Things are looking up

Things are looking better for my son and I am feeling a little more relieved. I put him on 1/2 dose of calcium caltrate and that has controlled his diarrhea very well. No diarrhea= no pain so he hasn't had the severe pain attacks at all. It has been 4 days. Also he is still on a pretty bland diet but I just bought him some baby food and am introducing some veggies back in. I found some chewable digestive enzymes for him to take. From what I read, people who could not tolerate most food could eat almost everything when they took this stuff. I'm still going to introduce things one at a time and am using the Eating for IBS recipe book as a guide. I know he is not back to normal quite yet as he continues to have some gas and cramping as well as queasiness. I have been giving him peppermint tea and peppermint altoids and he has been on the probiotics for two weeks which have been working great. I have to say all these remedies have worked a lot better than any prescription drug that I have given him.

We are supposed to take him in for more blood work as requested by Children's Hospital so I am hopeful they will be able to squeeze us in the near future as soon as we get those results back.

Out with the old and in with the new

I went and bought the book, Eating for IBS and have begun to make the dietary changes. Bought some soy vanilla milk, chicken breast, fat free mayo, sweet potatoes, dried mangoes and the list goes on. It looks like the recipes may be good. Tried the herb chicken one for my son , but first started him off on rice . He liked it and he is a picky eater. He was having a lot of trouble earlier yesterday with his stomach but after eating the IBS way, he is having a much better morning today. I am hopeful that this is going to help him a lot. He's had the diarrhea for 2 weeks now but it looks like it's getting a little better. He also has been on gas X and hyoscyamine too the last 2 days so they could be part of the reason for the improvement. Hard to tell. The whole family will probably make the switch to this diet because it is a lot healthier way of eating.

This particular IBS diet - can it work?

Well, my son relapsed today. Is still having lots of IBS like symptoms. I've been doing more research on it and spent a lot of time reading the IBS message boards. It's a horrible chronic problem to have and non sufferers really don't have an inkling to the seriousness of it.

I was quite excited when I came across this site: Help for IBS.com. It was very interesting and very informative. Heather Van Vorous wrote a book called Eating for IBS and she has been an IBS sufferer herself. What was interesting about this site is that she said that all food is either a stomach irritant or not. Also fiber is either soluble on insoluble. It's the insoluble that gives IBS sufferers trouble. I know my doctor told my son that he needed to eat fiber like bran and etc. Well that is the insoluble kind and can aggravate IBS symptoms. She also said the order in which you eat food was very important. Insoluble fiber is necessary in the diet so an IBS person would need to eat the soluble fiber first and then can add some insoluble toward the end of the meal . That will reduce chances for stomach upset. I am definitely going to get her book and give it a try. Seems like people have had great success with her recipes. She says that 90% of symptoms can be controlled by this diet.

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