Where do I start? Desperately trying to sort myself out. Dr believes all my symptoms lead to IBS. Daily D over 7 months miserable , tired, losing weight very gradually.
Any help appreciated. Diet never really changes from week to week so why this?
Thankyou , if you can help - please advise!!
There can be so many causes of IBS it can be difficult to pin point a cause, although it can sometimes be easier to find a solution. First of all, if your diet is roughly the same every week, what do you usually eat and have you tried making any adjustments to see if that helps? (If not, don't worry, people will suggest a few).
Secondly, if it's constant diarrhoea that you've got, you may have bile acid malabsorption (thesensitivegut.com/2016/02... - there is a test for this but it isn't always reliable (sometimes giving false positives) but if it is the cause the treatments should have an effect.
And thirdly, what was going on in your life when you first started experiencing the symptoms? IBS can sometimes follow a bout of gastroenteritis of significant changes in life circumstances.
Thanks for the reply.I only have D first thing in the morning but it is fairly regular now and pretty aggressive !
My tummy is very very noisy, often rumbling and gurgling.
On one or two occasions I have had bowel leaking which upset me. Is it normal in IBS ?
I have yet to make changes to my diet but once I have a clue where to start , I will !!
Okay - so it sounds like it probably isn't bile acid malabsorption, then.
The rumbling and gurgling can be caused by a number of things including the natural movement of food through the gut but I think the main two are hunger and bacteria. Once your stomach has emptied, the bowel starts a bit of a cleansing process, which can cause the noise and sometimes pushes air down through the gut. I also read somewhere that the stomach acid might react with the salts added in the gut generating carbon dioxide that has to go somewhere. I know that I get more bloated and gassy when I start to feel hungry and my stomach and bowels start to rumble.
Bacteria digest the food that the body doesn't digest, turning some of it into nutrients that help the body and gut to function as well. But a few things can go wrong with this. In small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), the bacteria from the large intestine find their way into the small intestine, and start digesting your food before your body can, producing more byproducts that can trigger wind, bloating and diarrhoea. Another way bacteria cause problems is that there is food that our bodies simply cannot digest but they do, but for some reason in IBS, our bodies become a bit more sensitive to this natural process, or the bacterial balance is nudged in the wrong direction so bacteria that are particularly good at digesting this food have an advantage and process more of it, leading to problems.
It's hard to say which (if either) of those two theories might be behind your symptoms, and while it might be possible to test for SIBO this test isn't always reliable. However, there are some dietary interventions you can try.
A simple change can be to add more *soluble* fibre to your diet. This has the advantage of not being digested too much by the bacteria but instead absorbs water in the gut so it has more bulk. You could try adding linseeds to your breakfast cereal in the morning for instance but for a list of other sources of soluble fibre see helpforibs.com/diet/fiber1.asp
If that doesn't work, or isn't totally effective, you could also explore the low FODMAP diet. This should ideally be done with the help of a trained dietician. FODMAPs are those foods I mentioned earlier that can't be digested by your body. The diet involves excluding these for 6-8 weeks and then seeing if that improves symptoms. If it does, you can then start to slowly reintroduce those foods to see which, if any, bring your symptoms back. You can then avoid these for longer/permanently. It's all a touch more complicated than that, but there's your gist.
Thanks for that!!
Wondered about seeing a nutritionalist but not sure now.
Will try the fibre to begin with.
Can you tell me why I get sudden 'urges' to go to the loo but when I get there it's always a false alarm ?
Thanks once again x
I don't have an explanation for the sudden urges I'm afraid but you're not the only IBS sufferer to experience them. If I had to guess I'd say it was probably some weird nerve signals misfiring - the gut and nervous system are tightly connected in ways we don't fully understand.
I do know that for some patients, after eating the bowel starts to go into overdrive meaning people often void soon after having eaten (this is what mebeverine helps to control) so there could be something similar going on here as well. If it's a problem maybe something like CBT might help to correct it but I am just speculating now.
One note on nutritionists in case you weren't aware of a difference between them and dieticians. While both can be registered, only dieticians are trained to provide evidence-based dietary advice to tackle health problems. Some people have found they've had better results through nutritionists/nutritional therapists, but nutrition-based practice is less evidence-based. Their therapies might work but we don't understand why, and IBS varies from individual so what works for one might not work for another. So, personally, I would speak to a dietician over a nutritionist.
Thankyou once again.
Last question for tonight- I read somewhere that D over a period can deplete your vitamins and minerals. Now being as I've had D for 7 months, I 'm very worried that I could be at risk.
Any advice please?
I'm afraid I don't know how true that is and I suspect it will be dependent on a number of factors including where in the bowel vitamins are absorbed, and how quickly your diarrhoea moves food along that part of the bowel. If you're worried, I'd say speak to your doctor. Worth noting as well that you only have diarrhoea in the morning so you still have almost 24 hours to absorb other food in your gut; it's not as if food is constantly moving through you.
There is a diet called "lofodmap" diet that limits certain carbohydrates. It's supposed to be very helpful in these situations. I think Amazon.comUK has some books outlining these ideas, foods, etc. Good luck, Nesie 237
I wasn't diagnosed until I had an endoscopy and colonoscopy so you need to have those procedures first before being diagnosed. It so annoys me when some doctors say IBS and they haven't even sent you for tests.
Best of luck
i have ibs and it gets so bad doubled up severe pain coughing up bowel cont. nearly passing out also have diverticolosis of the coln 4.or5 colonoscopies and no treatment only eat plenty veg. which i do 4.or 5 times wk. and drink at least a pint and half of water still the same only ibs is worse more accidents always seems to happen when no toilet to be had conclusion they dont know enough about it but i beleive medication could have something to do with it 16 tabs a day various illnesses had this ibs for over 20 years just got worse over time.
Questioning diagnosis.
chronic gastritis diagnosis 
IBS - awaiting diagnosis 
