IBS and pre-diabetes

In my experience NHS dieticians are a waste of time . I have seen three and could have made a better job of it myself. Cut out all sugar where possible and this includes fruits like too many grapes pineapple and even bananas. At the same time I avoid all bread and rolls apart from Tesco high protein small loaf and I just have a slice . Beware of hidden sugars like in sauces , Indian sauces can be high and things like chicken in breadcrumbs or pastry. Do a bit of research online and you will get plenty of advice.

I have IBD - Crohn's colitis which, when flaring, means that dashing to the loo is all I do do so I know how you feel.

I too was in need of dietary advice - not so much for weight loss - just knowing which foods didn't cause or aggravate inflammation.

Technically, I am a lacto vegetarian but eat very little dairy mostly just fruit and vegetables. I was advised to cut back on fruit and most vegetables, to eat only white foods: white rice, white bread, potato ... which sounded like a recipe for weight gain. I had put on a little weight through having to take high doses of cortico steroids to treat the IBD but expected this to fall away once I was off them.

I came across Andrew Taylor aka SpudFit - a man who decided to break his self-confessed food addiction by eating only plain potato for a year. I started to chat to him about the anti inflammatory properties of potato and was convinced enough to try the diet.

His rationale about weight loss diets is that most make you think about food all the time: what to shop for, calories, treats, what to feed the family while you are dieting, feeling hungry, cravings etc etc none of this good if you are addicted to food. He figured that if you make your diet as bland as it can possibly be you soon stop thinking about food. You use the time you would otherwise be using to plan meals, shop and cook, on other things.

I imagine people reading this are feeling very sceptical. I did too. But seeing as I had been told to eat white foods including potato, needed to give my colon a rest, needed to get my high inflammation markers down and wanted to lose the steroid weight I decided to give it a try.

I ate nothing but mashed and baked potato for two months. I found it quite easy. I'm not that interested in food, dislike grocery shopping and cooking. That I could buy a big sack of spuds, bake them in the microwave or boil up some mash was appealing, very easy and very cheap.

I lost three stone as easily as anything and hadn't felt so well in ages. Potatoes are bland but very nutritious. bit.ly/2oqtZlq

There is a ton of stuff online about this. There's Andrew's own website and a lot of blogs from people who have tried the SpudFit challenge ... this one for example bit.ly/2uaiQJY

I'm aware that people with diabetes are advised not to eat a lot of carbs. Dr Neal Barnard has an opposing view. bit.ly/2MUHbet

You don't have to do it for a year as Andrew did although his eight stone weight loss is impressive. Just a month could clean up your digestive system, calm your colon to help reduce the IBS symptoms and trigger some weight loss to get you on the road to feeling better.

I mentioned the diet to a hospital nutritionalist. He was horrified but it was clear he was of the all-carbs-are-bad school. All I can say is that my subsequent blood test results were good, I lost weight and felt great so it worked well for me.

I’m not coeliac but went gluten free to see if it made any difference, as I’d noticed that certain foods definitely triggered IBS. Barley was the worst culprit, which I always used to add to soups and casseroles. Going gf changed my life completely! No more full on IBS. Still find certain veg can be an issue.

I'm not coeliac but bread definitely has an adverse affect on my digestive system which is why I wasn't happy about the eat bread advice - see above. I don't know whether it's gluten or simply that the wheat used in bread today bears little resemblance to the original plant. It has been modified so much to resist weather, disease and produce better yields. I am not convinced that our bodies have evolved to cope with the changes.

The FODMAP is also a good resource for IBS although again, everyone is different and we need to identify our own specific trigger foods. www.ibsdiets.org/fodmap-diet/fodmap-food-list/

That is true, I can eat some of those on the FODMAP list but not others.

I am T2 and often suffer IBS symptoms loperamide is my best friend.
I can't work out my food triggers, there dosen't seem to be a pattern to it. The only thing I've stopped is OJ or anything orange flavoured as that is a trigger.
Despite eating healthily I can't loose weight

My sympathies ninathenana

Try contacting the IBS network www.theibsnetwork.org/
They have a diet section and they have also produced an excellent recipe book too.
I have IBS as the result of another illness but I've found that eating less processed foods has improved my system. That said I still carry out a check on toilet availability whenever I leave the house! You never know!!!!

Yes, I have joined their network.
When I am at home I can eat more healthily even if I know I will have to dash to the loo. But if I know I am going out in the evening, or am out during the day, I have to eat much more carefully and usually this means more carbs eg a ham roll with lettuce and red and yellow peppers is fine, but a salad especially with tomatoes is not. I have learned to avoid cauliflower and raw tomatoes, yet broccoli and green beans are fine.

A specialist once reluctantly admitted to me that 50% of the people with IBS are actually made worse by the kind of healthy food they are advised to eat for their condition and life in general. I do not have IBS, but I have found - as many above have stated here - that some so-called healthy fruits and vegetables can have an unpleasant effect on some family members, including the normally-robust ones. I think it is time for dieticians to consider being less rigid in their advice and start helping people find what works for them, optimising healthy food without a blanket ban on carbs or anything which works for living your life in comfort and confidence.

At an appointment with a nurse re overactive bladder, I mentioned this issue and she referred me on to another nurse in the clinic who is a specialist in bowels. So I had an hour with her. What a privilege to have a whole hour on the NHS to talk about my health and lifestyle!
I am determined to follow her advice as the next steps are not ones I relish. I am not going to give Too Much Information.

Like Squiffy I found IBS just disappeared when I eliminated gluten from my diet. It was like a magic wand.

I've always cooked from scratch if possible which is good because GF processed foods can be high in sugar - not good for pre-diabetes. Now I've re-introduced fruit to my diet with no ill effects.

I'm glad it worked for you but I am a type 2 diabetic already and baked and mashed potatoes are some of the worst foods you can eat. I recently had my yearly check up and my blood results were up a bit. I realised over the last three months over the summer I had got a bit complacent with my diet and resolved to be more careful in future. The diabetic nurse suggested I make an appointment with the wellbeing service at the surgery and I had over an hour with someone who looked at my diet measured my overall body stats like fat, muscle mass etc and gave me lots of information and advice. Maybe worth asking if your surgery does the same. I've decided it would be good to try and lose a bit more weight too and am arranging to see her again in Sept. She was very helpful and friendly

I'm pre-diabetic and have IBS and am absolutely confused about what I should and should not be eating. But I do know that bread is the worst thing for me and always triggers stomach problems. Cutting down on sugars, many of which are hidden, is really difficult.
I'll check out some of the websites mentioned above.

It's all very confusing out there what's best to eat and not to eat. I have abdo and bowel adhesions from surgery and my problems are very akin to IBS , and I'm of the age where I could probably be pre-diabetic (I'm sure a heck of a lot of people are without realising) .

Therefore, I am better following a low fibre (residue) diet, but of course in doing so I lose out on helpful fibre, but too much of the stuff really gives me problems.
And of course a low fibre diet is totally wrong for diabetics. It's sort of a no win really. I constantly worry about what and what not to eat.
Nightmare.

Sheena on a recent edition of The Food Programme on R4 someone said that he had decided to ignore the NHS advice to have a third of the plate full of carbs and as a result he had lost a lot of weight and was no longer diabetic. I have a friend who is Type 2 and she totally agrees. Apparently a lot of people think the advice given to diabetics about carbs is wrong.

I understand from my husband who has been Type 2 for some years, that the latest advice is not too many carbs but more protein.
He hardly ever eats bread, has a salad every lunchtime Mon- Friday, we both eat a balanced evening meal, meat or fish and veg, but he has lots of potatoes, new in summer, mashed in winter, plenty of veg but no fruit. He is not keen on pasta or rice as they send his blood sugar too high, but occasionally we do have a stir fry or spaghetti Bolognese.
Generally he keeps very well, with his diabetes and has lost weight. He has no IBS issues.

My DH has just been diagnosed as being in the low end of being pre-diabetic. I spoke to the doctor and said that I'd been reading the Blood Sugar Diet Recipe book based on Dr Michael Mosley's work. He was advocating an 8 week diet but you can just follow the general ideas to change your lifestyle. Our doc said the principles were good but we didn't need to be very aggressive about cutting carbs, just to cut down. There are lots of good tips and ideas in the book as well as useful recipes. It's the basic guidance that I was really interested in. I don't know how it works alongside IBS but for anyone in a pre-diabetic situation, I'd really recommend it.