IAN: ____________________________________"However based on my own limited knowledge, my favourite 'explanation'(if there is such a thing as a single 'explanation') for IBS/Fibromyalgia/CFS..." ______________________________________Ah, now, as Susan Purry points out we are talking about a horse of another color when we start talking about FMS or CFS or IBS comorbidity with CFS and/or FMS.If you look at the symptoms originally described, which is what I was answering, we are not lloking at the symptom set associated with those conditions, but transient constitutional symptoms.So indeed, in the context of what you or Susan point out, thats another kettle of fish.In these cases, the hypersensitivity to chemicals or foods, remember, is a symptom genertaing mechanism...that does not automatically denote causal basis of a disease.For example, patients with asthma can react with bronchspasm to inhaling air deeply that is tood ry or too cold. This causes the aireays, which have been upregulated by mediator release from mast cells secondary to allergy, to constrict (resposne to mechanical stimuli). But we cannot suggest that this is the physioliogic basis for theor asthma (I know it is oversimplified but see my point)...In many conditions, the abnormal reaction to dietary components which results in mediator release and symptom generation is a casual basis for symptoms, not the disease...it may be a feature of the disease.In other cases, the abnormal immune response IS primary and IS the causal basis. The difficulty is that clinically folks confuse mechansism with cause....so in FMS for example in a subpoulation of those patients hypersensitivity reactions to foods or chemicals in foods exacerbate (worsen) the symptoms. So we can help reduce or eliminate that mechanism and thus that part of the problem but that does not mean that it is te casue of FMS, only a feature of the condition.But, in the symptoms described, I was not speaking of those problems only of the frequent occurrence of extraintestinal symptoms which can be provoked by mediator release regardless of whether it is mastc ell degranulation, lymphocytes, macrophages, even platelts releasing mediators into the plasma, which can occur episodically or chronically esp. in people who are diagnosed as IBS who have a diarrheic component to their symptoms.And you are right, in the sense that at this time research has suggested several possible etiolgies for the conditions you refer to but they are far from well understood and each has his pet theorum.Eat well. Think well. Be well.MNL