4 Ways to Embrace IBS

For many people with IBS, a sensitive gut can feel like a ball and chain. You might go through a constant negotiation with yourself about which and how much food to limit or restrict. This experience can cause daily interference with activities and life events. You may find yourself dwelling on the foods you can’t have - or that you’re scared you can’t have - to the point where worrying about food becomes second nature. Ultimately, it’s easy to fall into a restrictive mentality and accept IBS as the status quo for your life.

However, feeling confident about food choices and enjoying new dishes is possible. While it might require putting in some time and energy upfront into establishing effective management routines, IBS doesn’t have to be an eternal sentence of constraints. Luckily, with the growing research on diet and lifestyle modifications that improve symptoms of IBS, there are ample diet resources and workarounds available to ensure someone with IBS can maintain a great quality of life. The key is to use knowledge as power – understand your symptoms, your diet, and life triggers, and the tools available to help, so you can prevent your IBS symptoms without continually feeling restricted!

Identify IBS triggers

The first step to freedom with IBS is knowing your unique IBS, as best as you possibly can. This involves doing some detective work (which you may have already started) to reap major rewards for symptom management. Consider your answers to the following:

• What are your symptoms? Can you describe the specific patterns you experience?
• Have you determined any foods that trigger your symptoms?
• Have you determined which foods make you feel great?
• How certain are you of the relationship between each food and your symptoms?
• Have you determined any lifestyle factors that contribute to your symptoms, or prevent them? How certain are you about these?

Depending on your body, the length of time you’ve experienced symptoms, and the length of time you’ve spent investigating them, these answers could have varying degrees of clarity at this point. If there’s uncertainty, consider pushing yourself to start identifying triggers and answering these questions. The more you can learn about your sensitivities, the more power you have to manage and control them!

Don't do it alone

The key here is to work with healthcare professionals, such as IBS-trained registered dietitian nutritionists, gastroenterologists, and psychotherapists, to get the most accurate answers that you can. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed when IBS interferes with your daily life, but professionals can help you overcome frustration as you work together to understand your triggers and flare-ups. Consider booking a consultation with a specialist that can help you investigate and manage what bothers you the most. Build a team you trust, so you don’t enter into a solo guessing game that could lead you in the wrong direction.

Does “no” have to be the answer?

Have you accepted restrictions as the status quo in your life? Even if you feel like you’ve had the same sensitivities for many years, it can be worth revisiting and reviewing them to ensure things haven’t changed (or can’t change) for you. Since our bodies, diets, and environment shift over time, an updated snapshot may provide new information or eliminate unnecessary restrictions for you. For example, if you’ve avoided nuts forever, why not work with a dietitian to determine if this is definitely necessary for you, and if it’s truly all nuts?

If you’ve accepted you get bloated after dinner, why not try to see if there is a modifiable reason for this? If you worry about travel or can’t even travel, why not see if a professional can help make this feasible for you? Utilize professional resources to take a fresh look at your management plan. It’s a new year, why not see if there’s anything that could make it a better one than the last?

Get liberated about your IBS

Understanding patterns between diet, lifestyle, and IBS symptoms can take some experimentation to reveal, but once you do, it’s some pretty exciting stuff! You need not accept a feeling of imprisonment with your symptoms; seek help in understanding them, so you can feel liberated and supported. If you’re unsure of what precisely causes your symptoms, you may be unnecessarily avoiding a lot of extra foods or activities. Read more to focus on what you can do to have a flexible management plan and life with IBS.