Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) - Two Rules
There are two important rules to remember in the self-help approach to IBS. You have made the important decision to take charge of what’s going on with your body, now that, hooray! the doctors and technicians have found none of the majors. You don’t have cancer. You don’t have Crohn’s Disease. You don’t have gall bladder disease, or you don’t have a gall bladder. You don’t have liver disease. So you do sensible things: you stop drinking alcohol, you test whether milk makes things worse, you look at the authoritative list of triggers for IBS here, and begin to eliminate them.
Still, not everything seems right–or worse, nothing seems to be under control. So these are two rules you need to remember.
- Never eat on an empty stomach.
- That means that when your stomach is empty, you do not grab a glass of cold water or leftovers or anything else. When your stomach is empty, you drink water at room temperature, and fix and drink your next soluble fiber dose. If you are out at a restaurant, ask for a side order of rice. Don’t start with the salad. Or take your soluble fiber with you wherever you go.
- Remember the Second Day Rule
- This rule is to use when you are more or less stable, and want to try something on the list of “triggers.” The way it works is that you do fine on the first day of the challenge with something that might be problematic–a frozen berry smoothie, for example. So you go out and get a bag of frozen strawberries and fresh blueberries, or whatever. Then, the next day when you try the same exact combination, you get griping pains, or diarrhea, or bloating, or you wind up constipated.
When you keep these rules, in addition to eliminating IBS triggers from your diet, you gain much more control over your IBS symptoms.