Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)

Diet plays a huge role when it comes to natural remedies for IBS. Because what we eat plays such a key role in the curing and prevention of IBS, we have included this expanded article outlining the Natural Cures Healing Food Plan, which can be printed out for your easy reference.

Changing your diet
Choosing to upgrade to a healthier diet is one of the most life enhancing decisions you can make, and one that in this day and age is essential to both prevent and reverse illness. This means choosing to eat a selection of foods aimed specifically at healing and avoiding those foods that can undermine your healing process or cause stress to your digestive system. Natural healing foods taste delicious, and have a higher level of nutrients and vibration than the typical meal eaten on the SAD diet, the standard American diet.

Give it time
During the first month or two, allow for a gradual transition from your usual way of eating, to an organic whole foods plan. Be gentle, yet ruthless with yourself, realizing that what you eat has a significant effect on your energy levels, your overall health, and your ability to heal.

What to Eat
Vegetables
Eat the freshest organic fruits and vegetables available, with a strong emphasis on steamed, raw, or juiced dark leafy greens such as kale, collards, chard, bok choy, spinach, and other regional greens. Choose from a broad range of vegetables, rotating your selection and experimenting with a wide variety of fresh seasonal produce. Broccoli, squash, tomatoes and avocados are great staples. Use lettuces of every color and shape to create salads of great variety and diversity. Eat as many raw and lightly steamed vegetables and fresh salads as you can digest.

Note: With digestive issues such as IBS, pureed vegetables could be an excellent option for you. Eating blended foods is less work for the system because the food is already partially broken down. Although it is unnecessary to chew blended food, it is still important to move each bite of food around in your mouth before swallowing to activate saliva’s role in digestion.

Proteins
Enjoy a fist-sized serving of protein per meal, which translates to approximately 2-6 oz of preferably organic protein. Non-vegetarians may choose from free-range poultry, preferably turkey, wild-caught fish that are low in mercury, and the meats of bison, lamb, and cow. Depending on your individual needs, consider limiting your intake of organic red meat to one serving every four days. It is very important to only consume red meat that is organic, due to the toxic build up stored in the fat of flesh. Fish such as blue fish, cod, Greenland halibut, mackerel, and wild caught salmon are excellent sources of both healthy protein and fats. Avoid the following: farm-raised salmon, because of the antibiotics and food dyes they contain; tuna, which is high in mercury; and shellfish, which contain a high degree of contaminants.

Excellent organic vegetarian protein sources include free range eggs, tempeh, occasional tofu, legumes and beans, especially red lentils, French green lentils, and black, aduki and mung beans. When preparing beans for best flavor and easy digestion, we recommend soaking overnight in purified water, draining and then rinsing the beans before cooking. Handful sized servings of soaked and rinsed nuts and seeds, such as hemp, pumpkin and sunflower seeds are especially beneficial. Flax seeds make great additions to smoothies, and also can be ground and dehydrated, or low-heat baked, into delicious crackers.

Complex Carbohydrates
For sustained energy, eat complex carbohydrates in the form of legumes, red potatoes, squash, yams, and whole grains such as brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat or millet. We suggest limiting your overall carbohydrate intake to 30 percent or less of the foods you eat at each meal. This means increasing your vegetables and protein quantities if necessary, to balance out the complex carbohydrates.

How to prepare and season your food
Steam vegetables in purified water until slightly tender, or lightly sauté in coconut oil, or water and shoyu. Enjoy homemade soups, and try pressure cooking for speed and nutrient retention, especially when experimenting with legumes and beans.

Season veggies and whole cooked grains with fresh and dried herbs, sea salt, or organic soy sauce, also known as shoyu or the wheat-free version, called tamari. Sea Salt is an important addition to the diet, and should replace commercial or refined table salt. Additional seasonings include a wide variety of fresh or dried herbs, gomasio, powdered or chopped sea vegetables, such as dulse, as well as many other interesting powders and condiments found on health food store shelves. Garlic, ginger, cayenne pepper, chili peppers, and onions can be enjoyed regularly for their great flavor and immune-boosting properties.

The preferred oil for cooking and/or baking is raw, organic coconut oil.  Extra virgin olive oil, high lignin flax seed oil, or hemp seed oil can be drizzled on steamed vegetables, cooked whole grains, and used as the base for homemade salad dressings. Many health stores carry a raw nut butter called tahini, which is made up of pureed sesame seeds; tahini is a delicious healthy plant fat, and makes a great base for salad dressings, dips or spreads.

Nutritional Boosts
Live Cultured Foods
Live cultured foods are a delicious and valuable addition to your diet. Eat raw, live cultured vegetables such as unpasteurized sauerkraut, kim chi, as well as cultured dairy products such as yogurt and kefir. Be sure to choose organic dairy products, and choose raw dairy whenever possible. (Look for the soon to be completed recipes for Kefir and yogurt making.)

Vegetable Juices
Freshly made vegetable juices add a powerful nutritional boost to your food plan. Juice made from a wide variety of seasonal vegetables are delicious, and essential to healing, and a great preventative tool when used as an ongoing supplement to any diet. See recipe section for ideas.

Sea Vegetables, Asian Foods and Broths
Asian foods such as miso, ume plum, and a wide array of sea vegetables are fantastic nutrient rich foods. Sea Vegetables vary in flavor and texture, making them fun to experiment with; they also offer an abundance of natural iodine, which is of the utmost of importance to support our glandular systems, especially the thyroid. Miso makes a delicious flavoring in salad dressings, dips, sauces, spreads, and as the classic, miso soup.

Healing broths are packed with delicious live giving minerals and can be sipped like tea or eaten as soup. Make your own delicious vegetable broth simply by cooking down an abundance of fresh organic vegetables in purified water. Miso soup, strained vegetable broth, broths from the seaweeds wakame, hijiki, andkombu, as well as fish and meat broths, are healing and easy to digest, making them especially valuable for any digestive problems.

Water
Throughout the day, drink plenty of pure, filtered water; drink at least half an ounce of water for every pound you weigh. Avoid drinking – as well as bathing, and showering in – unfiltered tap water, as tap water contains heavy metals and pesticide residues that can settle in high concentrations in our organs.

Allergy Testing
Undergo testing for potential food allergies and sensitivities, and avoid all foods to which you are allergic or sensitive. Common allergy-causing foods include milk and all dairy products, soy, chocolate, corn, and wheat products. Consider a rotation diet or elimination diet in order to further reduce the likelihood of food allergies, especially if you cannot get tested right away.

What to Avoid
Refined Sugar and Flour, Artificial Food, Soy Foods
Eliminate all refined sugar and sugar products, along with empty carbohydrate foods such as commercial white flour, found in white breads, bagels, muffins, pastries, cookies and pastas. Also consider omitting whole grain wheat and wheat byproducts from your diet for several months. Wheat is a highly allergic food, and can be the root cause of a wide variety of digestive troubles. As the weeks go by, notice if you feel better; if yes, consider eliminating wheat for a year, giving your aggravated digestion a long deserved break. Choosing alternatives such as spelt, kamut, and rye will give your body a rest from a lifetime of eating wheat and can offer a major energy boost.

Choose to eat a minimum of processed soy products. By far, the best of all soy foods are fresh or frozen edame and tempeh, a fermented soy product that is less processed and easier to digest than other soy products. Stop eating all “junk” and commercially processed foods, as well as all foods containing artificial ingredients, additives, colorings, flavorings, and preservatives (such as carrageenan, BHA, BHT, sodium nitrite, sulfites, saccharin, aspartame, and cyclamates).

Inorganic Dairy, Excess Caffeine or Alcohol, Hydrogenated Fats
Stay clear of inorganic milk and dairy products, including yogurt and cheese. If consuming dairy, always choose organic dairy products and if available, raw organic dairy products. Toxins are stored in fats, so choosing organic is especially important in the case of dairy and meat.

Minimize your intake of coffee and other caffeine based products, such as soda and soft drinks spiked with caffeine. Avoid commercial non-herbal teas, and excess alcohol. Do not eat saturated, trans-, hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated fats and oils. Margarine and shortening are made from these and are to be eliminated.

For some plagued with IBS, a raw food diet could be extremely beneficial; for others, raw food may not be the best choice. Each person responds differently based on their individual chemistry and the depth of the condition being healed. To learn more, read about the Raw Food Diet. You can printout this full article for easy reference. Numerous books are available to give you a bigger overview of how eating raw and live foods might be the perfect healing path. Healing Inflammatory Bowel Disease by Paul Nison addresses this issue directly and describes how he healed his disease by eating raw foods. See the recommended books section for other titles.

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet – A dietary approach that has been found to be effective in the majority of IBS cases is called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. It was developed by Elaine Gottschall, M.Sc., in an effort to help her four year-old daughter heal her own colitis symptoms, and is based on the research of the late Sidney V. Haas, M.D., who discovered that most gastrointestinal disorders are caused by an imbalance of carbohydrates in relationship to the microorganisms that naturally occur in the gastrointestinal tract.

According to Dr. Haas, when this relationship becomes unbalanced, the microorganisms grow unchecked and release toxins, causing malabsorption of food, and especially poor digestion of carbohydrates, a staple of the Western diet. To reverse this trend, Haas, and later, Gottschall developed the strict dietary regimen that comprises the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Based on her work with hundreds of patients with severe gastrointestinal disorders, Gottschall has found that the diet can yield complete results in as little as three weeks, but only if it is completely adhered to. Its eating guidelines are as follows:

Avoid: All processed, smoked or canned meats, breaded or canned fish, seaweed, processed cheeses, seeds, potatoes, yams, parsnips, chick peas, bean sprouts, soybeans, mung beans, fava beans, as well as all cereal grains in any form, including flour. Avoid milk, and all products commercially made from milk, dried milk solids, buttermilk or acidophilus milk, commercially prepared yogurt, sour cream and ice cream. Do not consume soymilk, instant tea, coffee, coffee substitutes, beer, cornstarch, arrowroot, chocolate, carob, bouillon cubes, instant soup bases, any product made with refined sugar, agar-agar, carrageenan, pectin, ketchup, molasses, corn and maple syrup, any flour made from legumes, and baking powder.

Eat: Fresh or frozen, preferably organic meats, poultry, wild caught fish, organic eggs, organic milk and products made from organic milk such as cheeses, homemade yogurt prepared at low temperatures from organic milk, and dry curd cottage cheese. Choose from a wide variety of freshly prepared, preferably organic vegetables. Vegetables and fruits are the main stay of this food plan. Use no canned foods with the exception of salt-free canned red salmon, white albacore tuna or sardines, only on occasion. Daily juicing of fresh green vegetables is an important addition for healing and offers you deep nutritional nourishment. With this and all illness, providing yourself with the most supportive nutritional profile possible is of primary importance.

Abide by this diet for as long as your symptoms persist. Adherence can be challenging, but maintenance is essential to obtain the desired results.

Supplements:

Useful supplements for IBS include vitamin A, zinc, and evening primrose oil, as well as probiotics such as acidophilus andBifidobacteria.
Two other highly effective supplements are fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) and soil-based organisms. FOS is an all-natural carbohydrate microorganism that has been shown by researchers to serve as a fertilizing agent that enables Bifidobacteria to thrive in the large intestine, where it helps to protect against harmful bacteria.

Soil-based organisms are beneficial microbes found in soil. Taken as a supplement, they go to work to detoxify the gastrointestinal tract while eliminating fungi, molds, parasites, viruses, and yeasts. They also help to improve the absorption of nutrients and to improve both immune and overall cell function, including the production of RNA and DNA. In addition, they also act as natural antioxidants.

Prescription and non-prescription medication:

What non-prescription and prescription drugs are you taking?  Your non-prescription and prescription are partially the reason that you have this illness or disease – you need to get off these medications, but do so only under the guidance of a licensed health care practitioner.

The next part on natural remedies for IBS is all around diet.