Irritable Bowel Syndrome sounds like a proper diagnosis,but it isn’t really. Generally it can be summed up that the bowel is irritated by something, but that the doctor doesn’t think that anything bad is wrong…usually backed up by a blood test, scan or colonoscopy, and that the fallback diagnosis is therefore IBS.
If the only irritant to the bowel is food or drink, then my suggested change of diet sorts things out.
The symptoms that are included under the umbrella of IBS are many, and can include those that seem diametrically opposed eg diarrhoea and constipation. Other symptoms can be bloating, wind, loose stools, nausea, abdominal pain or discomfort, urgency and incontinence. IBS is usually a diagnosis given to adults, but children with tummy symptoms can be included under this umbrella term also.
The main reason why people find it very hard to work out for themselves what their problem foods are, is because, in the main, their symptoms are similar from day to day, or come in clusters. Keeping a food diary rarely seems to clarify things for the sufferer. In fact diary keeping often does little more than make the patient restrict many foods, which actually are not causes of the problem, especially when tummy symptoms are involved.
Frequent consumption of a staple food or drink is usually the cause, but the sufferer naturally presumes that the food most recently eaten is what did it. This is why people often gradually exclude more and more foods from their diet, thinking that there must be something in the meal that they just ate that made them bloat…rush to the loo…start feeling sick…..and it isn’t until the underlying cause is found, eg dairy products, yeast, tea, coffee, that the person can tolerate the vegetables, fizzy drinks, acidic fruits etc that they had been avoiding.
I have just analysed my stats for the whole of 2016 relating to tummy symptoms in adults and children.
78% of the adults I tested last year had tummy symptoms.
These were the top 7 foods and drinks which were the underlying causes of IBS in adults.
Cocoa 50%
Orange 41%
Cow’s milk products 34%
Yeast , all cheeses, all yogurts 29%
Coffee 29%
Tea 23%
Sweet artificial flavours 19%
73% of the children I tested last year had tummy symptoms.
Here are the top 5 food causes
Cow’s milk products 81%
Orange 48%
Cocoa 33%
Apple 19%
Sweet artificial flavours 17%
All of the above foods became a problem because they were used daily, often more than twice daily, apart from orange which people seemed to become intolerant to whether used frequently or not.
So if you have tummy symptoms cut out orange, and any food / drink which you consume twice daily or more.