Recently diagnosed with IBS

Sadsong,

I found that it's not so much what I eat but how I eat. I have to eat my three meals at about the same time each day. If I let myself get too hungry and then eat a large meal, I really pay for it. I have to keep things moving evenly through my system without long intervals of time in between meals. Regularity and routine - that's what works for me.

It will take a while to get to know what works and what doesn't. However, you can eat some foods and do great and then eat the same foods and have problems. That's the problem with IBS. It's fickle.

I can eat scrambled eggs with cheese, meat, onions and bell peppers in them. I cannot, however, eat an omlette with all of those same ingredients in it. Sometimes there are just no reasonable answers for what you can and can't eat. Be prepared to discover that you're okay eating the ingredients but not the finished product for some meals.

I do know that bagged salads can be bad on your guts. I found that out in college, well before I started having any gut problems. My mother said that some pre-cut lettuces, like in bags and on salad bars, are washed in chemicals which can give people diarrhea. My fiance, who has no gut problems, has found that he can't eat the bagged salads either; he kept having unexplained diarrhea when he was eating them regularly. He and I neither one have had any problems with eating lettuce straight from a head, though. I have been eating a moderate-sized salad every day for lunch during the work week for months now without a problem.

Oh, a tip I consider very imporant: never, ever eat anything with sugar alcohol(s) in it. This includes almost all sugar-free and a lot of reduced-sugar products. Sugar alcohols are usually clearly indicated on the nutrition facts label under "carbohydrates", but you can also spot them in the ingredients list as they all end in "itol"; e.g. sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, etc. These sugar alcohols cause diarrhea and smelly gas in normal people--some can tolerate them in larger doses than others--but they seem to cause even worse effects in people with IBS. So much as one gram can lay me up in bed for two days with intense pain, horrible stomach rumblings and really bad diarrhea.

Be especially careful of sugar-free gum and mints because it lurks there too. Also, I have found sugar alcohols in popcicles that were labeled "Made with Splenda!"; the Splenda content was low, the sugar alcohol content high (false advertising in my opinion). So it's best to carefully look at the nutrition facts and ingredients list of any low-sugar or sugar-free product, regardless of what ingreidents it claims to use on the front of the package.