Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | General info for Newbies! Welcome!

Glad to have you here, and hope we can help you and you can help us!

Actually, there's so much going on here on these boards the best thing to do is search around a bit. Poke into the rooms and see what you can see! We're friendly folk (when we're not giving up our sugar) and we love for people to just jump on in!

Let me give you some tips:

1) Use the Search option at the top of each Board to run a search for specific info. (Example: say you want to know about our favorite snack, RKTs (aka Rice Krispie Treats)... just go to the Search and plug in your info. You'll get hits that help you find what you're looking for!

2) The Living Room is where we hang out and chat. Some of us call it "nattering" but those are the ones who are British (and they talk funny).

3) The IBS Diet Board is where we talk about IBS and its glory. It's where we discuss the diet we follow or other things we do to deal with IBS and all its glory.

4) Heather's Diet is outlined here for you. There's tons of links. If you're interested in trying to address your symptoms through this diet or Heather's other recommendations, make sure you click all the links and check it all out!

5) If you like to try cooking -or want to convince others to cook for you!- we have a running Recipe thing going on, and that has its own board!

6)There are also boards for hypnosis, yoga, stomach diseases like Crohn's and colitis. Why hypnosis? Read this. What's all this talk about yoga? Check this out!

7) Are you the kind of person who likes to read all about stuff to get familiar with its ins and outs? The IBS Research Library has tons of info. Heather adds the new research when she sees it. It's chock-full-o-info!

8) The boards get kinda hectic. If you have questions about the diet, check the message boards directory-- there are links to some info that may answer your questions. Inside the boards themselves (in this example, the Diet board), you will notice some posts at the top with what looks like a stick pin in 'em. They're always there, at the top. Heather calls them "sticky posts." (See what I'm talking about, here.) They also have info that may help you!

9) When you see -nt- in a Subject line of a post, it means "no text"--- there's nothing in the post, just the Subject line.

10. We have our own language, here! You'll see "D" and "C" and IBS-C and IBS-A, blah, blah, blah. I'll let you into our little secret world; here's what we're talking about:
"C" is constipation, "D" is diarrhea. I'm IBS-A which means I alternate between the two symptoms, like many of us do. If you're IBS-C you're predominantly a constipation sufferer. IBS-D? You got it: predominantly diarrhea. UGH. Lovely, eh? See why we abbreviate!? Other important abbreviations:

RKTs, as I've mentioned before are Rice Krispie Treats
ADBs are Antidepressant Brownies
HFS? That's the health food store!

Once you get acclimated, you may want to read back over these things... sometimes stuff registers in bits and pieces! For example, you may read a bunch of posts and think to yourself, "self, what the heck is this acacia people keep talking about?" You know how to search... you can do that and see what's said about it, or go back to the info Heather has provided!

And one last thing: please post your picture so we can see who we're talking to!!! Here's how.

Glad to have you on board! Don't be a stranger!

And if you have any questions that the above didn't answer for you, don't hesitate to ask. We don't bite (unless you're holding a RKT.)

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Print Remind Me Notify Moderator