# Low FODMAP diet - the ultimate cure for leaky gas



## tummyrumbles (Aug 14, 2005)

*EDIT: I've had a lot of luck with the SIBO Specific diet - a combination of the Specific Carbohydrate diet and the low FODMAP diet (2016)*

I've only recently tried this diet and it made a huge improvement. It's also helped me to understand this condition better. I've know for some time I'm intolerant to a lot of foods: milk, asparagus, raisins etc but didn't realise that the main problem was an inability to digest complex sugars.

Maybe for most leaky gassers a FODMAP intolerance is the main culprit, rather than IBS.

For the past few decades it's taken me hours to fully evacuate. I am now limiting my foods to low FODMAP and find that evacuation is a lot quicker and digestion gas much reduced, as long as I keep constipating foods to a minimum.

What basically happens is that certain high FODMAP vegetables aren't digested in the small intestine due to a lack of the proper enzymes. These foods continue down into the colon, where bacteria feeds on them, causing gas. This leads to the unrelenting, 24/7 type of gas that leaky gassers have.

If this was the only problem, you could eliminate these foods the next day, but most of us eat constipating foods as well, such as pizzas, white breads etc. This means that peristalsis doesn't work as efficiently. So if you haven't fully evacuated in the morning, then the gas from the high FODMAP foods continues building up in your colon.

Interestingly enough, I actually got constipated on this diet (just due to low fibre), but this didn't lead to leaky gas, which was a first for me. I guess this is what the IBS-C people experience. Because there were no complex sugar foods in the colon, the gas wasn't being produced. I had always thought that stool alone created leaky gas but this didn't happen. This explains why leaky gassers always ask why IBS-C types don't experience the leaky gas that we do. it's because either they don't eat the complex sugar veges in the first place, or if they do, they have the proper enzymes to digest them. They simply don't produce the voluminous gasses that we do.

This diet recommends non-gluten breads but really you're better off without breads at all. Try rice pops / corn flakes for breakfast, lunch - salad: lettuce, tomato, grated carrot, hard cheese and dinner just about any meat/fish with potatoes, pumpkin, carrots. The idea is to eat as much fibre as you possibly can of the low FODMAP type, but with none of the constipating foods that also feature in this diet.


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