# Cured of IBS-d



## Colin.H (Oct 8, 2012)

3 weeks into a FODMAPs diet and largely cured of IBS-d, I need to pass on my message hoping that a few others can make the same progress.I'm 63 years old, and have had about 10 years of IBS-d with increasingly severe symptoms. Typically, following a night of wind, pain and indigestion, I could get some relief after a number of toilet visits, giving me a reasonable morning, only for discomfort to begin around lunchtime, and increase for the rest of the day until falling miserably into bed when I couldn't put up with much more of it. With careful management, I felt I could sometimes “live” for 4 or 5 hours each day.Please, if you haven't given a low FODMAPs diet a serious go, do so, and start now. Give away the “bad” foods, go shopping with a list of the “good” foods, and there's a chance you could begin to feel better in two days time. Research seems to suggest that something like 5 out of 6 people with IBS-d have found considerable benefit.Yes, it's a big list of banned foods, but there's plenty left on the good list. You may be able to re-introduce some of the food you have been avoiding, and after a while (I'm giving it 50 days) you can experiment with the items on the bad list.I was already on a gluten free diet, and have supplemented my low FODMAPs diet with VSL#3 to re-balance my gut flora, and l-glutamine to hopefully begin to repair some of the damage. I keep a very careful food diary, and have already added to both my banned list and my good list.I'm a runner who had taken to running shorter and shorter loops, never wanting to be more than a couple of minutes from the toilet. I'm now just back from 6 miles of cross country, without a single thought of the toilet. If I can feel this good, I really don't care what I have to eat.I really hope this can help relieve some suffering.


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## lorainestrat (Oct 17, 2012)

I've looked about fodmaps and I was wondering if you can explain what foods exactly you ate? I look at the gluten free foods at our grochery stores and its soooo out of my budget and I'm resorted to more junk food. I'm ibs a but mainly c. Right now I'm having d though and it makes me feel like I can't have a life. I've looked at the map but I'm a little confused so what foods exactly did u find help from the shelf?


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## Colin.H (Oct 8, 2012)

Hello, Lorainestrat.
In addition to being expensive, gluten free alternatives seem to have lots of preservatives in them, so I now avoid them and have built my diet around meals which simply don't include bread or similar foods. I miss sandwiches and burger buns and cakes and biscuits and muesli, but have accepted that this is how it is going to be.
My breakfast and supper are oats or amaranth made with lactose free milk, my other meals are taken from the low FODMAPs list, good quality fish or meat with salads or vegetables, a small amount of the permitted fruits, and lots of nuts and seeds. Preparing meals from basic ingredients can take time, but I don't think anyone ever suffered from avoiding convenience snacks.
I'm convinced that my IBS was caused by eating more carbohydrate and fructose than my digestion could cope with. Low FODMAPs is a researched list of safe foods which seems to have worked for lots of folk. Please give it a try for a few days. If it doesn't work, try something else. There will be a solution for you somewhere, and diet will be a significant part of that solution. Good luck.


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## Goldfinch (Sep 9, 2012)

Celiac disease or an allergy to gluten is not the same as having IBS, although they have digestive issues in common. I find that eliminating wheat products is enough to help me, and I don't worry about trace amounts of gluten in other flours. The fodmaps diet is not specifically a gluten-free diet, but rather a wheat-free one. I miss toast and pasta and baguettes like crazy but I don't miss days with several trips to the toilet. I admit that I would have a very hard time cutting out all carbs; now I eat a lot of steel cut oats, rice, rice noodles and grits.


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## NCK (Nov 3, 2012)

Hi,

Thank you so much for this post. My specialist recently suggested this diet to me after a long year of worsening symptoms and no answers. I have tried a different diet change in the past and I did fairly well on it for the 1st year or so then my symptoms came back worse then before, so I've been a little scared to give it a try. I will definatly give this a good try in hopes i will feel as good as you.


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## Colin.H (Oct 8, 2012)

Goldfinch:
Thank you for your contribution. If we generate progress in just one sufferer, it is worthwhile.
I began by believing that I was gluten intolerant, but now suspect I was simply eating too much wheat which stressed my digestion to the point of damage. Although the FODMAPs diet is restrictive, after a while there an opportunity to re-introduce foods on an experimental basis, so I will soon be looking at small amounts of grain foods.
I could look it up, but I hope you don't mind if I ask: what is/are grits? Thanks.


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## Colin.H (Oct 8, 2012)

NCK:

Hello there. When it comes to lifestyle changes, remember:
"A year from now, you'll wish you started today"
I hope you give it a go, and start soon. There can be nothing to lose (although you'll have to give some food away), and there is the possibility of gain.
Forgive me if you know this, but look out for SIBO die-off. I suspect that SIBO (Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) is the underlying cause of many cases of IBS, and lowering your sugar and carb intake can cause a die-off of the overgrowth bacteria. This releases a flood of toxins into the body, so that you can suspect improvement, then feel rotten with flu-like symptoms for a few days. This is unpleasant, but could be good news, because you want the overgrowth to die. It's important to persevere at this stage: it will pass. And it's a good time to take probiotics.
Good luck, and please let us know how you are getting on.


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## Goldfinch (Sep 9, 2012)

I'm a big fan of moderation when it comes to dieting. Extreme diets like the paleo diet or the no-carb diets don't seem very healthy to me, but to each his own. I agree that the fodmaps diet has a lot of restrictions, but it is a pretty healthy diet if you balance out protein, carbs, fruits and veggies and there are plenty of low-fodmaps foods in all those categories. My desperation ace-in-the-hole is a peanut butter cookie that uses no butter or wheat flour. I do very well with peanuts, so that's a bonus for me.

Colin, grits is a southern specialty, and it is basically like polenta--Italian cornmeal pudding--although often it is used in a coarser grind. Freshly milled coarse cornmeal is the best, really, if you can find it. Cook it as you would polenta, stirring frequently; it take a little patience, like close to an hour to cook. I'm sure there are processed quick-cooking grits and polenta, but I haven't used them. They can be cooked with milk and a bit of cheese can be added at the end and stirred in. I mostly stay away from dairy, but I add about a half cup of low fat milk during the cooking process. And no cheese. Grits are a traditional southern breakfast food, and also are often served with spicy shrimp, hence the famous combo "shrimp 'n' grits." One thing that's nice about cooking polenta or grits is that both can be put in a mold when hot, smoothed out and cooled. Then you can grill squares of it or saute it in butter or bake it with tomato sauce or whatever, so it is more versatile than you might think.

After two months on a strict fodmaps diet (AND low cholesterol diet) I am starting to carefully introduce other foods. I had rice with a small serving of beans (I cooked them from dry beans) and did not have any problems. I am also slowly allowing myself low fat milk, but on a limited basis, like in my oatmeal or in my tea and that's been okay too. What do I miss the most? Wheat toast with my home made marmalade. But I do sneak a very few bites from my husband and it's heavenly. One of the most encouraging things about the low fodmaps diet is that for me--and some others--it seems to be a cumulative thing, that a little cheating isn't necessarily going to set you back. Of course not everyone is the same, and many people have serious trigger foods that can set them off.


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## Colin.H (Oct 8, 2012)

Maize was one of the foods which I thought to be a problem, and I've avoided it for a couple of years. On the FODMAPs diet, I've started to re-introduce it. Thanks for the info on grits, Goldfinch. If I can find some ground corn, I can try out your suggestions.
Re-intrducing foods is an interesting phase of the diet. I'm delighted to find that British hard cheeses are okay for me, but I have had some disasters, too.
And yes, for anyone reading, FODMAPs is not a strict total elimination diet, but a threshold situation, and small amounts of the "bad" foods can be dealt with.


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