More than half of people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) appear to have some type of atypical food allergy.
Irritable bowel syndrome, a chronic gastrointestinal disorder, affects approximately 1 in 10 people. You may have heard of the low FODMAP diet, but it doesn’t seem to be any more effective than the standard advice of avoiding things like coffee and spicy, fatty foods. In fact, you can barely tell which is which, as you can see below and at 0:27 in my video “Friday Favorites: Fasting for Irritable Bowel Syndrome.”
However, most IBS patients seem to react to certain foods, such as eggs, wheat, dairy products, and soy sauce, but testing for typical food allergies with a skin prick test may prove negative. But what we want to know is what’s happening in their gut when they eat those things, not what’s happening in their skin. Introducing confocal laser endoscopy.
By inserting a microscope into the back of the throat and into the intestines, we can observe in real time how the intestinal wall becomes inflamed and leaks after food drips out. Isn’t that fascinating? In fact, you can see cracks forming within minutes, as shown below and at 1:03 of my video. However, until now, this test had not been performed on a large group of IBS patients.
Using this new technology, researchers found that more than half of people with irritable bowel syndrome have this type of reaction to a variety of foods, or “atypical food allergies,” which go unnoticed by traditional allergy tests. As you can see below and at 1:28 of my video, eliminating these foods from your diet will significantly reduce your symptoms.
But outside of a research setting, there’s no way to know which foods are the culprit unless you try an elimination diet, and no elimination diet is better than eliminating everything. The 25-year-old woman had been complaining of abdominal pain, bloating, and diarrhea for a year, but medication did not seem to be effective. However, after 10 days of fasting, her symptoms improved significantly and appeared to remain so at least 18 months later. It wasn’t just a subjective improvement. A biopsy was taken to show that the inflammation had subsided, her intestinal irritability was measured directly, and a dilation balloon and electrodes were inserted into her rectum to measure changes in her sensitivity to pressure and electrical stimulation. Fasting seems to have rebooted her gut in a way, but just because it worked for her doesn’t mean it will work for others. Case reports are most useful when prompting researchers to conduct tests.
“Despite research efforts to develop treatments for IBS, medical treatments for this condition remain unsatisfactory.” Medications can control symptoms, but what if they don’t work? In a study of 84 IBS patients, 58 of them failed basic treatment (consisting of medication and brief psychotherapy), and of the 58 who were still suffering, 36 underwent a 10-day fast, while the remaining 22 continued with basic treatment. What are the findings? Subjects in the fasting group experienced significant improvements in abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, loss of appetite, nausea, anxiety, and overall impairment, significantly better than the control group. The researchers concluded that fasting therapy “may be useful in the treatment of patients with moderate to severe IBS.”
Unfortunately, patient assignment was neither blinded nor randomized in this study, so comparisons with the control group are not very meaningful. Vitamin B1 and vitamin C were also administered intravenously, which seems typical in Japanese fasting trials, but it was not expected that vitamin deficiency syndromes (beriberi and scurvy) would develop within just 10 days of fasting. Study participants were also isolated. Will this make psychotherapy more effective? It is difficult to determine just the effects of fasting.
Psychotherapy alone can have lasting effects. Researchers randomly assigned 101 outpatients with irritable bowel syndrome to medical treatment and pharmacotherapy with three months of psychotherapy. After three months, the psychotherapy group performed better, and a year after psychotherapy ended, the difference was even more pronounced. As you can see here and at 3:58 in my video, it gets even better at 3 months and even better at 15 months.
Psychological approaches to IBS appear to be as effective as antidepressants, but the placebo response for IBS is around 40%, whether psychological interventions, drugs, or alternative medicine approaches. So basically doing nothing and taking a sugar pill will improve your symptoms by 40%. In that case, it would be better to choose a treatment that is cheap, safe, easy and without side effects, but long-term fasting is definitely not one of them. But if all else fails, it may be worth considering fasting under close medical supervision.
All of my fasting videos are available for digital download here.
Check out the videos on the topic already posted on the site here.
For more information about IBS, see the related articles below.
