stop a runaway freight train with a little orange traffic cone.

HTH. Tie a knot and hang on.

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

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