IBS and Food Intolerance

My husband has just got over another serious bout of IBS. We are absolutely sure that it is triggered by eating wholegrains.....over a period of days after eating wholegrains he gets a build up of gas (keeps burping!) then gets a tightness in his chest and acid reflux, and then lots of noise in his stomach and finally severe cramping. If he doesn't eat the wholegrain it doesn't happen. He eventually realises what is causing the upset but then has to take Buscapan or and anti spasmodic and deflatine to get back to normal. Sometimes it can take a week or two to get over it. Mostly it's a build up....one mouthful doesn't lead to disaster but a whole biscuit or two slices of bread can be enough to trigger it.   

We get lots of enquiries from customers about food intolerance and the link to irritable bowel syndrome symptoms and our information pages on food intolerance mentions this as a trigger, but what I really note in my husbands case is that the link is absolute. If he eats whole grain it happens, period.  When I orginally got IBS myself I though it might have been triggered by food (smoked salmon always seemed to feature just before an episode!) but in the end I realised in my case it was too wide a mix and just co-incidence. It was happening too often and too indiscriminently to be food.

I know our dietician friends get very upset when they meet IBS sufferers that have an extreme diet with a long list of exclusions, and yet are still suffering from IBS. They work with clients to help them have confidence to put essential foods back into their diet so that they can get back to balance. It would seem in these cases food is unlikely to be the trigger and that something else is really causing the IBS.

Just food for thought if you are trying to work out what is causing your IBS......