Women who have IBS have spoken to me at length about their IBS triggers. Sometimes you know what it is that sparked your IBS syndrome, or your symptoms.
Other times what triggers your IBS can seem a mystery that you need to figure out. Even if you have no clue as to what has activated your IBS, there are a few different areas that you could explore that could give you insight into what’s giving you those really bad IBS episodes and what you can do about it.
Today we’ll discuss the most common IBS triggers so that you can get closer to the root causes of your pain and establish a plan to health and less frequent painful episodes in your life.
Find the full transcript for this episode and other resources at healingheribs.com/23.
How Food Can Trigger Your IBS
With IBS, food is often a major trigger for episodes of diarrhea, constipation or bloating. For me, 85% of my worst IBS episodes started very soon after eating a meal.
When you first start healing from your IBS, it can be so effective to focus your attention on what foods are causing you the worst symptoms and how you can avoid those.
This is why the Low Fodmap diet is such as useful and common initial intervention for those who need to feel better and want to prevent really bad IBS problems from continuing. Many women have mentioned to be those foods like dairy, cruciferous vegetables, avocados or gluten are big food triggers and that they really try to avoid them at all cost.
If you haven’t listened to Episode 4: Will the Low Fodmap Diet Help Heal Your IBS? It would be a good idea to go back and listen to that episode to help you decide if, how, and when using the Low Fod Map diet could help you get the worst and most surprising IBS episodes under control.
Figuring out the foods that aren’t working for your digestive system right now can really be a pivotal first step in reducing these painful incidences.
I would recommend however that you remove these foods that are truly bothering you with the intention of re-introducing them into your diet as you are getting better and better.
Removing tricky foods can be helpful in the initial stages, but you really want your diet to be as diverse as it possibly can be. Removing too many foods or becoming overly obsessive about what you do and do not eat could have negative side effects to your healing and keep you from fully getting better.
One food I discovered after doing the Low FodMap that was initiating painful moments was most dairy products, especially products like yogurt and milk and cream and soft cheeses. I decided to cut those out for a long while. Little by little over the years I have been able to reintroduce those foods back into my diet without any negative consequences.
The stronger you get, the more your body will be able to tolerate again. So, hold these food triggers as a temporary intervention to help you feel better today, thinking of removing foods as a band aid to you eventually won’t need anymore.
The Stress Trigger for IBS
I just talked to a medical doctor yesterday who told me that “stress wasn’t a thing” that could contribute to IBS and that it’s all genetic. He said that my sensitivity and intolerance for gluten wasn’t a real thing, that it was all a thing I made up in my head.
It’s times like these where I’m not even sure where to start in responding to some people. Yes, the stress is in my head. My head is in my body, and it’s all connected. For those doctors and other people who are dismissive about the correlation between our bodies and our minds, I just truly worry for their patients who must feel unseen and unsupported by them.
Stress is a normal response and can be a very healthy part of our lives, and it can also take up a certain space in our lives that affects our ability to live well, to be happy. Stress can affect our digestion, and it absolutely can lead to IBS.
We know of the brain gut axis and its scientific relevance for those with IBS. The gut brain axis is the network of nerves that connect your brain and the gut, and this axis sends messages back and forth. The Vegas nerve, your gut microbiome and the enteric nervous system are the main components of this gut brain axis. Scientists sometimes refer to this part of our nervous system as our second brain.
The conditions that are present in our gut microbiome can absolutely result in IBS in your life. Also, having a traumatic event in your life or prolonged stress can also result in you developing IBS. Because of this connection and communication between our gut and brains, scientists now understand that the body often keeps the score.
Frequently for me, if my IBS symptoms weren’t brought on by certain foods that I ate, or the way that I was eating, they were brought on simply by my emotional responses to certain stressful events in my life.
There’s a reason why our appetites are affected by emotional events in our life, or why we have so many expressions in English: it was like a kick in the stomach, or I had a pit in my stomach.
We can often feel emotions in our stomachs and our stress responses can absolutely contribute to our IBS getting better or getting worse.
Do you have a sense that your IBS is connected to your stress?
Learning how to deal with food on the one hands, and my mindset and emotional response to stress on the other hand are two forces that can work powerfully together but you have to know where to start.
If you need support figuring out where to begin with your IBS, I am currently offering a discount of $100 on a Single 90 minute Session that I offer women with IBS called Identifying Your Stressors where we will walk through together what’s going on in your life that is leading to your IBS and I’ll give you a few powerful strategies to implement right away. Go to healingheribs.com to book that session today.
Other IBS Triggers
There are other IBS triggers that women report and experience and other reasons for why people experience bad stomach pain or discomfort.
Some of the most common other triggers for IBS are:
- Travel
- Antibiotics
- Food Poisoning
- Menstrual Cycle
- Lack of Sufficient Water, Movement or Pleasure
These above issues are a small list of the issues in your life that may be bringing IBS and keeping you in the cycle of bad gut issues.
I always wished that there was an easy answer as to why I got IBS and why it was that I was having these awful painful symptoms a few times a week. I wanted my silver bullet cause and my magical remedy.
The truth is that for most women with IBS, figuring out what activates our IBS takes time, openness and consistency in strategy. It’s a mixture of using your emotional and your cognitive intelligence to discover what the right answer is for you, just for you.
There is no one cure fits all for your IBS or for figuring out your stressors. Taking the time to dive in, be curious and open minded to different potential causes and what you can do about them is the key to recovering your gut health.
Thank you for listening today and I hope you found today’s episode useful.
