Elimination Diet Guidelines

One of the more challenging aspects of dealing with IBS is to try to figure out if certain foods really do trigger your symptoms. The basic guideline used to be to avoid a food for a period of three months to see if there was any effect on the severity of your symptoms. With this system, it would seem that it would take forever to pinpoint the culprits! The The Journal of the American Dietetic Association has just published a review regarding the relationship between food and IBS which offers a significantly more practical approach, as it cuts the trial period down to a more do-able two weeks.

For an elimination diet to be effective, one must make sure to keep a careful food diary so as to ensure that the correct trigger foods are being identified. My How-To guides have been updated to incorporate these newer guidelines:

• How To Keep a Food Diary
• How To Follow an Elimination Diet

_Source:

_{Heizer, W., Southern, S. & McGovern, S. "The Role of Diet in Symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome in Adults: A Narrative Review" The Journal of the American Dietetic Association 2009 109:1204-1214.}