irritable bowel syndrome

Dear Pat,

Was your diagnosis of Irritable Bowel made by a doctor or did you figure this out from your symptoms?  IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion – meaning when doctors can’t find anything specifically wrong, they tell you that you have IBS.

Are you constipated, or tend more toward diarrhea?

Here is some information from my website:  http://www.brendawatson.com/di…..ble-bowel/

You can also email my assistant at jsinclaire@renewlife.com to send you the chapter on IBS from my new book, The Road to Perfect Health, which is available through your local PBS station.

Question – are you eating extra amounts of raw foods? Raw can sometimes irritate IBS symptoms.The Fiber 35 Diet suggests those types of things. It's not a diet specifically designed for IBS, although the fiber component is very important. If you continue to follow it, just steam your veggies. And you can also add in a fiber product like RenewLife's Triple Fiber or FiberSmart if you're unable to get enough in your diet.

To really see what’s going on in your gut, I strongly suggest a Comprehensive Stool Analysis to test for bacterial balance and candida overgrowth – see more information on that test toward the top of this posting Forum. To see if in fact you are having a gluten/dairy reaction, check out the information from enterolab.com. More about that in that same post on Suggested Tests.

If you decide to order tests, let us know and we will be happy to help you interpret those results.

While diet is at least 80% of the deal, IBS symptoms are very often due to the TYPE of foods you are eating such as one's containing wheat/gluten, dairy and sugar – all known irritants with IBS. You might consider a Candida Diet instead of the Fiber 35 diet at this point.  

At the very least:  diet changes must be no wheat/gluten foods, low to no dairy, no processed refined foods, NO SUGAR, including fruit right now. Here's the Candida diet I mentioned above. http://blog.brendawatson.com/f…..diet-faqs/

Along with the diet changes, I would take the Ultimate Flora Critical Care 80 Billion capsule daily for a period of time to build up your good bacteria. It was formulated for those with IBS symptoms.

Let me know how it goes,

Brenda Watson