VIDEO: Dietary considerations for IBS symptom management

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

In terms of IBS in general, the low-FODMAP diet has been shown to be beneficial. However, it's a very restrictive diet. So the recommendation is for a short term trial, ideally with the assistance of a GI dietician. The main thing is that if patients do not improve with a short meaning two to four weeks of a low-FODMAP trial, the diet should be discontinued and patients should move on it to something else. I think all too often if patients aren't better with the diet we try to figure out, well did you do something wrong with a diet? Or blame the patient for doing it wrong or troubleshoot, and then the patients end up restricting their diet so much that they're eating a handful of foods. And so more and more what's being recognized is a condition called ARFID or avoidant restrictive food intake disorder. Patients who restrict their food and essentially anorexia or an eating disorder but not because they have body dysmorphia. They don't like how they look they're trying to lose weight, but it's because the they're so symptomatic with foods and have such fear of symptoms that are triggered by foods that then they just whittled down things they can eat.