Diet is a major trigger for IBS flare-ups. Fortunately, there's a life-changing diet that
helps many people manage their IBS symptoms and reduce the risk of
worsening pelvic floor problems. Hi, I’m Michelle, and today I’m guiding you
through this IBS diet which is known as the FODMAP diet, and I’m talking to you about
it with specific reference to pelvic floor and pelvic floor management. Now, we're going
to be going through the trigger foods to avoid in this diet, I’m going to be taking you
through the foods to choose in this diet, and I’m also going to be showing you some
of the foods that work for me that I include to help me manage my IBS symptoms too. So you can skip straight to the timestamps
below regarding the diet if you'd like to look at it now, otherwise there's some really
important information I need to give you before commencing this diet.
Now, I just want to
tell you a little bit about the FODMAPs diet. FODMAPs are certain sugars that aren't well
absorbed as they pass through the bowel, and what these sugars do is they
can sit there and they can ferment, they can draw extra fluid into the bowel,
they ferment causing gas and bloating, and that's what can then give you the abdominal
pain and the abdominal cramping, and these certain sugars can also cause constipation
and diarrhea or this can alternate. Now, this condition can occur some of the time or all
of the time, and if you need emergency management strategies for this condition, you can refer to
my video above that outlines what to do straight away when this condition occurs.
This video today
is much more about prevention of these things. Now, to start the diet what happens, and it's
usually recommended to work through with a dietitian, that's a really important
recommendation, because it's quite a restrictive diet. If you can't work with a
dietitian, the Monash University Diet app, the FODMAP app is linked below and it's pictured
up here, and I really strongly recommend you, get this diet, because these scientists
have actually rigorously investigated this diet and, also too, the quantities of how
much you can have and how much not to have which is really important in this diet. Now, normally
the diet starts with a six-week elimination of all the trigger foods that I’m about to take you
through, and then it's a gradual reintroduction over eight to 12 weeks or maybe longer of one
food at a time over three days. Now, we're about to go through the major food groups, so let's
start with fruit.
So you can see on the screen, some of the fruits to avoid. Now, the reason these
fruits need to avoid is because they contain the fruit sugar called fructose, and what fructose
does is causes gas and bloating in the bowel, and fruits with high levels of this sugar are
those are the fruits to eliminate, and they're the ones that you can see on the screen now.
Now,
some of the fruits too I want to make mention of, in terms of – I’m going to make particular
mention of prunes here, because prunes are often one of those fruits that we tend to reach
for if we're constipated, so watch out for prunes because they are dried plums and they are very
high in fructose and they're also hard to digest. Now, if we look at fruits to choose,
again with reference to the bowel, you can see the fruits to choose here. I want to
make special mention of oranges and strawberries and also too kiwi fruit. Oranges and strawberries
are high in fiber, so they're great for managing constipation if you suffer from pelvic floor
problems. And also too, kiwi fruit, so these are kiwi fruit or Chinese gooseberries as they're also
known, and the Monash university recommends that we start with two of these a day. So obviously,
they're peeled, and these are great because not only they're high in dietary fiber, that would be
about 150 grams each I think a day – so not only are these high in fiber, but they also too have an
enzyme, and it's the same enzyme that's in papaya and pineapple that actually softens or tenderizes
meat, and also, so that can have a great effect on digestion and your ability to digest your food.
So kiwi fruits, put them on your shopping list.
Now, let's move on to vegetables. Now, some
of the common vegetables to avoid, again, you can see on this list here. When we're
talking about vegetables to avoid, we really want to think about the most common culprits
are, you've got your garlic and your onion, and these are often hidden in a lot of foods. And
I should have mentioned with fruits, chilies too, but I’ll mention here as well – these are major
irritants and they're things to eliminate from your diet. Okay? So these are actually fruits,
but eliminate those, eliminate chilies, eliminate garlic, and any garlic maybe
garlic products, like your garlic salt; and look for the ingredients of these in the
products that you have, they're strong irritants. Now, in terms of vegetables to choose, I’ve
made like a nice easy salad here and, again, you can see, the vegetables to choose up here.
But this is a salad I just quickly whipped up, and it's got spinach leaves, it's
got baby tomatoes, red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, and I choose these ones because
they're lower in acid than the red ones, which are kind to my tummy.
It's also got alfalfa, and
it's got some shredded carrots, so that's a simple FODMAP friendly salad that you can dish up. Now,
if you want to make a dressing for this, you could use a little bit of olive oil or sesame seed oil
or you could use some lime juice or orange juice. But what I really like to use is tahini, and I
get the whole tahini, and I actually sometimes mix this with lactose-free yogurt, and put it
over the top. And if I had time, I would have put in some sweet potato into this salad as well. So
that's some of the vegetables that you can choose.
I want to make a, just a mention of a couple
of other vegetables – red capsicum and green beans are really great for constipation,
because they'll help soften your stool, and help your pelvic floor problems. And the other
food I want to mention is white mashed potato, they have a vegetable to include. White mashed
potato is really great at firming the stool, if you suffer from diarrhea. So that might be a
food that you'd like to include in your diet too.
So let's move on now to protein sources
– so in terms of proteins to avoid. One of the first things we reach for when
we're constipated, and we're told this time and time again is to reach for legumes.
So we're told to reach for our beans, our kidney beans, our chickpeas, our lentils, and
we know how good these are for our gut health. Unfortunately, these are major triggers for IBS
sufferers. So these are things to eliminate right from the word go. Don't forget that things like
hummus that you can see here and falafels are also a combination – falafels are a combination
of this which is our chickpeas and garlic. So that's a lethal combination, isn't it? So don't
forget to actually think about the ingredients in the foods that you're choosing. So in terms
of proteins to choose, you can choose most meats, just cook – make sure they're cooked simply. I
personally suggest that you avoid fatty meats, because a lot of fat can slow down digestion,
so try to choose your lean meats, but you can have red meat, I have fish, I have eggs daily and
include that in omelets which I cook with tomatoes and Asian greens.
And the other protein source
that I want to mention is tofu – now, we know that this is a great protein source, but if you're
choosing tofu, choose the firm tofu, not the silken which is a high in FODMAP food. Choose your
firm tofu, which is your lower FODMAP alternative. All right, so now we're going to move on to
dairy. Now, on the foods to avoid for dairy, I just want to mention milk sugar,
because the milk sugar called lactose is what causes people a lot of
intolerance. It causes bloating, and it can cause terrible diarrhea. So many of
us know a lot about lactose intolerance – the foods to avoid are all your milk products and
your milk based products like your yogurts, your ice creams, all those types of things that
are based on milk.
I also just too want to mention soybean milk or soymilk – because if you have
soymilk, remember what we said about beans, if it's actually made from soybeans, it's going
to be a gut irritant, potential irritant or IBS irritant. So you want to choose milk made from
soybean extract, and fortunately, that's one of the less expensive options too. So just be
mindful of that with your milk alternatives. Now, if we actually think about the types of
products that we can have, and thinking about our bowel, and also too our pelvic floor, obviously,
you're going to go for your lactose-free milks, and that's a huge range of lactose
free products that we all know about. In terms of cheeses, this is where it can get a
bit tricky for the pelvic floor.
So hard cheeses, I eat quite a lot of hard cheeses, but just
your plain hard cheeses – this is a Spanish Manchego cheese which I really like
at the moment – but these cheeses, hard cheeses can actually cause constipation
in people that are prone to constipation, but conversely, if you're prone to diarrhea,
they can be something that's really good to include in the diet. So just remember that about
hard cheeses, you might want to just start off with a small amount of hard cheese, if you're
prone to constipation.
Soft cheeses, you can include camembert, brie and feta, and they're
all really nice options to include in your diet. Now, let's move along to grains and cereals
and bread. So this is where a lot of people come unstuck, because wheat is a major IBS
flare-up trigger. So you need to eliminate all products that are made from either wheat, barley
or rye. So that makes your gluten-free products semi-safe, doesn't it, so long as they don't
include – I mean, your gluten-free bread, so long as they don't include fruit, dried
fruit.
So the breads that you can include are things like your sourdough, so use sourdough
bread, your spelt bread, and also too, the safe gluten-free breads. Now, on bread gluten-free
bread, white bread will firm the stool. So if you're having a lot of gluten-free white bread,
just again be careful of that with constipation or conversely, if you suffer from diarrhea,
might be something that you'd like to include. Now, one of my big tips for cereals is this. So
I usually make a smoothie in the morning out of oats, that's one of the things I include with
my lactose free milk. But baby rice cereal is an absolute gem, it's really easy to digest,
so Farex or the Baby Rice or Baby Rice Cereal. But the wonderful thing about this, not only
is it really easy to digest, it's actually iron fortified and calcium fortified.
So for someone
like me that doesn't eat a lot of red meat and perhaps that might be you too, this is a really
nice way of getting iron because we know that our iron supplements can cause constipation and that
affects our pelvic floor. So I find that these are a really great way of actually increasing my iron
consumption, but also too, getting a really nice little plain cereal. And this also too goes into
my smoothie which I’ll show you in a little while. So that's a really nice option for your cereals.
I also too wanted to mention boiled rice.
Boiled rice is a – boiled white rice, is a great
food that you could include in your diet, again, that's a stool firming's product. And
I also too wanted to mention just plain rice crackers. So I snack on these, just plain rice
crackers during the course of the day as well. So rice crackers, rice cakes, all those sorts
of things are fine to include in your diet. Now, we're just about to finish up. We're
going to move on now to nuts, seeds, and also to sweets – topics that are close to my heart.
So
if we look at the nuts to avoid, things like your cashews and your pistachios are the
ones to eliminate. But fortunately, you can still have walnuts, you can have
peanuts which means you can have peanut paste, and you can also have macadamia nuts which
means you can have macadamia nut paste too. Now, seeds are where things really come into
play for your bowel management and I love the fact that on the low FODMAP elimination diet, you
can have chia seeds.
So I've got chia seeds here, you can see them here, little black seeds – these
are a great source of dietary fiber. Now, what happens, I soaked these overnight just to show
you in milk. That's the volume increase you get with this, and the chia seeds become like a gel
like, I don't know if you can see it on screen, but they become like a gel like consistency.
So I put this in my smoothies, so I make a smoothie in the morning, and this is my smoothie,
so obviously it's got the baby rice cereal in it, it's got yogurt, it's got kiwi fruit in
it, and it's also got the chia seeds, really yummy, so it actually looks like that. So
that makes – and you can also add some gluten-free protein powder to it as well, which is what I
often do as well, so making sure that it's low FODMAP.
So you can make a really nice filling
healthy smoothie from these types of seeds. The other types of seeds that you can
include are linseeds or flax seeds. So they're your flax seeds, and again, it's
a myth now that these cause diverticulitis, they actually have been shown not to. But you can
actually then blend these up with your smoothies as well. So I tend to blend up my seeds, and
they just tend to work well with my stomach. The other thing that I’ve found recently too
is these grain biscuits, so these are biscuits, and they seem to be readily available everywhere,
they're just made from grains. So just linseeds, Pepita seeds which you can have. I think
they've got some chia seeds in them as well. This is the packet in Australia, but
I’m sure they're available worldwide. Just read your ingredients and make sure there's
no other additives, there's some thickener in there and there's some salt and that's
it, and they are just delicious to snack on.
Now, finally what I need to move on to is
sweets. So things to avoid, in the US, high fructose corn syrup, major IBS trigger. Make sure
you avoid the high fructose corn syrup, it's in everything. You need to read your labels. Honey,
just because it's natural, it's not IBS friendly, so eliminate that from your diet as well. And
the other important thing that I want to mention, and I’ve got a close-up here that you can see
of the label, is your artificial sweeteners. So there's a dose-dependent effect of these. You can
actually see on the label that excess consumption can cause a laxative effect.
It's true. The
more you have, the more likely some artificial sweetness like xylitol and mannitol can actually
have on your bowel and cause your IBS symptoms. So alternatives, your safe alternatives are
things like pure maple syrup unfortunately, don't get the cheap stuff, make sure you get the
actual pure, this is pure Canadian maple syrup. Also too, you can have rice syrup, you can
have plain white sugar. And fortunately, last but not least, one of my favorite things
– the packet was already open this morning when I got out of the cupboard, dark chocolate, you
can have dark chocolate as your sweets as well. If you've got a question about caffeine, and
people ask me about coffee, caffeine is a bowel irritant – so coffee is a bowel irritant so that's
something to avoid in this diet, unfortunately.
But we've gone through a lot of things there,
haven't we? We've talked about the foods to choose, we've talked about the foods to avoid
on the elimination diet; but this is just the elimination diet, then you gradually reintroduce
extra foods, and this is where it's really important to work with a dietitian. Once again,
I’ll reiterate the importance of the Monash app, grab it if you haven't already got it, it's
a great little app to have. I really hope this information today helps you manage your IBS
symptoms. Don't forget coming up is the emergency management video for IBS, if you want to stay
with me for that. And if you've liked the video, please make sure you give it a like below, because
then that helps YouTube recommend it to other viewers, and they can find it as well too. Look
forward to seeing you next time. Bye for now..
