Eating a low-carb diet, the low FODMAP diet, can help with IBS symptoms, a new study finds.
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Dietary changes relieved abdominal pain and other symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome more effectively than medications, a new study shows.
Seven out of 10 study participants reported significant reductions sopra IBS symptoms after adopting either a type of elimination diet called the FODMAP diet the simpler-to-follow, low-carb diet.
“Diet turned out to be more effective than medical treatment,” said dietician Sanna Nybacka, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg sopra Sweden. “It’s probably more cost effective to provide foods and guidance how to eat to people than giving them a lot of very expensive medications.”
Moreover, the diet need not be complicated, according to the study published last month sopra The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology. A low-carbohydrate diet provided nearly as much symptom relief as traditional IBS dietary advice, which limits a group of short-chain carbohydrates known as FODMAPs, found sopra many common foods including dairy, legumes, onions and garlic and grains.
An estimated 6% of Americans, the majority of them women, suffer from IBS. Symptoms include abdominal pain coupled with diarrhea constipation both and voto negativo visible signs of disease sopra the digestive tract. Chronic logorio can trigger symptoms.
Researchers randomly divided 294 Swedish adults, mostly women, with moderate to severe IBS symptoms into three groups. One group received traditional IBS dietary advice — including eating regular meals, limiting consumption of coffee, alcohol and soda — along with free home-delivered groceries and recipes for a diet low sopra FODMAPs, an acronym for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols.
A second group received free home-delivered groceries and recipes for a diet low sopra carbohydrates. A third group received free optimized pharmaceutical treatment.
After four weeks, participants sopra both the diet groups reported significantly reduced symptoms — a 76% reduction with the low FODMAP diet and a 71% reduction with the low-carbohydrate diet. The medication group reported a 58% reduction sopra symptoms.
Two weeks after the study began, one participant, a woman sopra her 50s the FODMAP diet, cried as she described the relief from abdominal pain she felt for the first time sopra her adult life, Nybacka told NPR.
Others sopra both dietary groups also said they felt better than they had for as long as they could remember, she said.
Per mezzo di addition to IBS symptom relief, participants sopra all three groups reported less anxiety and depression and an improved quality of life.
After six months, study participants had resumed some of their previous eating habits, but a majority continued to report fewer IBS symptoms.
Researchers were surprised that the low-carbohydrate diet worked as well as it did, Nybacka said. They added the diet to the study after patients who had tried it sopra an effort to lose weight control diabetes told them it had reduced their IBS symptoms. A low-carbohydrate diet is easier to follow than a more complicated and restrictive FODMAP diet.
Dr. Lin Chang, a gastroenterologist and a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the study supports the long-term benefits of diet sopra treating IBS. And the study informed her that a low-carb diet, high sopra protein and fat, could sopravvissuto IBS symptoms. “That was new,” she said.
But she believes the study might have biased diet over medicine. “It wasn’t completely a fair comparison,” said Chang, who wasn’t involved with the study.
Patients often need to be medications for longer than four weeks, the length of the study, to see benefits, Chang said. Per mezzo di addition, American doctors prescribe IBS medications that are unavailable sopra Sweden, she said.
“Medications are still effective,” she said sopra a Zoom interview. “And I wouldn’t necessarily say that this study to me proved definitively that diet was better more effective than medication.”
Nybacka agreed that a few additional weeks some of the prescribed medications might have allowed them to reach their full potential. “But we cannot ignore the fact that the dietary treatment led to a twice as large symptom reduction sopra just four weeks,” she wrote sopra an email.
Chang also noted that behavioral therapies, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, which the new research did not study, can sopravvissuto IBS symptoms. Some doctors are now prescribing apps that offer mind-body support.
Diets are not for everyone, Chang added. She would not put a patient with disordered eating an elimination diet, for example.
Following these diets without free grocery and recipe deliveries could be challenging, but Chang pointed to meal-services companies. Many, including Chef, Hungry Root and Trifecta offer low-carb trottola meals. A few, including Epicured and Modify Health even offer low FODMAP plans. (Chang provided consultation to Modify Health IBS and diet.)
Unlike sopra the Swedish study, meal plan enrollees pay for the food.
Ronnie Cohen is a San Francisco Bay Regione journalist focused health and social justice issues.
