Elimination Diet For IBS: When Should You Try It?

Author's Bio: Katie Bailey, MS, RD, LD, FNC

Hi everyone. Welcome back to our channel.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome, also known as IBS, can have a significant impact on an individual's quality of life as symptoms can often become debilitating. Although there is no one size fits all treatment for IBS an elimination diet can provide some relief while you determine the root cause of the symptoms.

So in today's video, I will be addressing what is IBS.

What is an elimination diet and how can it be beneficial for IBS?

When should you try an elimination diet for IBS?

How do you start an elimination diet?

Can you cure IBS naturally?

And what can you do to help manage IBS symptoms?

Hi, I'm Katie Bailey. I'm a Gut Health dietitian at Oswald Digestive Clinic where we help individuals improve and resolve their bothersome gut issues.

If you're interested in learning more about gut health, I'll link our free guide Five Ways to Improve Your Gut Health here.

Alright, let's get started on today's topic.

[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]

What is IBS?

IBS is a condition that is characterized by abdominal pain and changes in bowel movements such as diarrhea or constipation. With IBS, there are no abnormal findings on a colonoscopy and it's usually diagnosed using the RO four criteria once all other possible GI conditions have been ruled out. The Rome criteria requires that you have recurrent abdominal pain for at least one time per week for the last three months, and is associated with changes in the frequency and the form of your stool.

Basically, IBS is a condition of different symptoms that are going to vary from person to person. Although symptoms vary from person to person. The most common symptoms we see are abdominal pain and cramping, gas and bloating, diarrhea and constipation, nausea and indigestion.

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Now these symptoms can worsen with stress or with trigger foods and those trigger foods are going to vary from person to person as well.

Now, although there are many different possible root causes for IBS symptoms, some of the most common ones are gut dysbiosis, which is that imbalance of good and bad bacteria in the gut. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, also known as sibo, pancreatic enzyme insufficiency, and poor gut motility.

What is an elimination diet and how can it be beneficial for IBS?

So an elimination diet involves temporarily removing specific foods from your diet to see how your body responds and see if it helps to reduce your IBS symptoms. By eliminating common triggers for a period of time, usually three to six weeks, you can identify which foods worsen your symptoms and which foods help to improve them.

Common foods that individuals eliminate include gluten and dairy sugar and high FODMAP foods. Now this is going to also vary from person to person, which foods they choose to eliminate. Now after the elimination phase, foods are gradually reintroduced one at a time to see how the body responds.

And elimination diet can be beneficial by identifying your specific food triggers that may be making your symptoms worse. It could potentially reduce inflammation by removing those food intolerances that your body is responding to negatively. And elimination diet is very individualized, which can really help alleviate your specific symptoms.

So when should you try an elimination diet?

So an elimination diet for IBS can be a useful tool when other methods haven't been successful or effective. Or if you're unsure of which foods trigger your symptoms, you should consider trying an elimination diet. If you are experiencing severe IBS symptoms that are persistent and or worsening. If you suspect that you have food intolerances or sensitivities, an elimination diet can be helpful in determining or pinpointing which ones are contributing to your symptoms.

I do want to mention though that an elimination diet is not always necessary for every individual, but it can be helpful in certain circumstances to provide relief while you get to the root cause.

How do you start an elimination diet?

So starting an elimination diet requires some careful planning and preparation. Elimination diets are not meant to be long-term as they can be quite restrictive and can lead to nutritional deficiencies over time. It is recommended that you work with a professional during this phase that can help you determine which foods you should eliminate and ensure that you are meet in your nutritional needs.

The first step is to remove foods that commonly trigger IBS symptoms or foods that you know specifically trigger your symptoms for about three to six weeks, ideally until your symptoms resolve.

After completing this elimination phase, you can begin reintroducing foods back in one at a time and see how your body responds. You want to start with the least likely trigger foods and work your way up. You want to allow three to four days between each food reintroduction and track any symptoms that may occur.

If you experience symptoms after reintroducing a food, then that lets you know that maybe that food is a food trigger for you.

A question that we get a lot is,

Can you cure IBS symptoms naturally?

Ultimately the answer to this is it is possible to get rid of IBS symptoms and I'll explain why.

So IBS is a disorder where there's no structural abnormality in the digestive tract. Instead, the issue lies in the way that the gut is functioning, which is what's causing the symptoms. When you think about IBS as just a collection of symptoms, ideally if we can determine why you're having a particular symptom and address that, then it's possible for the symptom to go away.

The thought behind it is since IBS is classified by symptoms, if you no longer have symptoms, then you may no longer have IBS.

Alright, so what can we do to help manage IBS symptoms?

So ideally we want to determine the root cause of your symptoms and address this in order to get lasting results. But there are a few things that we can do in the meantime that can also be really helpful for your symptoms.

Regular Exercise

The first is to incorporate regular exercise. So we know that exercise is going to help with our gut motility as well as help reduce stress.

Adequate Sleep

You want to get adequate sleep as adequate sleep is going to help reduce stress as well.

Proper Hydration

You want proper hydration because having enough hydration is going to promote regular bowel movements and prevent constipation.

Stress Management

And you also want to practice stress management. So we know that stress is going to make our IBS symptoms worse. So really trying to do things like yoga, meditation and deep breathing can all be really helpful for helping to reduce IBS symptoms.

Modify Your Diet

Another thing you could do is to modify your diet. You may need to avoid your specific trigger foods, which you find through an elimination diet or follow low FODMAP diet just temporarily in order to find some relief of your symptoms while you work on root cause.

With IBS, it's also important to focus on your gut health and digestion. So a few other things that you can do to help with this is eating a whole foods nutrient dense diet and really trying to limit your processed foods, which are going to damage the gut lining or cause inflammation and negatively affect the diversity of your gut microbes.

You want to incorporate a variety of fiber rich foods, which are going to help promote regular bowel movements and help to feed the bacteria in your gut eating probiotic rich foods or taking a quality probiotics and or prebiotic supplement to really help restore the bacteria in your gut and improve digestion.

And then lastly, it's important to determine the root cause of the gut dysfunction, whether it be inadequate stomach acid, digestive enzymes, poor gut motility, or gut dysbiosis, just to name a few.

To wrap up our topic for today

An elimination diet can be useful as a way to identify foods that trigger your IBS symptoms and to help create an individualized IBS diet plan while you work on addressing the root cause of your symptoms.

It's important to understand that there's no one size fits all solution and IBS management often lies in finding the right combination of strategies to address an individual's root causes and imbalances, triggers and individual needs.

If you're struggling with IBS and don't really know where to get started, I highly recommend that you work with a practitioner that can help you determine if an elimination diet is right for you and help you get to the root cause of your symptoms so that you can find lasting relief.

Alright, that's it for today's video. If you liked this video, please hit the button and subscribe for more nutrition videos.

If you're interested in working with our clinic, you can click the link here to schedule an appointment. We do take insurance and you can find more information about that on our website.

Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye.

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If you'd like to explore any of this information further or obtain an individualized nutrition plan, you can schedule an initial appointment at our clinic. We also take insurance and some of our clients get full coverage, which is great.