Curing IBS with a Better Diet

IBS is a very common problem. Infact it will affect 20% of people at some stage in their life and a little fact for you - it will affect twice as many women as men. But what causes IBS?


Well unfortunately no one has a concrete answer - no one knows for sure! What is known is that the are many contributing factors to IBS such as stress, nerves, potetenial food allergies and diet. Looking at these 5 potential causes of IBS, 3 out of the 5 are food related! That indicates to me that food is a very big contributing factor in IBS so it is a very wise decision to start your process of elimination with a change in diet. It is the easiest and cheapest way way of finding out the cause of your problem and whats more if it doesn't resolve it, you have eliminated 3 out of 5 of the most common causes of IBS. So where do you start?

The best starting point is to cut down on your sugar and fibre. Fibre was once thought to be great at easing IBS symptoms but recent studies have shown that it infact can make IBS worse. The reason being is that fibre is not absorbed into the body and so remains in the gut. While in the gut it can ferment, cause gas, wind and stomach bloating to name but a few! After I cut out fibre and sugar I saw the results within days.

Cutting out fibre and sugar are not as easy as you think. You would be surprised the amount of foods that they are in - especially sugar. It is hidden everywhere. High sugar fruits are the best thing to eliminate because of their fibre and sugar content - that may surprise you but its true.

As I have previously mentioned, I was a sufferer of IBS for many years and it wasn't until my wedding that I decided to go on a diet. I took on the Atkins diet. As you know low carb diets are (as a rule) low in sugar and fibre. I ate mainly green veg and had three meals a day and within 2 days my IBS had practically cleared up. Obviously there are a lot of other things that you need to implement such as water intake and a decent diet plan but this problem can be easily resolved.

A few articles that have been written which relate to this can be found below:

• Causes of a Bloated Stomach After Eating
• Why a Low Carb Diet Can Cure You Gurgling Stomach
• Goodbye IBS

I hope that you get as many benefits from a change in diet as I did.

Why Eating Less Fruit Can Ease Your Loud Stomach Noises

Eating fruit is clearly very good for you. For those of us who suffer from very loud stomach noises (particularly after you have eaten) it is very wise to try eliminating high sugar fruit from your diet for a few days to see how you get on with it.

I have often written that when I removed high sugar fruit from my diet I saw a massive improvement - literally straight away. It is a very good idea to stick to fruits that are lower in sugar and increase your vegetable intake to compensate for the reduction in fruit. As I have said before this may not work for everyone but for the majority of people that I have spoken to - it has worked well.

High sugar fruits and juices to temporarily eliminate are:

• Apples
• Oranges
• Grapes
• Fruit juice drink
• Dates
• Banana
• Mango

I am not suggesting that you eliminate these permanently, this is a temporary measure to see whether there is any improvement in your stomach noises and/or pain.

Take a look at this article which gives a good insite in fruits and their sugar content. Using this as a basis will help you choose correctly and wisely the fruits that you would like to eliminate. For further information on Low Sugar Fruit and Vegetables then this is also a great article. For a great diet/plan then take a look at the CURE IBS page.

How to Cure Loud Stomach Noises

After eating, loud stomach noises are more common than many people think. This can be a very embarrassing problem for those it affects, I know as I was one of these people. Many have visited doctors and written food diaries but still have had no luck. Many people are wrongly diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and sent on their way by their doctors - again I was one of these people.

The embarassment of the loud stomach noises became too much after a while so I took it upon myself to research this problem and find a cure for myself, I didn't believe that this could be IBS and if it was then I believed that this could be cured with a better planned diet. This is a digestive food related problem so it HAS to have a food/diet related solution!

It took me several months of reading the logic behind diets like the Atkins, Low GI, Low Fat Diets and caveman diets to come up with my strategy. If there was one thing that I got from all of these books it was that we are not eating natural foods anymore, we are not eating what we are designed to eat. We are designed to eat like cavemen - Meat, Vegetables, Fish, Fruit, Nuts and Seeds. That is all that a caveman could really eat, that is what our body is designed to eat. Do you honestly think that our body is designed to eat bread, pasta, refined sugars, refined carbohydrates. I agree, the body is able to digest them but not in the quantity that we consuming them. So there is my strategy - to cure my loud stomach noises I was going to eat like a caveman, I was going to limit my food intake to basically meat, vegetables and natural foods.

The other major problem that I discovered was our sugar intake. Our sugar intake is incredibly high and most people are consuming far more than their recomended daily allowance of sugar (90g for women 120g for men). This is a major factor in digestion and in a lot of foods such as fruit we are consuming very acidic, sugary foods which does not go down well with a sensitive stomach. This is a big cause of gas and wind and will cause a gurgling stomach noises.

I gave this two weeks and was very strict with what I ate, I gave myself a selection of 5 low sugar, low carb vegetables and didn't stray from these. I gave myself a selection of meats such as as chicken, beef, lamb, turkey and pork and all non smoked fish. I also gave myself eggs, cheese a little milk in my tea and coffee (although this was limited to 2-3 cups a day). For lunch I gave myself all leaves, radish, onion, celery and peppers. These foods alone gave me a wide variety of meals for two weeks. For example; a wide variety of salads for lunch, omelettes and sausages for breakfast, meat and vegetables for dinner. It was a high protein, low carb, low sugar diet. I ate smaller portions so I was never bloated but never hungry.

Within no time at all my loud stomach noises had gone - it was completely cured. My visits to the toilet were far fewer, I had far less wind, I no longer had a bloated stomach or diarrea and work was far less embarrassing for me. This was a total success - better than I could ever have hoped! I am now six months on and I have slowly introduced more foods a week at a time, I know what does agree with me and what doesn't.

I have written a full write up and step by step guide of how to cure loud stomach noises so take a look. I still hear the digestion noises if I eat things like apples or oranges but I know now to avoid them. If you are a sufferer of this problem then PLEASE try this. It costs nothing but will power and you have nothing to lose. The only thing you will need is maybe a suitable cookbook to give your meals variety but this link is also on my article.

Good luck and let me know how you get on.

Why Drinking Water Helps You Lose Weight

It sounds like a contradiction but drinking more water will avoid water retention and weight gain. Basically drinking more water aids weight loss.

When you diet and begin to lose a few pounds, most of this is water weight. It varies with each individual but once you lose over 7 pounds your body begins to panic and immediately thinks "prepare for famine" - in a sense it goes into 'starvation mode'. You must remember that the bodies primary goal is survival, nothing else, so losing weight and losing water worries the body and it will begin to retain everything it can from both food and drink to avoid losing any mroe weight. This is why a lot of dieters lose the first 7 - 10 pounds and then their weight loss stalls. This is the phase where the body is retaining everything it can for survival.

How do we get around this? Basically you need to reassure the body, give it as much water as possible to tell it that there is nothing to worry about. This stall in weight loss could last up to week (again varies with each individual) but its perfectly natural, its the bodies way of adjusting to your new weight, it needs to reassure itself that it is getting enough water and to reassure it that it isn't heading for starvation. Drinking water through this will reassure the body.
How much water should I drink? As a general rule of thumb we should try to drink around 8 glasses of water a day, some say 2 litres a day. The problem is most people find water boring, and lets be honest - it is! It doesn't taste of anything but it is vital for good health so we need to find ways of sneaking it into our daily routine without noticing.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you have a pattern in your daily routine of when you drink?
• Do you always have a coffee when you get up?
• Do you always have a drink with your meals?
• Do you always have a drink before you go to bed?

If you answer yes to any of these you can easily substitute some of these drinks for a glass of water. For example; have glass when you wake up, have a glass when you go to bed and one with your lunch. Are any of you drinks fruit juice, or diluted quash? Change these for water, you will find as time goes on you will be drinking it without noticing. Set yourself a target of 4 glasses a day and promise yourself you will have these 4 glasses for a week at least, at the end of the week increase your intake to 5 glasses a day. Build it up slowly, sneak it into your daily routine and you will feel better for it.

I read an interesting post in a forum the other day. A young girl (in her twenties) had lost a stone in her first month of dieting, she continued this for 3 months and lost a further stone. During this time she was eating a low sugar and low carb diet, she had substituted all her diet cola drink for water during this time and just had a few mugs of coffee a day - all was going well. A week into the fourth month of her diet she continued to eat the same foods in the same quantities but increased her intake of diet cola to 10 cans a day! This was the same amount that she used to drink before dieting. In the two weeks that followed she put on 7 pounds!!! The body was shocked into not getting its usual healthy intake of water so again began to retain what it could. I would like to see what would have happened if she continued to drink the same water - my guess is that her weight would have remained the same.

5 Ways to Cut Down On Sugar

Sugar is everywhere at the minute. Everything we eat has hidden sugars in, and the more we eat the higher the risk we have of developing such diseases as Diabetes and Heart Disease not to mention the many benefits that you will feel in cutting it down in your diet. So I thought I would write 5 steps to cut down on your sugar.

• Buy Low Fat Products: Low fat products are lower in fat but higher in sugar. If a manufacturer has '25% LESS FAT' what have they replaced that 25% with? SUGAR - nearly always!! If you dont believe me take a look on the back of the product.


• Remove Added Sugar From Your Hot Drinks: Many of you will think you can't do it, but you can - if you want to. They say you should try something 12 times before you can say that you definately dont like it but in this case I want you to try it for 12 days. I used to drink approximately 7 cups of tea or coffee every day at work, 1 when I woke up and at least another 2 when I got home so I was nearly having 10 hot drinks a day each with a teaspoon of sugar in. A teaspoon of sugar weighs approximately 4 grams, so multiply this by 10 and I was getting 40 grams of sugar a day in just my hot drinks!! That was a third of my daily intake without thinking about it - thats before I ate anything!!! I wont lie, cutting sugar out my drinks did take me a while to get used to, a few weeks in fact, but i didn't back down and now I dont miss that sugar in my tea or coffee at all.


• Change or Eliminate Deserts After Dinner: How many of you have a desert after dinner? Even if you have 1 or 2 a week, then dont. Having a desert after a meal is basically just a sugar hit. These deserts though are lovely I know, and are your treat. If you feel you can't give them up just yet, what about if you changed your deserts to have less sugary treats? For example my girlfriend and I used to love chocolate in the evening - maybe a couple of times a week, when we were cutting down we changed the type of chocolate we were eating. We had very dark chocolate, between 80% - 85% cocoa. This has very little sugar in it as very little is added. Whats more as it is so rich we only wanted a square or 2. It is amazing, I urge you to buy some and try it. Like most things it takes a while to get used it (try something 12 times before you say you dont like it). This massively reduces your sugar intake.


• Analyse your breakfast: What do you have for breakfast? Do you have breakfast? If you dont have breakfast then start! It stops any mid morning cravings for food, any hunger and makes you feel a lot better. If you have breakfast then what are you having? Are you having cereal? If so look at the sugar, how many grams are you getting, remember that 90g a day is your limit. Cereals are nearly always very high in sugar. Try cooking something for breakfast, or some brown bread or toast. Stay away from those cereals, pastries and skipping it all together. It is the most important meal of the day for a reason. I used to snack terribly, once I started having breakfast it completely stopped.


• Cut out Condiments: Condiments are terrible for sugar. Tomato sauce alone is very high in sugar, but tomatoes themself are not! Take a look on line or in any recipe book and try to make your own and look how much is added. Look how much sugar is in your sauce PER 100g and this gives you the percentage of sugar. Do you really need as much as you are getting? Instead of salad dressing, try some olive oil, try some lemon juice or lime juice. Make your own salad dressing!

These are 5 simple steps to cutting down on sugar. Your body is addicted to sugar so it is never going to be easy but these steps can begin to improve your health. Try not to think of cutting it down for ever, give yourself small targets. Promise yourself you will do it for a month, see how you feel, if you genuinely are happy with some or all of the cut outs then carry them on, if you are struggling then promise yourself one more week. If you think you definately can't live without condiments, then maybe look at alternatives for that (I will cover this in later posts). If you feel you definately don't miss sugar in your drink then GREAT - thats what we want, thats a massive cut down. Little and often is a great way to do this.

Good luck, if you need a hand contact me....

Sugars Link to Epilepsy

I am an epileptic, was first diagnosed around 15 years ago and take medication twice daily for this. I was never an epileptic who had seizures daily, in fact I rarely had them once diagnosed because my epilepsy is and was completely controlled through medication. With that being said, if I dont take my medication I know that I haven't - I need it, I can feel my mind acting slightly different. It is one of the hardest things to describe but if you are epileptic I am sure that you can relate to what I am saying, my mind feels kind of distant. Before I was diagnosed and my epilepsy was not yet controlled I was having an 'episode' each day. I have the petit mal form of epilepsy if you are wondering.

After a conversation with my friend about the dangers of sugar I began to look into the effect it could possibly have on epilepsy. I knew that sugar causes and accelerates so many of todays diseases so thought it must be logical that epilepsy might also be affected from a high sugar diet. After a lot of research I discovered that there have been remarkable tests and studies in recent years that strongly suggest that a high sugar intake will increase your likelyhood of a seizure. When I first started to look into this I was shocked to say the least, the more I read the more I wanted to find out.

The strongest article that I found was here. This test goes to show a young girl who had seizures up to twice a day over a 15 year period. The Doctor put the patient through a 6 hour glucose tolerance test, during the 4th hour her blood sugar level dropped considerably and she had a seizure. This then showed that her seizures were triggered when her blood sugar level dropped considerably. From that day she was put on balanced diet keeping her blood sugar level controlled, this involved eating the correct low sugar foods and eating at the same time. Since that time (2 years ago) she has only had 1 seizure whereas before she would have had over 700!!! The one time she did have a seizure was after she drank a large quantity of orange juice (massively high in sugar).

Could epilepsy be linked to a with levels of sugar in our diet? After further research I found studies to suggest that epilepsy is not caused by a high sugar diet and nor can it be cured by it, but it certainly makes it far far worse. Have you ever heard or read about children having too much sugar that it makes them hyperactive? Well this is same the situation here, very basically - have too much sugar and your brain becomes hyperactive, your brain short circuits and causes you to fit. An epileptic is not able to deal with this rise in hyperactivty.

To add weight to this sugar and epilepsy argument; I recently read a of a study where 5 epileptic individuals fasted for 5 days drinking nothing but water. During this time not one of them had a seizure, when food was slowly re-introduced their seizures returned. This is further evidence that eliminating sugar does not cure your eplipesy but it can massively reduce any attacks.


I myself have taken a different approach to my diet and found amazing results. I stopped eating sugary puddings, sweets, I carefully watched what fruit I ate, for example I only ate low sugar fruits, I no longer ate refined carbohydrates - for example, changing white bread for brown. I make sure that I eat 3 meals a day, even if I am not hungry. The results have to be seen to be believed, I feel 100 times better and anyone who is affected by epilepsy or knows of someone that is then I would look at your diet and the amount of sugar you consume. Lets not forget there are so many hidden sugars in food now you are probably eating more than you know. I think that basically eating too much sugar is having a massive effect on epilepsy, we need a level blood sugar level, a healthy diet and a steady 3 meals.

As with any change of diet you obviously should consult your doctor. I am not a doctor I am just publishing my experience and thoughts, I hope it helps. For further help and advice on Epilepsy I have added a couple of links to epilepsy forums. Check them out, it is a good place to exchange experiences and discussions in the forum. Many people here also have had a similar experience relating to sugar and epilpesy.