For those who have IBS and Acid Reflux what do you eat?

Jeckia

I have both IBS and Acid Reflux and I need to stay away from dairy things. I was tested for lactose and it came back negative, but it still makes me sick. They said there's something else in dairy products that are making me sick and that test isn't always 100%.. kind of dumb if you ask me. Anywho....

It's so hard to find things to eat.. Well it seems like it to me.

So what do you guys eat?

littlewolf3785

I have IBS and have a similiar problem to some dairy. I stay away from fried foods for most part with the IBS, have you tried Almond milk or a Lactaid milk for the dairy. I can eat some cheeses and yogurt with no problem but have to stay away for ice cream at all costs. It could be the enzyme in the dairy that you are having trouble with, your body might not be able to break it down. Have you tried any other forms of dairy other than from a cow?

redraidergirl2009

It may be casien, the dairy protein. Lots of people with IBS have issues with dairy. I have those issues. I like soymilk and smart balance vegan butter or earth balance. These are very basic things you can find at walmart. don't need a healthfoods store. You can try a lactose-free cheese like "veggie shreds", even walmart has it. It is free of lactose but does contain casien, but it might help you figure out what is irritating your ibs..

MiamiKid305

Almond milk, muscle meds carnivor protein powder, eggs, basically staying away from all things dairy

Mharren

IBS is sadly just an umbrella diagnosis we apply to gastrointestinal disorders for which we cannot find empirical causes for. We generally just theorize about it. I myself have this issue as well as intermittent colitis.

Generally patients are advised to increase their fiber intake to help bulk up stool, as well as prevent constipation (since IBS tends to switch between loose and hard stool). A consistent diet also seems to be helpful. Some patients who eat very 'unhealthy' choices do not experience aggravation of the IBS symptoms so long as they consistently eat the same foods, flavours, etc. Fiber supplements such as Metamucil are often recommended.

Cellulose is not digestible in the human intestine, thats why corn and lettuce can clearly be seen in ones stool after passage. These foods can aggravate IBS when the issue is an inflammatory one. Imagine rubbing grit over a swollen wound, that is sort of what can happen if IBS is a result of inflamed sections of the bowel. Lettuce, Corn, nuts, and other hard and non-digestible foods can aggravate IBS.

Lactose intolerance is a condition that is actual intermittent as well as variable in severity. There are plenty of people that test negative in the lab for lactose intolerance but still have gastrointestinal symptoms consistent with lactose ingestion. The severity of the sensitivity can change depending on time, other foods eaten, and the type of lactose product. For instance, milk will almost always incite irritation of the bowel, but products that contain bacteria that ferment lactose such as yogurts and cheeses and creams are more tolerable.

Lactaid was mentioned above, which is just the lactase enzyme in tablet form; the enzyme your body is failing to produce at sufficient levels. There is no harm in taking a lactase supplement or purchasing lactase-treated milk if you are not actually lactose intolerant, and it may help with the symptoms. Lactase-treated milk is no different than regular milk, it just has the enzyme added.

A lot of research has gone in to the study of gastrointestinal biofilms as of late, particularly here in Canada. We do something called 'Stool transplants' here, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Your bowels cannot digest and process food without the aid of the microflora that live in your bowels. Thus it has been theorized that persons with IBS have abnormal bacterial colonies in their bowels, causing disruption in digestion. When your body can't digest something, it kick starts into overdrive to get it out of your body as soon as possible and by the closest end of your alimentary canal (mouth to *kitten*). Food does not actually begin to become absorbed into the body until it passes out of the stomach and into the first section of the small intestine. This is one of the contributing factors to 'over-eating'.

Now, remember that IBS is a syndrome, not a disease. A syndrome is a collection of symptoms characteristic of something as yet unidentified. That is why syndrome is often applied to psychiatric disorders, because we don't have empirical evidence to indicate what is organically wrong. We don't have 'lab results', and without those, we often cannot give a diagnosis that indicates what precisely is wrong.

Now, when we do a stool transplant the idea is that we take the stool from someone with healthy, normal gut flora and then process it and then introduce it into the recipients gut via direct intubation into the duodenum (first part of the small intestine) or via an enema, so that the bacteria in the donor stool can colonize in the recipients bowels, correcting the flora abnormality.

I am not suggesting you go out and get a stool transplant. No one likes to talk about this procedure and even less people will do it. But you can perhaps learn something from it. Nothing, not even our best antibiotics, work as well as stool transplants for treating bacterial infections or floral strippings. Nothing.

So this shows us that gut flora is not only an extremely effective variable to consider when treating non-pathological gastrointestinal disorders, but it's also quite simple. You know all those commercials for 'Activia' and 'Pro-Biotic' yogurts and what not? Those are just yogurts that have been inoculated with bacteria found in stool. Yogurt and creams are just bacterial cultures. There is actually this cheese somewhere in Europe you can watch slowly crawl across your plate, or so I've heard. lol.

Eating at least two servings of yogurt a day (200g) has not only been found to alleviate gastrointestinal problems such as those characteristic of IBS, but the most recent Nurses Health Study (something we've been basing our guidelines about what is and isn't healthy on since the 70's) showed that people that ate at least 2 servings of yogurt a day, were less likely to put on weight as they aged (since weight gain is a normal part of aging) and when they did put on weight, there was less of it.

If you consider that the bacteria in the yogurt product is an organism that needs to eat you can imagine that it eats some of what you eat, and its byproducts are things you can uptake into your blood stream via the bowel wall. Lactobacillus sp. is the primary bacterium found in yogurt products and since it processes lactose for you, you can perhaps see why it might be helpful to have a good quantity of Lactobacillus residing in your bowels.

A word of caution because this is a site where people diet. Dairy products that have 'reduced fat' or 'no fat' are less likely to help with gastrointestinal irritations caused by dairy because manufacturers use parts of whole milk to augment the mixture to make it more 'thick', in the absence of the fat. If you consider eating dairy products - whether dieting or not - it is recommended that you use the regular forms of them and avoid the low fat and non-fat varieties, if you have gastrointestinal irritation when consuming dairy products. These low and non-fat varieties of products can actually irritate the bowel more because molecularly, they are actually more like whole milk than the regular products.

If you ever want to look any of this up, I strongly recommend taking a waltz through our primary database of peer-reviewed journal articles (what academics consider to be the only admissible information) on PubMed. You don't need to have a degree in science to get the gist of the abstracts and the database is quite easy to use. You'll actually find that many scientific and medical wikipedia pages have links at the bottom for their reference sources with the acronym PMID, which will take you to the paper cited in the PubMed database.

That was a bit of rant. I apologize if i hijacked your thread.

Hope something here was useful.

All the best,
- Mharren

sarahf3092

I suffer from this also. I just try to avoid where possible the foods that irritate my stomach but when theres no avoiding it my doctor prescribed me some 'Mebevrane' (not sure thats how you spell it) but its the only thing that settles my stomach down.

Jobeth1961

Wow. Mharred briliant reading thank you. I will try the website too as I have learnt more in 5 minutes than 30 years of suffering IBS.

Jobeth1961

Sorry last post should have said Mharren ~ MANY THANKS

TheDevastator

You might want to try Betaine HCl and digestive enzymes. I got rid of my acid reflux by taking them. I never have heartburn now.

Also here's an article on digestion that you might find interesting:
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/you_are_what_you_absorb

I would also recommend a good kimchi recipe(the best probiotic):
http://drbenkim.com/how-make-kim-chi.htm

MzzFaith

Tell me

lucan07

Just to throw a cat among the pigeons following bowel cancer surgery times three I developed Ulcerative Colitis treated with high dose steroids and then Mercaptopurine I stopped taking all meds and started smoking a few cigarettes again instead. This may sound crazy but the occurrence of IBS and UC in smokers is lower than non smokers, the reason seems to be nicotine intake producing additional mucus in the gut. From my point of view taking drugs that leave me 15000 more likely to get leukemia than win the lotto, plus other drugs for pain like Tramadol that wipe me out made my 4-5 cigarettes seem a better option. I have been trying a nicotine substitute recently and find it gives me the same relief.