I deal with a lot of clients who have suffered with IBS for many years. Many of them have seen every specialist, taken medication, tried “special” diets including FODMAP and even been for exploratory surgery to find out the cause of their discomfort. With not much luck.
To date, all of my IBS clients have been symptom free within 14 days. But more on that shortly.
I have nothing against the FODMAP diet, in theory it should bring some relief for people and I think it’s a good start. But it’s so sweeping and generalised that it doesn’t succeed in helping people become totally symptom free in a lot of cases. IBS is such an individual illness. I’ve read FODMAP plenty of times, and each time I pick out foods in the “safe” list that I know a lot if my clients just can’t tolerate, and there are foods in the “avoid” list that I know some of them are fine with.
So, like I say, I think it’s a great start but it doesn’t take into account the very individual nature of this illness.
The only way I have found to keep people symptom free is physical food testing. Finding out what reaction they have to foods by controlled testing. For that they need to be symptom free which is why we always start on a 14 day detox. Plenty of food! Just gentle, basic cleansing ones. It can take up to 12 weeks to get through a wide range of foods but life gets back to normal pretty quickly.
I then provide meal planners to make sure my clients have plenty of recipe ideas going forward.
If you’re suffering with IBS please feel free to contact me. Email [email protected] or get in touch through Facebook.
