For My Tummy

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and the Food Diary

Naturally Controlling IBS
Amid a group of generally excellent suggestions for the treatment of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) from Andrew Weil, M.D., there comes the following classic description of how the “Food Diary” suggestion from your doctor is supposed to work.

How a Food Journal Works

A food journal: Most people with IBS say their symptoms worsen after eating certain foods. Write down what, when, and how much you eat in a notebook. Check it for patterns that indicate food-related triggers. In a British study, people with IBS were sensitive to wheat, beef, pork, and lamb. Alcohol, caffeine, and fatty foods are other common culprits; if any seem to bother you, eliminate each for a week or two to see if you improve.¹

Food-Diary Problems
There are a couple of problems with the food diary–beyond the fact that I’ve only ever been willing to do a food diary for IBS just once.

Logical?
For one thing, Weil makes this suggestion:

Alcohol, caffeine, and fatty foods are other common culprits; if any seem to bother you, eliminate each for a week or two to see if you improve.

So you eliminate one food that’s a trigger and keep on eating all the others? To be a little bit silly here, because of course our bodies don’t act in a logical fashion, but the thinking seems a little bit off. If you have ten triggers for IBS, and eliminate one, won’t your IBS still be triggered by triggers two through ten?

Grouped Triggers
At least that’s more or less what I found: I was already a vegetarian; stopped the somewhat possible things containing lactose and switched to soy milk, stopped soda, caffeine, egg yolks,

For me, I eliminated everything on the triggers list except artificial sweeteners, and still had symptoms–about half of what they were before, but still . . . I really didn’t think artificial sweeteners belonged, particularly Splenda ™. Besides, what would I use to satisfy my sweet tooth if I gave them up? I tried switching out artificial sweeteners, as Weil suggests, and did notice some difference between them.

So I stopped artificial sweeteners, too. And my IBS was under control at last.

The Point Is
What I am suggesting here is that many, many of us think we have tried the dietary approach and it hasn’t worked. We have eliminated each food in turn, and sometimes noticed a difference. So there are maybe two foods that we think we can’t eat, that are triggers for Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Yet actually, there are four or five or eight or ten. We just never stopped enough of the foods all at once to notice the difference.

Elimination Diet
Yes. I am advocating the total elimination of all the foods on the “IBS Triggers” page. After a couple of weeks on an elimination diet, then cautiously add back one food, one of the “essential food groups” as one blogger has called them, sardonically. Add something back that you miss. Take it slowly, because you have reached an IBS-free (or almost) equilibrium, a platform on which to build.

Just One More Thing!
Sometimes there is “just one more thing!”

For me, wheat, only about 10% of a normal diet–it comes under the IBS second-day rule. For some people, plain wheat doesn’t work, but sourdough does.

Conclusion
Do not stop taking your Soluble Fiber Supplement (SFS), or your probiotic. Also remember the two life rules for Irritable Bowel Syndrome: “Never eat on an empty stomach,” and “Never drink anything with ice in it.”

You’ll do fine!

1. ”What Can I Do for IBS? Natural ways for soothing your digestive problems” by Andrew Weil, MD. Prevention Magazine online, current issue, accessed 9-2-07. [↩]

September 16th, 2007 Posted by tummyblogger | Sweetener, IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, IBS Triggers, IBS Diet | no comments

IBS Basics

In this post I will try to outline the basics of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) therapy. The harsh truth is that there is no magic pill or potion. IBS is a condition rather than an illness. I know, when you are in the middle of the current round of bodily “wrongness” that is IBS, you feel sick, often very sick.

The way to deal with this truth about IBS, that there is no magic pill or potion to heal IBS once and for all, is through life-style changes. Yes, that’s the “blame the victim” kind of answer that is so irritating, to me as well as to you. And what is worse, the life-style changes have to be so thorough, to do a good job at IBS control.

What I am talking about is cutting out all of the IBS triggers on the Page in the index across the top of this page. You no longer eat

July 18th, 2007 Posted by tummyblogger | Teas, fiber, Sweetener, Probiotics, IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, IBS therapy, IBS Triggers, IBS-C, IBS-D, Soy Products, FiberSure (tm), Heather's Organic Acacia Tummy Fiber (tm), Benefiber (tm), Digesting Information | 2 comments

Low-Fiber Meal Replacement

This is a quick recipe for a low-fiber meal replacement that I just invented. I discovered, sadly, that there is a fairly small window between too few grams of fiber a day, and too many. Since my standard meal replacement shake provides 13 gms. of fiber in one nice-sized serving, and two of them provide 26 gms., I’m near my limit. If I then add a high-fiber taco to the mix, at 7 gms of fiber, there is absolutely no more room in me for any more fiber!

So when I want another small meal, and I often do, I need to make a low-fiber shake (or eat Wonder Bread!). I came up with this recipe today: let’s call it “Fiber-free mocha shake.”

Fiber-free Mocha Shake Left-over soy “coffee” or RocaMojo half-soy, half-coffee blend (about 1/4 cup is good)
1 level Tablespoon of Stevita Delight Chocolate Flavored Stevia, or 4 half-droppers of dark chocolate liquid Stevia (or your own mix of cocoa powder and Stevia Powder, to about 1 Tbsp.)

NOTES: ** There is no egg in the BestLife Soy Nog I used, but there is crystalline fructose–not the high-fructose corn syrup we usually get served in prepared foods.Use regular or vanilla soy milk or Naturade Soy-Free Protein Booster. One-third of a cup of the Naturade Protein adds 22 gms of protein; 2 scoops of the Fitness Labs Soy Protein adds 28 gms of protein. A warning: to me the Naturade Protein tastes like grass.

I promise more to come on Low- and High-fiber Meal Replacements.

September 28th, 2006 Posted by tummyblogger | fiber, Sweetener, Stevia, Revival Soy, Food for IBS, IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, IBS food | no comments

Unsweetened!?

UGH! Breakfast with unsweetened coffee (or whatever), and Unsweetened Soy Shake from Revival Soy? Doesn’t sound very good, does it? Well, I left out the best part. I found, first on the Revival Soy pages and then elsewhere on the web, a very good no-calorie organic sweetener called Stevia, which comes from the stevia rebaudiae plant found in South America. The following copy from Revival Soy sums it up:

An intensely sweet extract from leaves of the stevia plant that’s over 200 times sweeter than sugar – with no calories, carbohydrates or bitter aftertaste.

Revival Soy web site, accessed 9/27/06.

You can also read more about Stevia at this site, stevia.net.

So there is a real alternative to the low-calorie/no-calorie artificial sweeteners, called Stevia. Another place to buy Stevia is at Vitacost. Also, the IBS Shopping web site has a page in their Amazon aStore that is devoted just to Stevia–go to the “Soy Store” tab, open it, and find the “Stevia Alcove.”

September 27th, 2006 Posted by tummyblogger | Breakfast, Sweetener, Stevia, Revival Soy, IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, IBS food | one comment