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Are grains a primary cause of IBS?

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#1 ·
Is it possible that IBS is a low-level autoimmune disease?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3271243/

Everyone's diet here is different, but nearly all of us eat grains and this includes corn and rice.

Most grains have an indigestible protein called prolamine which can damage the intestinal wall and cause intestinal permeability, resulting in inflammation, gas, dysmotily, constipation and diarrhea. Gliadin is the prolamine in wheat, but other grains have their own prolamines as well: corn, zein; oats, avenin; rice, orzenin.; barley, hordein; rye, secalin.

This study suggests that inflammatory proteins in grains could affect everyone, not just those genetically predisposed to Celiac disease.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16635908

A lot of people here are on a gluten-free diet, however still eat refined flour, corn and rice as well as pseudo-grains like quinoa which are high in saponins.

http://www.thepaleomom.com/2012/03/how-do-grains-legumes-and-dairy-cause_29.html

Antibody testing isn't always conclusive, and there could be some overlap between conditions such as IBS, Leaky Gas, SIBO, Inflammatory Bowel Disease etc.

Maybe we weren't meant to eat grains. The tough outer coating containing prolamines, phytates, lectins and enzyme inhibitors were designed to protect the grain, not as nourishment for us.

This is why IBS is so hard to beat. We have to give up eating food we absolutely love. Try going completely grain-free for at least a few days. There's no reason to be hungry as you can eat whenever you like but grains contain opioid peptides that can make you feel hungry so be aware of this.
 
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#3 ·
Have you really had no improvement after 2 weeks on a strictly no-grain diet? Evacuation this morning still took almost an hour but I've had no gas at all today and I've never experienced that before. BMs are still mushy and broken with a feeling of constipation between them but I've only been grain-free for 1 day. Bowel evacuation was the usual broken pattern: 8.00 am, 8.10, 8.20 and 8.55. It used to take me 2.5 hours to evacuate and gas would build up in the afternoon so there's definite improvement for me.

I didn't have a sudden onset of IBS, mine was gradual over decades. Heavy drinking could have caused some damage but the end result was the same as someone with post infectious IBS who acquires IBS suddenly. Once the colon has learned to react to inflammatory foods it can't unlearn it. The only cure is to stop eating inflammatory foods and these can also include alcohol and high FODMAPs like legumes. If your symptoms haven't improved could it be that you haven't fully evacuated? Any gassy stool in my colon gives me IBS symptoms.
 
#4 · (Edited by Moderator)
I Don't have IBS-C or IBS-D or IBS-A so i'm not constipated, my stools are just completely screwed up and sometimes loose (other times not so much). I can only really classify myself as IBS-PI as i had a food borne illness prior to all this, and 2 weeks on the SCD diet has done nothing for me (just like everything else i've tried -.-). I hope it works for you though, it seems like we have completely different problems.
 
#5 ·
I think my daughter is getting this form of IBS. She had a very bad case of food poisoning and seems to be getting diarrhea on a regular basis, but always after eating things she's not really used to - high fibre non-gluten breads, cous-cous etc. Maybe the PI-IBS sets up something like an autoimmune reaction to certain foods that cause inflammation. I think I have the same underlying problem, but inflammatory foods cause gas for me rather than diarrhea. The SCD diet can still have inflammatory foods. Maybe try a mix of SCD, low FODMAP and paleo. You just have to keep experimenting.
 
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