5 common mistakes IBS sufferers make

Those with irritable bowel syndrome have a tough road to becoming symptom-free but it is possible. In this video I talk about 5 common mistakes that IBS sufferers make when trying to feel better.

5 Common Mistakes IBS Sufferers Make

Welcome to this video. Today I want to talk to you about five common mistakes that IBS sufferers make.

1. The first one is to not follow an accurate low FODMAP diet and by accurate I mean not dabbling with it, not doing it 50% or even 90% because even one wrong food is going to cause you symptoms. So you do need to decide to do it 100% and you need to get all the elements of that diet correct -not just the list of good foods and bad foods, which is just the beginning for us. We need to get the amounts correct and the combinations correct in each meal. Without taking into account all of those elements, you’re not going to get the results that you want. So the diet has to be 100% accurate especially the elimination diet.
2. The second mistake that people make is that they let stress affect their gut. We can’t all avoid stress obviously. It’s a part of life, and stress can come out of the blue at any moment. Large, traumatic stress or small stress like when you’re driving along the road and a driver cuts you off. That’s stress. That makes your adrenaline surge. Your heart beats faster and all of that affects your gut because we have a faulty brain to gut connection and our gut overreacts to the signals it receives. So, you need to learn some very simple techniques for interrupting the message of stress that goes from the brain to the gut and deep breathing is one of the very best ones that does that. When you do deep breathing you fool your body into thinking that there is no stress after all. So, make sure you have a strategy like deep breathing in place for whenever stress hits.
3. The third thing that IBS sufferers often do wrong is that maybe you’ve got the low FODMAP diet absolutely accurate but you’ve forgotten to look at other gut irritants like fiber levels, fat levels, caffeine, alcohol – they are all gut irritants. In particular with fat and fiber, we need them, unlike caffeine and alcohol, so we have to find our own tolerance level for those. Especially if we have IBS with constipation, we need to get those fiber levels really perfect. We need to get as much as we possibly can without tipping over that fine line into the territory where we get the symptoms of bloating and gas etc. The same with fat – we need it for really good bowel movements but too much is going to cause IBS symptoms. So find your own tolerance levels for those.
4. Number four is to get the timing and the amounts, the size of the meals, correct. They’re almost as important as eating the right foods, perhaps not quite but almost. So the timing is about three hours apart so that there’s time for the motility cleansing wave to go through. Not much longer because then digestion is finished and gas starts accumulating in the gut. Have five small meals a day. It’s really important not to overload the gut at any one time because we have a hypersensitive gut and you’re going to feel that so much more than another person and it will cause symptoms. Five small meals about three hours apart.
5. And the last one, number five, is something you might not even think of – stop supplements while you’re on the elimination stage of the diet. Everything that goes into your mouth counts. The only one I would advise you to continue taking is vitamin D because IBS sufferers are low in vitamin D. But, for example, if you have IBS with diarrhea and you’re taking magnesium, that’s a mild laxative. Actually, it can be a fairly strong laxative in certain amounts and you shouldn’t really be taking that. Calcium for those of you with IBS with constipation makes your constipation worse. So if you’ve got problems with your bone density ask your doctor for alternatives to taking supplements. There are alternatives. So stop your supplements except for vitamin D. You can always test those during the reintroduction stage of the diet.

So there are five common mistakes that IBS sufferers make. Cover all your bases with those and you will start to see an enormous improvement.

If you are needing help with your meal plans so you can get the low Fodmap diet accurate as I mention in mistake number one in the video, then check out this page here to see how I can help you with that.