Hello, welcome to episode 64 of the Inside Knowledge for People with IBS. I’m Anna Mapson.
What’s keeping you stuck with IBS?
The reason I picked this as a topic for a new episode was these are the similar things I see in clients before they have worked with a nutritional therapist. And I know a lot of you out there who just listen to the podcast and don’t work with a nutritionist, don’t have any support with your diet and lifestyle. Actually, these are some of the things that you potentially can work on or at least some of these things may resonate with you. So I hope this is going to be a helpful episode.
1. A focus on supplements
The first place I see people getting stuck is a focus on supplements and a lack of focus on your diet and what you’re actually eating.
Sometimes the marketing from supplement companies really plays into this as well. There’s a lot of products out there promising to cure your bloat. To resolve digestive symptoms. Especially like constipation and bloating. So, it’s really tempting to think that you can just take a supplement and that will make everything better.
When to stop taking an IBS supplement
And, the other thing I see is people being very fixated on the supplement being the thing that kind of cures them. And not wanting to stop taking them. So if for example you’ve been taking a probiotic for the last six months and yet you’ve seen no improvements, then probably that probiotic is not actually making that much difference to you.
If your symptoms are the same, you’ve been taking it for a really long time, it’s probably not worth spending your hard earned money on that product anymore. It doesn’t mean all probiotics are useless. Just that one just might not be the right one for you. But what I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that I see people saying that they need the supplements.
Because that’s what’s keeping them going. But they’re still getting a lot of symptoms. So actually the supplements aren’t doing that job. See more about supplements for IBS.
What to do instead
And we need to look at longer, more sustainable ways of working, like diet and lifestyle changes, that actually are more effective than supplements. Now, it doesn’t mean I don’t use supplements in my practice with my clients. I definitely do. With everybody, I will suggest they take some sort of supplement, almost everybody, whether it’s something like psyllium husk, PHGG, maybe probiotics, it could be something else.
There are lots of reasons why supplements are good, but it needs to be very targeted and specialised.
The problem with always chasing the next best thing, the next supplement that is going to make the difference, is that you may lose focus on dietary change.
Diet is still important in IBS
And IBS and SIBO are both affected by what you eat. As in your whole body is as well, like your brain, all your cells, all rely on the nutrients coming in from your food. And so making sure you’ve got that good, broad and balanced diet is really helpful.
We can lose sight of it. Of that goal when we’re just focusing on taking the next supplement.
Supplements can worsen IBS
The other thing I wanted to say on supplements is that sometimes they can be making your symptoms worse. I’ve had a few cases where somebody was once taking psyllium husk for 25 years. No joke, he was taking it every day for 25 years. And he didn’t even really know why, it’s just that a family member had always taken it.
He just picked up the habit and thought that it was something that he had to do. He actually didn’t really need it as an additional supplement and felt better when he stopped it, but just hadn’t considered when to stop.
With supplements, we only take them for a set amount of time and then we stop. It’s not necessary to take them forever.
The three ways that supplements can be keeping you stuck is
- one you’re not focusing on your diet
- two either that you’ve got a magical thinking about the supplement that it is the thing that’s holding you together and you cannot survive without it, but you haven’t ever tested that.
- Or, three, that it could actually be making things worse in the long run.
2. Finding your root cause
The second area I wanted to focus on is constantly searching for the root cause of your digestive distress. Often you will see people saying you must find the root cause, particularly this is for people who have SIBO.
Why did you get this in the first place? What’s led to this dysbiosis in your small intestine? Now whilst that is helpful in some cases, it can also lead you down a blind alley searching and searching and never really finding the cause.
Sometimes you just don’t know what led to this overgrowth of bacteria in your small intestine. You don’t know how it got there and what caused it.
Even if you do know, sometimes people know that it is due to a food poisoning incident. Maybe two years ago, and since then you’ve never been quite right, and you can pinpoint it back on that. Even if you know that, it doesn’t necessarily help you with your symptoms.
Keep the focus on your symptoms
It depends on what your symptoms are, how you’re currently treating the SIBO, and a whole range of other things.
It’s unlikely mould is your root cause
The other sort of blind alleys that I see people going down quite a bit is looking at mould. Is mould the cause of your symptoms? It’s very, very unlikely, I would say, that it is. massively over diagnosed that people have got problems with mold. People have also really started to worry a lot about blood sugar balancing and again for most people that is not a concern.
Most people don’t need a glucose monitor
So wearing a continuous glucose monitor to track your blood sugar responses to certain types of foods, which is common now. And, isn’t necessary for health. It’s not important to know your response to everything you eat. These things give us too much data, I think, on our health, which isn’t necessarily healthy.
The reason that all of this investigation and looking for these very niche potential causes of digestive issues like IBS. The reason it’s a problem is that sometimes it stops you focusing on some of the basics.
Keep a focus on the basics
And what I mean by the basics are the things that you can see in my, free download – non food ways to help your gut. I’ll put the link in the show notes if you don’t already have that. But I’m talking about things like meal timing. Are you eating regularly? Are you eating enough? Are you chewing your food really well?
Are you eating slowly? These basics of eating are really important. As well as are you prioritizing sleep like not staying up till midnight and then getting up at 6am? Are you giving yourself opportunity to sleep? Well, go and listen to the episode I did on sleep a couple of episodes ago if you haven’t heard that.
Then also Diet. Are you actually eating a good, broad, and balanced diet? And if you’re not, I would start there before you start going down these rabbit holes of looking at mould. Or an alkaline diet or all of these things which just aren’t backed up by science and aren’t really going to give you the solutions that you’re looking for.
I really understand that this drive for more information is coming from Not feeling heard or understood by your doctor, often that is massive.
It feels like you’re going around in circles so you turn to doctor Google and looking for answers. That is very understandable. It’s just that this constant searching for more and more information, like I said, it can sometimes lead you to ignore the basics.
3. Restrictive diets can keep you stuck with IBS
The next area that I see keeping people stuck is staying on a restricted diet for too long.
Very commonly this is the FODMAP diet. You start this restriction of certain fermentable fibres and find that you get on well with it, you feel better. Digestive issues go away. So you just carry on eating like that. The problem is that that restricts and reduces the key nutrients that you need for a broad and balanced digestion, helping you feel really healthy and well.
Over time, it may lead to other problems like lack of calcium, lack of B vitamins, sometimes zinc. These are commonly low in people who have been on the low FODMAP diet for a long time. And you also will have a lack of diversity of types of fibre because you are restricting types of fibre. Generally, that is the nature of the FODMAP diet.
The low FODMAP diet can affect gut microbes
One of the ways it keeps you stuck is that over time, following this diet may lead to changes in your gut microbes, that’s in your large intestine, where you can have reduced diversity because of the lack of fibre. So, the way it’s keeping you stuck with IBS symptoms is it can lead to more dysbiosis in your large intestine.
What I mean by that is that when you have less of the commensal bacteria, that’s the good ones we want lots of that just pad out the gut, take up space. They also do good work by creating short chain fatty acids that are anti inflammatory. Help the health of your colon.
When you’ve got less of those, there’s more space for potentially pathogenic type bacteria to get in and they can start to irritate the lining of the gut, create less mucus, for example, maybe.
Less fibre can affect bowel regularity
And that can also lead to changes in how regular your bowel movements are. So there’s a knock on effect of reducing fibres over time. The same thing can happen if you have been on a very strict diet that’s gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, you know, you never eat anything processed, you never go out to eat.
That also is very controlled diet. Over time may lead to issues with your overall health. The way it keeps you stuck is it restricts key nutrients that you need from other sources.
4. Undereating can keep you stuck with IBS
The fourth topic I wanted to talk about was under eating. This is something I see quite a bit with people is that they’re not eating enough and skipping meals in order to avoid symptoms.
Maybe when you go travelling you just don’t eat for the day because it will set off your diarrhoea. So you just skip meals and don’t eat. Again It can lead to restriction of nutrients that help keep you going keep your energy up It can affect your mood being undernourished as well as those other things I was just mentioning about restriction of nutrients, but under eating in itself can cause IBS type symptoms. When you go for long periods of time with no food, sometimes people can get a bit gassy and crampy, and that may be down to the amount of acid that’s being produced in your stomach.
You may also find that when you do eat, you eat faster because you’re hungry, so less chewing, less slow and mindful eating when you’re gobbling it down because you’re so hungry and haven’t eaten all day. Or you choose different foods because you have been effectively starving yourself all day by skipping breakfast or skipping out lunch.
And that can lead to different food choices that may be not as beneficial for your digestion as if you had eaten properly and steadily throughout the day. So, under eating, the way it keeps you stuck is that not only can it restrict your nutrient intake, but it can also, over time, if you are severely under eating, cause issues like Slow digestion, which could lead to constipation, it can lead to excessive gas, further bloating.
So by eating less, you may actually be creating some of these digestive symptoms.
5. IBS becomes part of your personality
The fifth area is a little bit of a delicate one. I’ve left it till last. It is tricky to, talk about, but it is something I see with people I work with over time, particularly when we start challenging long held beliefs about certain foods being a trigger.
For example, if somebody I work with has been following the low FODMAP diet for a long time. I’ve got somebody in my mind that I’m thinking of when I’m describing this to you. And she’d been on the low FODMAP diet for about two years. When we started to very carefully reintroduce FODMAP foods, she found that actually she wasn’t intolerant to any of them.
And this really shook her belief in her sense of knowing her body. She was also a bit embarrassed because she said she’d been avoiding them for ages. All her friends knew that there were all these foods she couldn’t eat, and now suddenly she could. She was like, well, how am I going to describe this to them?
How am I going to explain this? That suddenly I can eat these foods?
You identify as a person with IBS
The way it keeps you stuck in IBS is that you may start to have a part of you that identifies as being a person with IBS. Now, of course, you might say, well, of course I am a person who’s got IBS because I am someone who’s got these digestive symptoms.
That is completely true. But it’s to what extent that becomes a part of your identity and a part of your actual being. So your personality is dependent on you having IBS for you to feel like you. When we start to take those things away, it can feel really disorientating. And I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a therapist.
Sometimes it’s helpful for people to have a different space to talk that through with. But part of what I do with people is explaining how when you change your diet it can change some of the long held beliefs you’ve had about yourself. And about your body. That can be quite hard to let go of.
Does your IBS stop you engaging in life?
The other part of it is I see with some clients and this is probably less often but using their digestive issues as an excuse not to fully engage in social events or other parts of life. Because whilst those things can definitely hold you back, can stop you going on romantic dates, it can maybe hold you back from going for a promotion at work, all of those kind of things.
Absolutely, it makes sense, but sometimes it’s a protective mechanism to stop you doing things that either you’re a bit scared of. Or you’ve got some like low mood and anxiety and actually having a reason for not going out to a social event. Oh, it’s my tummy. I’m not going to go. Or my tummy’s playing up again I better not go.
Is your IBS your default position
It gives you a reason not to go to that event that actually you didn’t really want to go to anyway. Now obviously I’m not saying that is all of you. A lot of the times people are desperate to go to events and have missed important things like weddings or birthday parties because they just couldn’t get off the toilet. They just felt so awful and I felt desperate about missing the event.
But I have also seen cases where people have been using some of their issues with their tummy and their digestion to put off doing things, to put off engaging in life.
If that resonates with you, you know, I think it’s really worth just thinking about, is that part of your presentation. Like I said, obviously it is not something that everyone goes through and I don’t believe that people genuinely want to miss all of these key, important social events.
But at the same time, there are cases where people’s anxiety is showing up through their digestive symptoms and it becomes something that you can talk about and a reason to say, Why you don’t want to go to certain events.
In summary
Those five things that I’ve just mentioned there are all pretty common I would say in people what I work with or before I actually get started with them.
- fixation on supplements,
- Staying too low FODMAP or staying very restricted in their diet.
- Continuously googling and searching for the thing that is causing your symptoms. rather than looking at the basics of how you’re eating, what you’re actually eating and other things in fact that can affect your life.
- under eating and then
- over identifying as a person with IBS.
Those five things. are particularly challenging to stop or to like change in your life. I’m not saying it would be easy, but just maybe something to think about that’s not your standard IBS advice.
Work with me over 3 months
I guess I just wanted to do something and talk about some of the problems more fluffy, I don’t know if they’re fluffy, but some of the less, um, concrete examples of how IBS can affect your life. So I don’t know if that quite makes sense. What I mean is some of the aspects of IBS that are less, documented and studied and tracked and are also as key in lots of ways. It’s the sort the unseen side of IBS, I suppose, and maybe that’s something that’s resonated with you.
I know the last few episodes have been very specific about certain key topics like acid reflux and the PPIs and so on.
Do you have questions for my IBS podcast?
However, if there is a thing that you’d like me to talk more about to do with IBS to explain my thoughts on that topic and some things that you can take away and change then please get in touch.
My email address is info@goodnessme-nutrition.com. And I also will put a link to the download that you can download for free from my website where I give you my five non food strategies for dealing with IBS. Okay, I will leave it there for this week.
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of the Inside Knowledge. Better digestion for everyone.