Hey Syl,
Hope you're doing well.
I've now completed a trial of the FODMAPs diet and it has definitely been a success. I would say the diet has resulted in approx. 50-60% symptom reduction.
I was surprised by this, because I've done exclusionary diets in the past that eliminated dairy and wheat, but I had never eliminated the full combination of FODMAP foods.
However, as pleased as I am with the results, following the FODMAPs diet alone doesn't seem to be the full picture for me.
I was wondering if you might have any recommendations about where to proceed from here?
My goal is to try to get even more symptom reduction before I try to add back in foods that I've eliminated. My problem in the past has been that no elimination diet has ever given me enough symptom stability to make it possible to objectively evaluate whether the reintroduction of specific foods was problematic.
I now believe it may be possible to achieve this, but I sense that I need a little bit more symptom reduction.
As mentioned in past correspondence, following the EFI diet alone never really resulted in great benefit for me. Consequently, I have not been strictly adhering to the EFI principles (including during the FODMAPs elimination diet).
Perhaps a good first step would be to combine the EFI and FODMAPs diets and see if that results in further improvement? If I remember correctly, I believe you mentioned that you take this approach. While following the EFI diet in isolation never worked that well for me, perhaps it will be more effective now that I'm eliminating/reducing FODMAPs intake.
Or another combination approach might be to try eliminating grains in addition to FODMAPs (there's so much talk these days about grains being problematic for some - and my reasoning here is that if fermentation is the core issue, an overall reduction in carbs - no just high FODMAPs carbs / might be beneficial), or following one of the anti-yeast diets in addition to the FODMAP diet (my reasoning here is that perhaps this would further cut down on the amount of fermentation/malabsorbtion in my gut by cutting out those foods that promote yeast growth/fermentation).
What would be your best guess as to the best direction in which to concentrate my energies?
Having tried so many elimination diets in the past, I had more or less come to the conclusion that diet just wasn't a determining factor for my IBS. My success with the FODMAP diet has however led me to believe that it may after all play a significant role.
It may also be that many of the food/food categories I eliminated in the past that had no positive effect on my IBS are in fact problematic. In order words, eliminating these foods didn't seem to have an effect, but that might have been because I was still eating too many other foods that were causing symptoms.
Anyway, thanks for any comments you may have!
Greetings from NM,
Chris
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question for Syl re FODMAPs and EFI diets
