Has anyone done the FODMAP diet under a dietician

[walker2796]

I have this week on Monday started the FODMAP diet under a dietician, it's only day 5 I know it's early days but I feel no different, I understand that it may take a few weeks before I feel any different but does anyone have any past experience with this and did it work, I suffer mainly from bloating and very bad wind.

[Iesgobdafydd]

It does help significant numbers of people, studies have shown. My personal experience with it (under a dietician) was even after the full time period I wasn't sure it had made any difference, so I went to my next appointment and said so. She told me it wasn't necessarily supposed to cure me, maybe just reduce symptoms, which I hadn't really understood before, and we talked about what to do and I decided to try the "reintroductions" anyhow - the reintroductions are what you're supposed to do if low FODMAP helped you, is test the high FODMAP foods one at a time to see which ones are really a problem for you so you only have to avoid the ones that are problems and can freely eat the others. Well, the results of the reintroduction tests were a bit confusing for me in some cases - like, I had no reaction to bread, maybe a bit to pasta, but definitely a reaction to weetabix so that was a bit weird but I guess each test is a different kind of wheat. It seemed like I was getting at least a slight reaction to almost all the FODMAPs even though I'd thought low FODMAP hadn't helped me. I went on to do a "few foods" diet afterwards - the dietician would have been able to supervise me on that too, but I didn't think from what I'd seen so far that her help was going to help me more than get in the way, so I stopped seeing her and did my best to check I was getting balanced nutrition myself - there are online calculators you can use to help with this now. What I learned eventually was that nothing at all I could do with diet would stop me getting some amount of gas and cramping. But there were some foods that if I ate them for dinner then the next morning I would wake up early and feel cramps in my lower gut and need to get up and use the toilet and pass a slightly loose, sometimes slightly acid-feeling stool, and then a wave of discomfort would slowly roll up from my bowel into my belly area and just hang around there for a few hours and I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep and wouldn't feel hungry for a few hours. And that was quite a lot worse than just having a bit of gas and cramps during the day. What I have tried recently that actually stopped me reacting to some (but not all) of those foods was Atrantil combined with several weeks of a low-carb diet, but Atrantil is expensive and I wouldn't advise you try it before trying other things, including the full length of the low FODMAP diet.

[walker2796 in reply to Iesgobdafydd]

Thank you very much what is atrantil please

[Iesgobdafydd in reply to walker2796]

It's a medicine devised by an American gastroenterologist in the last few years which is designed to attack archaea in the small intestine. These are methane-producing organisms which it's normal to have living in the gut and which aren't vulnerable to antibiotics, but like bacteria if you have an overgrowth of them they could be contributing to your producing too much gas. The ingredients are completely harmless to us as they're not absorbed by our digestion, they just pass through. There is more detail on the manufacturer's website atrantil.com if you're interested, and the cheapest way I could find to buy it was from detoxpeople.eu, but it was still £100 for a month's supply, which is about what's needed to try it out thoroughly.

[Jacqui7653]

Hi i went on the fodmap diet through a dietician for 8 weeks and it didnt make any difference to my ibs at all. Dietician did warn me fodmat doesnt always make a dirrerence. Good luck with giving it a go

[gurgleguts]

For me the fodmap diet was just used as a guide. There are infinite combinations of foods and ingredients so you're never going to find out exactly what your triggers are (unless you're lucky and its one thing like onions). Ive been using it for years and have never been strict with it but after a while you can find out what your major triggers are. It took me a year to realise that lettuce was a problem. No other leaves, just lettuce? IBS is a really weird and frustrating condition but keep using the fodmap as a guide. There are apps that can assist you so you can plot bad days on a graph over a given period of time.

[IBSLori]

I have chosen a Naturopathic Doctor and I am feeling better. I keep a food diary and between paying attention to how I react, some supplements and adjustments, I am experiencing less pain and symptoms. I have only been on this for about 3 weeks, but I am improving.