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[yellow11]

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Hi again,I was in with my gastro last week and asked if he could put me on an elemental diet as outlined in Mark Pimental's book. For reasons I'm not too sure he is reluctant to do this and instead he suggested i try the nutritional product Ensure for a month. Basically it's a liquid supplement which is supposed to provide all your nutritional requirements so in theory anyway you can survive on ensure alone. The gastro said it will give my digestive system a rest not having to deal with any solid food though I can have the odd solid foodstuff if i like.Looking it up on google though I see some people tried it and just couldn't stand the taste (while some actually quite liked it) and others got diaahera from it. It's a bit expensive too if you are buying it in a large quantity. Also I see it does contain some ingredients which I feel may cause me problems like milk protein (it is lactose free though).If anybody has any experience of Ensure or know of other people who have tried it I'd appreciate it so much if they could give me any feedback on it.In case anybody might be interested I'll post on how I get on with it though for various reasons I probably won't start on it for a week or two.

[annie7]

i drink it from time to time when i have to travel and stay overnight. i have chronic constipation and overnight stays always make my c worse so i've been experimenting with replacing a meal (breakfast or lunch)with ensure for these trips since i get pretty backed up and don't care to eat as much as usual. i drank it almost exclusively during the last few days of my sitz marker test (way too backed up to eat with that).also my primary care doc is wanting me to supplement my diet with ensure so i can gain some weight--i'm quite thin--except for the belly bloat--lol.and i like ensure. i have reflux--can't eat/drink chocolate--so i drink the french vanilla kind and i think it's great, actually.i'm nor sure how well an all-ensure diet would work for someone who is quite active, though. you might not be getting enough calories with it to sustain an active life. if you're fairly sedentary then that might not be a problem.

[anmegrl]

I tried it before {ensure as sole food source} for a few days but I'm lactose intolerant and it is a milk product - so not a great result. Did have less LG though. Plus those drinks have so much "extra stuff" in it, you may be consuming triggers (elements that may increase SIBO/gas) unlike with elemental diet. If the purpose is to help starve the bacteria as much as possible you should probably try to find something exactly like Pimentel's recommended product. From the SIBO forum, that stuff sounds worse than Ensure and I'm not sure they make it anymore... at least not the specific one in the book. You may want to check out that forum and see what they have been using.

[pikmin]

Hi,I'm taking 2 ensure plus per day,this is not related to my ibs,but due to losing wight after an operation.I only drink the strawberry flavoured drinks,and have noticed no issues with my ibs.Hope this helpsIf you would like to know he I deal with my constipation just send me a message ,Mike

[ironlionzion]

I started to drink it since I cut meat from my diet, my symptoms remain the same, there is also a product called vivonex plus, I haven't tried it but seems to be used for similar purposes.

[yellow11]

Hey guys,Thanks so much for your replies. It's extremely nice to know there's a place to go if you need advice on something and people will go to the trouble of giving you some feedback.I saw somewhere some people complain about the taste so it's good to hear Annie that you enjoy taking it, it mightn't be so bad then as I thought it could be. Actually I'm a pretty lazy kind of guy so the calories factor won't be an issue for me. I'm glad too that yourself and Mike feel that it will put on weight as I'm pretty underwight myself so it would be useful to put on a few pounds. well done Mike on overcoming your constipation problems and thanks for your kind offer but to be honest constipation and diarrhea aren't really issues for me. My only ibs symptoms really are a constant crampy kind of feeling in my stomach but worst of all is the lg and fbo that I am suffering from for so long. It's nice to know though that the ensure doesn't trigger ibs in you, hopefully it will be the same with me.My heart sank a bit though when I saw some of the ingredients in Ensure so the points you make are extremely valid Anmegrl. It's a long way from the elemental diet I was hoping for, also I'm pretty sure I'm lactose intolerant like yourself. That's a very good idea of yours about going onto the sibo forum.Something like vivonex plus would probably be a lot better so thanks for the suggestion Ironlionzion, it's a pity your symptoms haven't improved but I did read some expert saying often it takes anything from 3 minths to a year for a change in diet to start to work.I'll probably try it for a few weeks alright after Easter not in great expectation though of it stopping my lg and fbo. Genuinely thanks again for your input everyone, it's really apprecaited.