Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: Always more questions than answers....

Hi Shelgirl,

Your post brought up a lot for me. I'm not sure whether what I have to say will apply to you, but for what it's worth: I have struggled with IBS for 15 years, but I've also been underweight for most of that time as well, and in my experience, the less you eat and the thinner you get, the worse the IBS is gonna get. Especially the cramping. I don't have nausea so I'm not sure about that. But starvation/malnutrition will definitely kill off the good bacteria in your gut, so that EVERYTHING will cause excessive gas. And diarrhea from malabsorption of fat is also common if your body isn't used to eating it.

For years, I saw a slew of naturopaths who prescribed a variety of very restrictive diets, even though I was obviously underweight. I've often thought of writing them to shake my finger at how unhelpful and even harmful they were.

You might want to see someone specialized in refeeding underweight patients. I don't trust this woman or the sounds of this diet. It takes a LOT of calories and a lot of eating to gain weight. Last year, at 85 lbs, eating less and less because I was always in so much discomfort and pain, and feeling worse and worse, I finally went into an eating disorder clinic (even though I wasn't sure I should be there), and put on a very traditional but high-cal diet - 3 meals, 3 snacks, probably around 3000 cals a day, which included wheat, dairy and red meat. And I felt better than I had in years. I was pretty bloated the whole time, but I was regular again - huge big BM every afternoon - and way less spasm.
I have since modified the diet a bit - I eat very little wheat now - my main grain is brown rice since it's gas free and easy to digest. And I chose lower-lactose dairy like hard cheese and goat dairy. I still have IBS but it's more manageable than it was last year.
I know that what I'm advocating is not Heather's diet, but I just don't think that adding butter to veggie soup is gonna cut it here. So you might want to consider tackling this from a totally different angle.
When I was in treatment, almost every girl in there was having GI issues - undereating definitely causes IBS-like symptoms. I still think that I will have IBS regardless of my weight, but I do know that keeping the weight up keeps it from worsening.

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IBS-C, lots of spasm and trapped gas.

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