Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: Another thing to confuse poor Shirl

Hi - What's the book? You would think that something written by doctors would be accurate, but when it comes to IBS and diet that's often not the case.

For years, doctors have recommended a "high fiber" diet for IBS, without specifying that there is a big difference between soluble fiber and insoluble fiber, and how they physically affect the gut. Doctors should know this, because there are studies going back to at least 1994 showing that insoluble fiber, and specifically wheat bran, does NOT help most IBS folks and actually makes most of them worse. You can read the studies for yourself - they're here on the boards in the Research Library forum, under the "diet" section. There are also studies in there that compare IBS patients taking soluble fiber vs. insoluble fiber and, big surprise, the soluble fiber patients did much better and most of the insoluble fiber patients opted to switch to soluble fiber in the middle of the study. Why don't GI doctors who are writing books about IBS bother to do the research and find this? Or bother to talk to their own patients about how a diet high in wheat bran makes them feel? Or even use common sense to think about how a food that is a huge GI stimulant might not be such a hot idea for people with a physical gut dysfunction that makes them highly over-sensitive to bowel stimulants? I'm as much at a loss as you are.

As an aside, a few years ago I saw the "top GI doc" in Hartford, CT. Nice enough guy, but he actually asked me if I had invented the term "soluble fiber" as he'd never heard of it before. He thought there was just one kind of fiber, and wheat bran was what he gave as an example. I remember sitting there thanking God that I didn't actually need dietary advice from this guy, I'd just been asking out of curiosity to see what he'd say. What really scared me is that he treats patients with inflammatory bowel diseases, and if they eat too much insoluble fiber and have an intestinal stricture, they can get a bowel obstruction that requires surgery or it can kill them.

Well, there's my two cents on the subject!

- H

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Heather is the Administrator of the IBS Message Boards. She is the author of Eating for IBS and The First Year: IBS, and the CEO of Heather's Tummy Care. Join her IBS Newsletter. Meet Heather on Facebook!

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