What should you eat to help you prevent painful symptoms when you have Irritable Bowel Syndrome? Knowing what NOT to eat is just as important as learning what to eat with IBS.

So here are some tips…

What is IBS-C? What is IBS-D?

If you’ve been wondering what the letters “C” and “D” stand for, it’s this:

IBS-C means Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Constipation. IBS-D means Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Diarrhea.

That’s all there is to it.

For an effective, drug-free method that helps you take control of either “C” or “D” and live a more comfortable life, try The No IBS Program.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup chia seeds
2 cups water

Instructions:

Put the chia seeds and the water into a jar with a tight-fitting lid, such as a Mason jar. Make sure the lid is properly closed.

Shake it up until the seeds are blended with the water. Now what you need to do is...

Have you heard of chia? I’ve eaten it for years, but until I began to research it, I didn’t realize what a truly amazing food it is.

Chia is a small seed that originally came from Mexico. Aztec warriors and long distance runners used it on long treks as a highly concentrated endurance food because of its incredible sustaining powers. Chia is the Mayan word for “strength.”

I’ll get on to the nutrients in chia in a minute, but first I want to tell you why it’s such a great food for IBS.

Chia is a good source of soluble fiber which is very soothing to the gut. A standard rule of thumb with IBS is to always eat your soluble fibre foods first. What could be easier than...

This is a super-easy IBS recipe you can make in a few minutes. The turmeric and pepper add that little extra spice that livens up the avocado and pasta. And it’s healthy, too. In fact, every ingredient does more for you than just taste good. I’ll explain why below the recipe.

Ingredients (for one person):

Rice pasta – about 1 ½ - 2 cups fusilli spirals
½ avocado
½ teaspoon olive oil or flax oil
¼ teaspoon turmeric powder
Pinch of black pepper
Sea salt to taste

Boil rice pasta according to package directions, using lots of water so it doesn’t get gummy. This usually takes about 10 minutes.

While the pasta is cooking, the next step is to...

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

The Spine Rub is a good all-around balancer. Plus it feels great! You can use it for more than IBS nausea and abdominal pain. Use it to relax when you're stressed, or to give yourself a boost when you're tired. And here's a way to use it that will surprise you...

Apples are a great food for IBS, once you know their secret. They may even help to relieve irritable bowel pain.

Here’s why...

Did you know that diarrhea is the third biggest killer of young children in the developing world? So there’s a strong motivation to find a way to stop diarrhea, especially in places like South-East Asia and Africa.

Here’s the newest non-toxic method they’re using: zinc. That is, zinc supplements in syrup or tablet form. You might have heard about zinc nasal sprays for colds. Well, now there’s zinc for diarrhea. Children are given 20 mg of zinc per day for 10 days to two weeks and apparently it clears up the diarrhea that could otherwise be fatal.

I’ve read several articles about using zinc supplements for diarrhea but none of them explain exactly how it works. One theory, according to WHO diarrhea specialist, Olivier Fontaine, is that because zinc is “an essential ingredient in about 300 enzymes” it boosts your immune system. He suggests that supplementary zinc keeps the diarrhea from getting worse. 60% of the immune system is near or around your digestive system.

In Nutrition Almanac, Lavon J. Dunne says that, after iron, the human body uses more zinc than any other essential trace mineral. It is part of 25 or more enzymes involved in digestion and metabolism, and helps you digest carbohydrates, absorb vitamins, break down alcohol, produce insulin and heal wounds.

So it’s pretty important to your digestive health as well as your general health. But will zinc work for IBS-D (IBS with diarrhea) the way it works for children’s chronic diarrhea in Africa and Asia? It's a good question. Here are a couple of thoughts...

I’m a big fan of the humble digestive enzyme. How can you not love a product that makes your stomach feel better (with no side effects) when you make a food choice that turns out to be a problem? A good quality digestive enzyme will help you when you eat fats, proteins, processed foods, and gas-producers like legumes that have a lot of hard-to-digest insoluble fiber. That's my first reason to love them.

But enzymes help out with more than digestion! You might be surprised to learn what else they can do for you. Who would think that a digestive enzyme could work on a cold virus or provide pain relief? Read on to find out how...

Even though I hardly ever get sick, a few weeks ago, I got a bit of a cold – or possibly flu, so I started taking handfuls of enzymes. Like 10 or more per day. Does that sound crazy?

In case you’re wondering what digestive enzymes could possibly have to do with a cold, here’s my second reason to love them.

Colds and flu are started by viruses and virus cells have a protein coating. So if you take a lot of digestive enzymes, they break the protein coating on the virus cells in your body and the viruses die. (At least, that’s what happens to the ones in your digestive tract, which frees up your immune system to attack the rest of the little buggers.) Then you either get better faster, or you get less sick in the first place.

I learned this health tip from Udo Erasmus, PhD, who's an expert on digestive enzymes, probiotics, and healthy oils. Just remember, you have to take quite a few enzymes (I took about 5 two or three times a day) for the anti-virus effect. And it's probably best to take them between meals, not that you'll be eating much if you're sick.

The third thing I LOVE about digestive enzymes – and this is something I found out totally by accident – has to do with chronic pain relief...

This is Part Three of a three-part series on anxiety. Part Two gives you four anti-anxiety tips to calm the "alarm center" in your brain.

Did you know that physical stresses can make you anxious even though you may not realize they're affecting you? When you have irritable bowel symptoms, here are seven possible causes of anxiety: dehydration from diarrhea, toxic build-up from constipation, food allergies and intolerances, chemical sensitivity, lack of sleep, lack of exercise and shallow breathing.

Making a few lifestyle changes to deal with these stressors will give you good natural anxiety relief. In addition, they will help to relieve skin rashes and itching, headaches, and fatigue (not to mention digestive problems.) You'll typically have layers of anxiety, so the more possible causes you deal with, the better your chances of staying calm and recovering quickly from anxiety.

1. Drinking enough water is an excellent anxiety treatment whether you suffer from diarrhea or constipation.

With diarrhea, you want to make sure you replace the fluids you lose.

Dehydration is alarming to your brain and body and keeps you from feeling comfortable and relaxed. Adding a few drops of liquid minerals, such as Concentrace or Ion-Mag, to your water will help to replace any electrolytes you’ve lost because of diarrhea. As an anti-anxiety bonus, the magnesium in them tends to be calming. Soluble fiber will help to bulk up the stool and slow down transit time.

With constipation, water and soluble fiber will help to keep things moving through the bowel, preventing a build-up of toxins. Again, the liquid minerals are helpful.

Since we’re on the subject of liquids: How much coffee are you drinking? Or black tea, pop, and other caffeinated drinks? If it’s more than one cup a day, you’re not doing yourself any favours, anxiety-wise. In fact, some people find that cutting out caffeine is their most effective anxiety treatment. But you knew that, right?

2. Food sensitivities can make you anxious. That’s because some foods act as neurotoxins, meaning they affect the signals between your brain and body. Elaine Gottschall mentions a woman who reacted to gluten grains by barking like a dog in her sleep!!! Imagine how stressed this woman’s brain and nervous system must have been to trigger such an odd response. Once the gluten was removed from her diet, the barking stopped.

Okay, you don’t bark in your sleep. But if you are anxious, you need a calming diet without food allergens. The food that works best for your body is also important for natural anxiety treatment.

You can have food sensitivities without having classic allergies. Here are a couple of options for dealing with them. One is to be tested to find out exactly what foods you react to and take them out of your diet.

Or, if testing is not an option for you then start eliminating the top food allergens from your diet: dairy, sugar, wheat and other gluten-containing grains, peanuts, shellfish, soy, sulfites in conventional dried fruit and other processed foods, pork, citrus, caffeine, corn, yeast, and eggs, but especially the first three on this list. Remove foods one at a time, leaving at least a week between foods, so you can observe the effect of each one.

Chocolate causes problems for lots of people. If you get headaches or tend to crave chocolate compulsively, you could be reacting to chocolate. Try a magnesium supplement to help with the craving. The theobromine in chocolate will make you anxious and jittery (I know it did me) because it speeds up your heart rate. If you have diarrhea, chocolate is not your best friend.

Dairy is known to be a problem for people with IBS. When you continue to eat foods you react to, you will become more anxious because it’s very stressful for your body. With gluten, even if you’re not celiac, you have a one-in-three chance of reacting to grains with physical and emotional symptoms, according to Dr. James Braly. A recent German study found micro-inflammation in the mucosa of the bowel in IBS patients. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that this is from reactions to foods or chemicals.

3. And speaking of chemicals, while most of us realize that chemical toxins and pollutants are linked to cancer, asthma, heart trouble and degenerative diseases, you may not know that they also trigger emotional problems including anxiety and depression.

The best thing to do is make sure your home environment is chemical-free, especially your bedroom. Sleep is the time your body renews itself, but that can’t happen if your bedroom is full of perfumes and scented products, room deodorizers, plastic bags, dry-cleaned clothes, mothballs, candles (unless they’re beeswax), paint, glue, solvents, particle board, new books and magazines, fresh newspapers or any other product with outgassing chemicals.

And, NO, the chemical toxins don’t stay in the bottle just because you have the lid on. Have you ever walked down the laundry products aisle in the supermarket? Notice that smell? Enough said.

By the way, the digestive system is quite sensitive to chemical toxins. So when you clear out your chemical products and buy natural versions, you will not only lower your anxiety levels, you will also help out your digestion. Definitely a win-win.