#028 Heather Van Vorous Explains The Benefits Of An IBS Diet

Heather Van Vorous is a long-time IBS sufferer, who helps others to live an IBS symptoms-free life, thanks to an IBS diet. 

Heather Van Vorous has been suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) from the early age of nine and even after being diagnosed many years later, she was unable to get any help or find any information to relieve her symptoms.

Heather understands what it means suffering from IBS and the emotional and physical pain it can create in people’s lives and she has an ongoing personal interest in helping others with bowel disorders, so that they don’t have to suffer as long as she did.

After a great deal of research she has become a health and special diet cookbook author and developed successful organic medical foods for managing IBS symptoms.

Heather is also the founder of HelpForIBS.com which is the largest IBS organisation in the world.

Learn more from Heather’s journey and her fight to gain back a happy and healthy life.

In this episode, you’ll learn: 

  • Heather’s struggles with IBS that began at the age of nine years old.
  • What is the difference between the IBS diet and the low FODMAP diet?
  • Why is it important to find your personal tolerance threshold?
  • What are the differences between soluble and insoluble fibre and which fibres can cause IBS symptoms?
  • What foods contain soluble fibres and what food contain insoluble fibres?
  • Why IBS sufferers need to minimise fatty foods?
  • How peppermint oil capsules can help IBS symptoms?
  • Why we need prebiotics?
  • Why a lot of food contain high FODMAP prebiotics?
  • What are the benefits of fibres, herbal teas, and peppermint oil capsules and how are these products used most effectively?
  • Why taking peppermint oil on a full stomach may result in heartburn?
  • What is the best way and the best time to use natural supplements and herbal teas to soothe your tummy?

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LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD THE LOW FODMAP DIET & IBS PODCAST EPISODE 28 HERE
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LARAH: Hi, and welcome to the Low FODMAP diet and IBS Podcast. My guest, Heather van Vorous, has been suffering from IBS since the age of nine although she was not really diagnosed until she was sixteen years old. Before being diagnosed, she had really no choice but to try and learn how to control the disorder on her own which took many years of first-hand experience and a great deal of research. Heather is now a health and special diet cookbook author. She is the developer of organic medical foods for managing IBS symptoms and has a great interest in helping others with bowel disorders. Together with her husband William, Heather has founded the HelpforIBS.com website which is a very successful website and the largest IBS organization in the world. She is also the head of Heather’s Tummy Care Company which has a selection of best selling products that help various IBS symptoms. In addition to offering products that help IBS sufferers, Heather’s Tummy Care also provides the only patient expert moderate irritable bowel syndrome message boards on the internet with a forum for diet, recipes, hypnotherapy, yoga, Crohn’s and Colitis, plus the IBS research library. Heather’s company supports and coordinates the formation and continuation of local, in- person IBS support groups across the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.  There you go.  It is with great pleasure that I would like to introduce Heather.

LARAH: Hello Heather.

HEATHER: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

LARAH: Thank you for accepting to be on my podcast. This is going to be very interesting. You have so much knowledge and your company sounds like they’re doing a lot of good things for IBS sufferers so I’m really eager to understand all that you do and what your products are. But, first of all, would you be able to tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself, about the symptoms that you suffered from as a child, starting from when you were really young — nine years old girl — and also your journey with IBS and how you finally got your IBS diagnosis?

HEATHER: Sure. That was a long trip. Actually, it was quite a few years and, yes, it did start when I was nine years old. I was a little kid. I had nothing else wrong with me — happy, healthy, normal little kid. A summer vacation and I just got struck one day, out of the blue, with blinding pain and I had no idea what was happening to me…what was going on. Why was there suddenly just this excruciating pain? I was taken to the doctors multiple times and got no help and was told that it was basically all inside of my head and that there was nothing wrong with me. They ran a few tests and not really much else, and it was just sort of this vague state for the next quite a few years of being normal and healthy and then suddenly getting hit out of the blue. So sometimes it was diarrhoea and more pain, and then I’d be fine. It was just a revolving door of doctors and tests and then, just basically being ignored and told there was nothing wrong with me. Obviously there was something wrong, and it’s just took a lot of investigation on my own to try to figure out what would help and what would hurt. I had to keep following up with doctors years later to try to still get a diagnosis of the symptoms and have an answer to what was going on. And eventually — it was quite a few years later — I finally got a diagnosis of IBS and still really wasn’t given help for that. They just had a name for what was wrong with me, but not really any information about what was the underlying problem and what was causing these symptoms. How do I stop them? How do I keep them from happening?  And that really just a sort of got dumped on me as a child and as a teen, and then as an adult. It was really in my hands to try and figure out what this diagnosis meant. How do I manage this and live around it? It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t fast. And really, my frustrations with that over the years, and then encountering so many more people with the same problem, years on who were still at the same point that I was, is what lead me to try to get people the information that had helped me — trying to get them information about what IBS is and how do we manage it. What can we eat or not eat, and what supplements we must take or avoid? To try to just basically share as much education or information on the subject as possible so that people could have tangible help and not struggle for as many years as I did to figure out what was wrong with them and how to address it. It’s a pretty simple request for people to have to try to find out what’s wrong with them and how to make it better.  It’s just going to take a long time to get there on your own, so I’m hoping to shortcut that trip for a lot of them.

LARAH: Yeah, thank you, Heather, for sharing your experience. You were really young when that happened. And spending most of your childhood and teen years in pain, it must have been really dreadful to not have a clue, really, of what was going on with you, right?

HEATHER: Yes, and I was lucky in that it was erratic, which is one of the hallmarks of IBS, not chronic, but intermittent. It wasn’t non-stop which was really a saving grace, but there really wasn’t an end in sight either, which was really frustrating. It just kept coming back. I do think it’s harder for people to deal with this as a child; it’s harder as a teen than it is as an adult. That definitely puts people in a more difficult situation when they don’t have the power to control their lives that adults have. It was a very many years long struggle of trying to figure out what was going on. And I wish that wasn’t still happening to people today and it is. It’s still a struggle for people, which is really upsetting.

LARAH: Yes, you’re totally right. So you eventually got diagnosed when you were nineteen years old. Was there anyone advising you to follow a special diet? Or what kind of recommendations were you getting back then?

HEATHER: I really wasn’t given anything at all. I was just given a diagnosis which, I guess, was a relief, although it turned out about ten years later I discovered that they didn’t even do that accurately. So I had  a diagnosis, but they didn’t really have what they needed to diagnose me. It was really a happy coincidence that it turned out to be accurate. But aside from being told that I had IBS, that’s really all I was given. I wasn’t given any dietary information; I wasn’t given any information at all. It wasn’t helpful. It was a relief to have a diagnosis, but that was it. I was sort of sent packing.  And it took probably ten years after that to figure it out on my own — how to manage this through diet; what other triggers were; what were the circumstances that made it worse or made it better. As far as I know, there just wasn’t any real information out there at that time. When I started compiling information for other people, there wasn’t much out there in terms of groups or things that were aimed at patients. There was a lot of research that had been done.  You literally had to go to research journals to find it — to find the medical studies to start hunting this down. There wasn’t anything in the form of patient information, guidebooks or anything to help you in layman’s terms — here’s what’s going on in your body or here’s what’s going to make it better or make it worse. So, no, that wasn’t information that I had handed to me, unfortunately. I had to figure it out on my own.

Heather Van Vorous - Help For IBSLARAH: Yeah, that must have been so frustrating. I’ve heard that, even recently from people with IBS, that they tend to be given things to let’s say calm diarrhoea, or help with constipation, or help with acid reflux or other symptoms caused by IBS, but the diet doesn’t come much into place, still, even years later after you’ve been diagnosed.

HEATHER: I hear from people every day, who have been told they have IBS and given no information at all, or people who are still struggling to get a diagnosis and just can’t get the simplest help to find out what’s wrong with them. So, yeah, it’s a big frustration that’s decades long at this point. The information is just doesn’t seem to be disseminated from the researchers on down. It’s not making its way to the family docs, the GI docs, the nutritionist, the GP, to dietitians who are the front line for patients. I think there are exceptions to that. There are some great doctors out there giving people some good information, but there are still an awful lot of them who are diagnosing some people with IBS and just sending them off without any help at all.

LARAH: Thank you, Heather. As my listeners know, personally, I am a big advocate of the low FODMAP diet because the GP who diagnosed me then suggested I go and see a dietitian. The dietitian three-and-a-half years ago told me to go on a low FODMAP diet. Then, eventually, I had to go to Italy after a couple of weeks so I had to  kind of work it out myself. But since then, my symptoms have almost totally disappeared and my life has completely changed.

I was wondering, what do you think about the low FODMAP diet? When I look at your website you talk a lot about an IBS diet, but not specifically about the low FODMAP diet. This is also one of the reasons why I was very interested in talking to you today, just to see a different perspective. So if you could explain, what do you think they are? The main differences between the IBS diet you follow and the low FODMAP diet?

HEATHER: Sure. And I’m just happy to have, really, any helpful dietary information out there for people. It’s a big improvement to get people educated in any way, shape or form. That’s progress no matter how I look at it.

I like to think of the IBS diet as sort of a foundations for people — for everyone across the board. Really, everyone’s gut is the same in fundamental ways whether they have IBS or not. Things like fats are GI stimulants, insoluble fibre is a GI stimulant. Soluble fibre is a GI regulator. There are GI irritants like alcohol or coffee stimulants like caffeine and all of these things can either help or hurt in terms of IBS symptoms by triggering spasms or cramps or helping to prevent spasms and cramps. So that can be a good foundation for pretty much everyone with IBS, regardless of their symptoms.

Soluble fibre will help. It keeps your gut stable and helps resolve diarrhea and constipation, and won’t turn one to the other. Soluble fibre foods are good foundations for keeping your gut calm and your gut motility normal, rhythmic and stable. Insoluble fibre, people usually have to be careful with. You have to be cautious with those foods. You don’t have to avoid them completely, but you have to be careful. They can potentially cause trouble. And there are some universal trigger foods for people that tend to be very high-fat; deep-fried foods; red meat can be really hard on people; dairy — even if it’s lactose-free — coffee, soda pop, alcohol. If you can sort of use those as foundation of being careful or avoiding triggers — getting a foundation of soluble fibre foods and using those to carefully incorporate insoluble fibre foods — you have a healthy diet. l can get a lot of people to a really good baseline, but for some folks, that does it. That’s all they really need to manage symptoms. If that doesn’t do it for people, I would say keep your baseline because this is what’s going to affect your gut the same way, regardless. So keep that as your baseline for help, and then, If you need to move on to FODMAPs, do that, and do it the way that you are supposed to — just working with a registered dietitian, who knows IBS and who knows the FODMAP diet — so that you can find your particular sensitivities, if any…or all of them…or just a few. And then find out what you really can tolerate — doses of FODMAPs — so you end up with the least restrictive diet as possible. It can be quite an ordeal for some people to get to that point and figuring that out, so I would say, have some patience. And if you want to do the FODMAPs, please do that with a registered dietitian. We’re not having such great results in America on how FODMAPs is being followed. People aren’t getting the guidance that they need for that. That’s how it’s being presented from the physicians’ side of things and the research, and that is not how it’s making its way to the patients, unfortunately.

We have a lot of confused people who are struggling with this. And the worst result that I see from it is where people are just being given a one page sheet that lists high FODMAP foods and they just take them out of their diet, as if that’s it forever after.      They end up with horrible diets because they’ve just eliminated all the foods completely that they may not even have any sensitivities to and they’re not being given an end point. They’re just supposed to take that and run with it and never eat those foods ever again. That is not the point at all of the low FODMAP diet, and it’s leaving people really unhealthy and unhappy. I’m struggling to get people to do this properly: find your own FODMAP sensitivity. So probably, after working with the dietitian to do this, which is fine — that’s how it’s supposed to be done — just determine what are your specific problems and sensitivities if you have any. Maybe you don’t.  Maybe you have a wide range of them or maybe you just have few. You need to figure it out and it’s very individualised. What one person is sensitive to in a FODMAP, the next person might not, so there are so many shades of grey in that. It’s a shame that people are being given   information about FODMAPs as if it is black and white. It’s not, and it’s really unnecessarily restricting the diet and keeping it restricted because they’re not being given the proper educational information. It’s a complicated subject. People who are not used to it, starting to talk to them about fructans and oligosaccharides, that’s a stretch for a lot of people. You can’t just dump that on them. They need help.

LARAH: Yes, I totally agree with you. It is so individual, your level of tolerance, and you cannot just think that you’re going to avoid all of those foods and be okay if you don’t know exactly what your threshold is on that food.

HEATHER: Right.

LARAH:  You might not have any intolerance from that food at all.

HEATHER: Actually, exactly. Which specific FODMAPs and what is your intolerance level, and it’s a great big deal that’s individualised for each person. I think it’s really hard to make blanket statements about that except to see a FODMAPs dietitian and work with them because you really do have to find your personal sensitivities. That’s why I think it’s nice to give people the baseline of sort of general IBS guidelines which are kind of universal for everyone. The fast-soluble fibre, insoluble fibre, there’s not a lot of shades of grey there; it’s just your gut reacting in basic biology. But getting the baseline from that, and if you need to move on and do the FODMAPs, make sure that you are doing it for your specific tolerances. It doesn’t matter what other people have. What matters with FODMAPs is you and that you are working with your personal intolerances.

LARAH: Yes, absolutely. And it is such a complex diet. And it seems that sometimes people don’t have either the trust or the funds to go and see a dietitian. That’s why they rely just on the advice they see on websites, or even this podcast. This is not meant to replace professional advice. It’s just meant to put questions in your head that you might be able to ask to your health professional and see different aspects of the diet, of IBS, of the symptoms, but it does not replace professional health advice which has to be individualised for your case, and especially after you’ve done the elimination part. Fair enough, you get a list of food that you should avoid, but when does the reintroduction part come, if you don’t see anyone that helps with that, and that’s the crucial part.

HEATHER: Yeah, and that’s where, when I talk to people, I see they’re stuck. You’ve got the elimination part that’s taken everything out of your diet, and that’s it. They’re not given any information to go past that point, so that’s the frustration. You’re right, it can be expensive to see a dietitian just to help you with that. It’s not always covered by insurance, if you have health insurance, so it’s easier said than done to tell people just go do this, just go do that.  You have to give them the resources for that and make sure that they’re able to go do what you’re telling them to.

LARAH: And I guess there isn’t yet as much support, maybe, from doctors, from general practitioners in terms of the diet. So, if someone gets the advice to just pop a pill, rather than seeing a dietitian, this person is more likely to do that because it’s easier, but it does not usually solve the problem.  We need to understand that if we’re not eating the right food, of course, there’s going to be consequences, so dietitians are not being given the right importance.

HEATHER: I think the patients know that really more than doctors. The patients know that what they eat affects them. They may not know how. They’re struggling to figure out the details, but they just instinctively know that they can eat the wrong thing and get sick. And sometimes they eat the same thing and they don’t get sick; and why is that? Sometimes there’s things that they feel will actively help them, but they may not have a logical reason. They really struggle a lot of the time on this aspect. They know that they need dietary help, but they don’t know what that means and they’re not really getting the details that they need about that from their doctors, which should be a referral to a dietitian, or at least references pointing people to additional information — something better than just telling them, “Don’t eat what makes you sick,” or “Keep a food journal. I hope that helps you.” Or “Food doesn’t matter; eat what you want.” There are all kinds of crazy dietary advice that people are given with IBS.

LARAH: Thank you for that. You kind of already started to talk about soluble and insoluble fibres. Would you be able to go into a little bit more detail? On your site, you talk a lot about soluble and insoluble fibres, so if you could explain what they are and what food contains which types of fibre; which fibres are good for IBS, and which ones may not be so good.

HEATHER: Sure. Yes, there are two different types of fibres, which comes as a surprise for some people. A lot of times they just know that there’s fibre. It’s a good thing and you should eat more fibre, and sometimes that’s even the medical advice they receive: “You should eat more fibre with IBS,” which is just kind of a meaningless statement because, what kind of fibre? More soluble? More insoluble? Two totally different things that have two radically different effects on your gut. Soluble fibre is a regulator and it’s found in foods that a lot of people don’t think of as fibre. It’s usually in starches, so those things like rice, oatmeal, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bananas or any kind of ‘smushy’ plant foods. That is soluble fibre, and it literally dissolves in water. It holds water and it regulates water content in the bowel, and it regulates bowel motility. So whether you have IBS or not, soluble fibre is going to regulate your bowel motility. It’s just a lot more important if you have IBS because you’re going to be more dependent on it.

Insoluble fibres are GI stimulants whether you have IBS or not. That’s what insoluble fibre does. They’re all of your roughage kind of foods. They are going to speed up the contractions of the bowel. They’re going to increase the rate of peristalsis and they’re going to increase the water content in the bowel. So if you don’t have IBS, probably not a big deal. If you do have IBS, insoluble fibre can cause severe spasms, cramping, pain, diarrhea… It can cause rebound constipation because the colon sort of seizes up and you can get really severe cramps. It stops motility — more of a constipator. So soluble fibre is the stabiliser and the regulator, and insoluble fibre is potentially trouble, but you can’t just avoid your insoluble fibre foods. That’s pretty much everything you think of as your healthiest foods in the world — your plant foods, your fruits, your veggies, whole grains, beans, all your roughage. That’s insoluble fibre.

So, if you have IBS, you can do whatever you can to break down insoluble fibre before you eat it.  It’s going to be a lot easier on your gut.  So that is things like peeling skin off, taking seeds out, chopping up things, throwing fruit in the blender to make a fresh fruit smoothie, cooking vegetables instead of having them raw… Anything you can do to mechanically break down insoluble fibre before you eat it is really going to help with IBS. And then, using your soluble fibre foods as a foundation, use them for your meals and snacks. Get your soluble fibre foods into your gut 24/7. The only way they’ll work is when they’re in your gut. It will literally help to gently force your motility to stay calm. Soluble fibre will give you safe buffer so you can carefully add the insoluble fibre foods that you need for the nutrition.

You can add some small amounts of your heart healthy fats. That’s your trigger, but you’ve got to have your heart healthy fats for good health. You can’t go fat free; you might have to go low fat to make your fat count. Again, have soluble fibres to keep your gut calm. You don’t want to have a lot of fat on an empty stomach. You can use that as a baseline — your soluble fibre foundation — and just try to avoid or minimise your high fat and trigger foods. A lot of people, just taking red meat, dairy, deep-fried, soda pop, coffee, out of the equation can help tremendously. That can really help keep your gut calm on a day-to-day basis. And a lot people can manage their IBS with that —  just that dietary adjustment. That works for a lot of people, but it might not be enough for everyone. So we give people across the board from the diarrhea, the constipation, stopping the pain, spasm and cramps and help get people to a baseline where they can get their gut stable. And once you’re stable, it’s so much easier to stay stable, so that’s the goal, for me, when people are changing their diet. Use your diet to get your gut functions stable, and then, to keep it there.

LARAH: Yes, I remember that before being diagnosed my bucket was always full, so anything I would eat, I would feel sick, but now that I’ve stabilised it… I’m still on eighty- five percent, let’s say a low FODMAP diet, but I can tolerate high FODMAP food now because I’m always within my threshold. So my bucket is no longer full.

HEATHER: Yeah, yes. There’s a lot more flexibility and freedom.

LARAH: Absolutely, it completely changes. Being Italian, you can imagine what my diet would have been back then.

HEATHER: Yeah, it’s really hard for people do that at first.  Restricting to get their gut calmed down can take a much greater effort than keeping it calm once you get there. You just have to get people to trust in that, “It’s okay. You’re going to be really bored and have not great foods for maybe a couple of days, maybe even a couple of weeks, but it’s worth it if it gets your gut calm.” Then you have a baseline and you can carefully expand your diet so you can have good food, and you can cook and go out to restaurants and have a happy, healthy life where you can enjoy eating without getting sick. It just might take a little effort to get there.

LARAH: Yes, and it’s a continuous adjustment to see what level you can go to.

HEATHER: It is, and it changes all the time. You’re at a baseline and you might be doing great, and then something comes along and whacks you out. You get stressed out, whether it gets too hard or there’s something else in your life that affects you and makes you sick, and then the IBS comes right back. And now you might have to crack down your diet again to get more stable and then you will have more freedom and flexibility. But you’re right. It’s just a constant sort of rollercoaster of more freedom and less freedom. You’ve got some flares and now you’re stable again. It’s kind of intermittent and you have to adjust almost on a daily basis sometimes.

LARAH: Yes, Thank you, Heather. Now I want to talk about fat. So we all know that high-fat food is not really that great for IBS, but why exactly is that happening? Why is food with high fat content bad for IBS? Which are the worst fatty foods that we should really avoid or limit.

HEATHER: Well, fats across the board are GI stimulants, and again, whether you have IBS or not, that is what fats do. So if you eat fats, they enter your stomach, and anything that enters your stomach triggers what is called a gastrocolic reflex which means your colon starts contracting. It’s your body’s normal way of regulating the intake of food.  But that’s what triggers that reflex more strongly than anything else. If you don’t have IBS, it really doesn’t matter. If you do have IBS, you already have a dysfunctional gut that is prone to overreacting to normal stimuli, and now you’re giving it a really powerful stimuli in fats. And it means your gut is likely to over contract and overreact — or you will have normal contractions that your brain misinterprets because IBS is a brain-gut dysfunction. So anything that really gets your colon speeding up, contracting faster, harder and stronger, is going to have some exponential effects if you have IBS. That can cause severe pain, cramping, spasms, with something suddenly rushing through your gut. It could be diarrhea.  Sometimes it happens so fast that people are still eating the trigger food when they get sick. That’s not unheard of. They have to leave the table because their gut is overreacting so quickly to stimuli like fats.

It’s hard to eat a lot of fat for anyone with IBS. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how heart- healthy the fat is. It can be extra virgin olive oil; it could be lard. They’re both fats. They’re obviously very different in terms of the health effects for rest of the body, but in terms of IBS, it really doesn’t matter. They’re both fats, so they’re both likely to trigger spasms, and cramps, and problems. You’re probably going to have to go to a lower fat diet which means you’ve got to make those fats count.  So if you want to focus on your heart-healthy oil — your olive oils, your fatty fish, your nut oils, your coconut oils — but you still are not going to be able to have them in huge quantities and you’re probably not going to be able to have them by themselves.  You’re going to have to mitigate that with soluble fibre to keep your gut calm. Use your soluble fibre foods to add in small amounts of your heart-healthy fats. Probably, you’re going to have to avoid the high-fat foods that don’t have a lot of other benefits or that have aspects like proteins that are also hard on the gut. That’s where the red meat and dairy come in. For most people, those are really hard foods, and it is tough for them to ever find tolerable amounts, so usually, people take that out and may not be able to add it back in. But you should certainly be able to get totally normal amounts of heart-healthy fats. Just cast a suspicious eye on anything high fat that you eat. No matter how healthy it might be for your heart, if it’s high fat, it’s probably going to cause trouble.

LARAH: Yes, great. And again, just see what your threshold is and if there are fats that you should avoid — the fried food, and the chips and that type of stuff — avoid those, and have a slice of avocado rather than have those.

HEATHER: Yes, exactly. Avoid the obvious things. Don’t get the steak; don’t get the deep-fried foods like fries and chips, yeah. Where you can take out the high-fat sources, do so. And again, just like the FODMAPs, your threshold can vary, and it might vary from one day to the next.  You might be just fine, and then, maybe you’re really stressed out the next day. You probably are not going to have the tolerance for something greasy on that day or on a totally empty stomach…or in large quantities. So have a little with a  soluble fibre meal. Have it when you’re feeling happy, and calm, and healthy. Splurging on something high fat is not good when you are stressed out and on the run, and running late to something important, and fighting off a cold, and not having eaten all day.  That’s not the time to see how much fat you can tolerate.

LARAH: Thank you, Heather. Let’s now start to talk about the products that you have developed which are very successful. So you have one which is a special fibre product that helps people with IBS, and it’s called the Tummy Fiber Organic Acacia Senegal.  Could you explain what it is and how this fibre can help with IBS symptoms?

HEATHER: Sure. Tummy Fiber is literally just an organic pure soluble fibre. That’s the only thing that’s in there. It’s really the only thing in a fibre supplement that is going to help IBS. It’s just the soluble fibre. It’s the only thing that should be in a fibre supplement. It’s really an adjunct to people to get extra soluble fibre in their diet. It’s hard for some people to do that with foods alone. Any form of soluble fibre is going to regulate your bowels. The whole point of adding Tummy Fiber is to have a sort of extra cushion of soluble fibre in your gut 24/7 — something that you take twice a day, everyday. Start at a low dose and increase gradually. It should completely resolve diarrhea, constipation, but the dosages would vary from person to person. Diarrhea tends to resolve with a lower dose of soluble fibre. Constipation has people end up on 25g or 30g a day. It can take a while to get there. So, this is not like using a drug, or a laxative, or an antidiarrheal medication. It is something that’s going to work slowly and steadily and gradually as you get your dose up. But if you can get your dose up, and you can keep your cool, and fuel with soluble fibre 24/7, it should proactively keep the IBS symptoms at bay and prevent the diarrhea, prevent the constipation, prevent the spasms and the cramps that go with them as well.  The nice thing that I really like about the Tummy Fiber is that it’s prebiotic, so it ferments very slowly in the bowel and creates an environment in which the healthy gut bacteria thrive, which is really great for IBS.

There is so much growing evidence on the importance of the gut microbiome, all of the gut bacteria play a huge role playing over our health, and the prebiotic effect is something that can really help people with gas and bloating which can be one of the most frustrating symptoms of IBS. And it’s a prebiotic that is inherently FODMAP free which is great because so many prebiotics out there are not just high FODMAPs, they literally are FODMAPs like inulin or FOS (Fructo-oligosaccharides). You certainly wouldn’t want that as a fibre supplement with IBS.

It was impossible to find something like that years ago. That is what really led to this company, I could not find things in the market. Other people could not find the things they were looking for, but I was talking about and researching books and websites, and I couldn’t find them. They were asking me to source them, and at that time, there literally wasn’t anything out there like that. You couldn’t just go buy a soluble fibre supplement. Soluble fibre literally didn’t exist. There is a huge need for that for people with IBS and people wanted a fibre supplement in general, so that is how the Tummy Fiber came about. It is something that needed to be sort of organic. It could be prebiotic. It could even be straight soluble fibre, no insoluble fibre, and then, ideally, something that is aesthetically nice for people to use as dealing with IBS day-in and day-out.  You want to make that is as easy and as pleasant as possible, so I don’t really want to have to stir up a glass of fibre supplement used in an orange juice that thickens up and I have to choke down really fast. I wanted something for people that they could just add to foods, or liquids, or to cook with, and it is just a very undetectable part of their diet for day-in and day-out uses so it was easy for them to use. It was something that wasn’t a negative experience to do every day — something that you wouldn’t notice. You’d notice the benefits, but you didn’t really have to notice the usages.

LARAH: Yes, thank you. And this is so crucial, what you’re saying about prebiotic, because we need prebiotics to feed our gut bacteria. But, as you said, most prebiotics are high FODMAP foods…

HEATHER: Right.

LARAH: So it’s like a catch twenty-two. So it’s fantastic that you actually have a product that is safe and it does the job that we need. It’s great.

HEATHER: Yeah. I spent a lot of time thinking about prebiotics. They’re becoming very popular in our gut, and they’re starting to add them to probiotics and to other food bars, healthy shakes and all that. Unfortunately, almost all of the time they’re doing that, read the ingredients, the prebiotics that they are using are FODMAPs. They are causing problems for people with IBS, and without, because they are adding so much of them to some products. They’re giving gas and bloating to people who don’t even have IBS.

LARAH: Yes.

HEATHER: So watch out for the prebiotics. Read that label! What kind of prebiotic? Is it fast fermenting? Is it slowly fermenting? Is it a FODMAP or not? You’ve got to do a lot of label reading with IBS.

LARAH: Yes, absolutely.  And I had that experience once when I was first diagnosed and when I went to Italy and I knew I had to get some probiotics in me, and those particular ones that I chose had also prebiotics, which were high FODMAP. I was so sick the whole afternoon.

HEATHER: It’s driving me crazy. They’re adding it everywhere.

LARAH: Yes.

HEATHER: Probiotics in yoghurts, health food bars….

LARAH: Yoghurt, yeah.

HEATHER: And they’re adding them to things where they’d never been in there before. So it’s the same brand; it’s the same product that people have been buying for years without trouble, and now, all of the sudden, they’re getting horrible bloating and gas and they can’t figure it out because their diet hasn’t changed. It’s that the ingredients and products have changed. Even using something for years, read the ingredients anyway because they might have changed them on you.

LARAH: Yes, because manufacturers are catching up on this health trend so they’re saying, “Well let’s put something healthy in there. Let’s put inulin in there. Let’s put in a prebiotic so that we can put that it contains prebiotic,” but then, without realising that they’re hurting those who have symptoms like us.

HEATHER: Right. And they’re choosing the cheapest ones in the US, and the cheapest ones available are the FODMAPs ones, so those are the ones that they’re adding to everything. I’m hoping that ends soon, but I don’t know.

LARAH:  More education I think?

HEATHER: Yeah. And people just have to read labels and they can’t really trust manufacturers. You just have to read the ingredients.

LARAH: Yes, absolutely right. So, eventually, it may improve. It will take a while, I would say.

HEATHER: Yes, it will take a while.

LARAH: Okay. There’s another product that you have created which I’m quite curious about because I hear about it quite a bit.  Even in my Facebook group people ask me about peppermints. You have the Heather’s Tummy Tamers Peppermint Oil Capsules. So what are they exactly? Do they contain peppermint essential oils?  Do they contain herbs? What other ingredients do the capsules contain and how do these ingredients help IBS symptoms?

HEATHER: Peppermint oil capsules actually go back a couple of decades or so for IBS symptoms, and they have really great clinical research — including with children with IBS, which is unusual. It’s unusual to see clinical studies on IBS in children. It’s always been a soft spot for me so I find it very interesting that they’ve actually tested peppermint oil capsules, not just on adults, but on children. So they’re nothing new.   They’ve been around for many, many years, but again, it was something that I was talking about years ago, with people that they couldn’t find. It was something that had good research and the products existed, but they just weren’t really on the market in the US. They imported them from England, and maybe you’d randomly find them in a store, but it was really hard to source. That was something I wanted to make available for people because they are fantastic!

Peppermint capsules have terrific studies showing how effective they can be to prevent IBS pains, spasms, cramps, to some extent bloating and gas, because peppermint is a powerful soothing muscle relaxant. And that’s going to be true for peppermint across the board — so peppermint as an herb that you brew like as a tea. That will be very helpful for pain, cramps and spasms. The strongest form of peppermint that you can get would be the extracted oil from peppermint leaves.  And that’s what peppermint capsules are; that’s what the are Tummy Tamers are — peppermint oil. There’s also fennel oil and ginger oil because fennel is fantastic. It’s a calmative, so it helps bloating and gas. Ginger is an overall digestive aid that’s got so many general digestive benefits from any kind of ginger root.

So pep caps are ideal for preventing IBS pains, spasms and cramps. They are not going to be ideal for quick relief because you have to take them on an empty stomach and they’re a preventive. They have to reach your small intestines before they dissolve. They’re enteric-coated and you always want enteric-coating on your peppermint capsules. You don’t want them to dissolve in your stomach. You want them to sail right through and dissolve in your intestines. They have an antispasmodic effect so they stop the cramps that are causing pain with IBS. I love the peppermint oil capsules for when I am travelling.  I’ll   take them before restaurant meals — I never trust restaurants. Just in general, if I feel like I’m having a rough day or something’s going to come up that’s stressful, I start taking them preventively. Other people take them every single day as a preventative. Some people just key them to when they know they’re going to have trouble.  First thing in the morning could be a bad time a day for a lot of people with IBS, so if you take a peppermint capsule every night last thing before you go to bed, that can help head off those problems. If you know that there’s a specific time of day that you’re struggling and you want take one in advance of that… It’s good little safety margin that you can keep in your pocket or purse or in your desk drawer at work. So if you think things are maybe heading a little south, as long as you have an empty stomach, you can take a peppermint capsule and help prevent symptoms from happening.

LARAH: So what happens if people take it on a full stomach? Is it just not going to work?

HEATHER: It will probably eventually dissolve in your stomach. The enteric coating is acid resistant to resist stomach acid, but eventually, it will break down. So if you’ve just had a big meal and then take an entire peppermint cap, it’s probably going to sit in your stomach for too long and is not going to be able to pass through because there’s a bunch of food in the way. So if it eventually does dissolve in your stomach and you have straight peppermint oil in your stomach, it’s likely to cause heartburn, because peppermint is a smooth muscle relaxant, which is great for your lower GI. That’s what you want to do is to relax the GI and stop cramps, spasms, but your entire GI tract is   smooth muscles. So if you relax your upper GI, that can allows acid reflux, and people are prone to that.

LARAH: Okay, interesting. So the idea is that the capsule goes straight to your intestines?

HEATHER: Yup. It should bypass your stomach before it dissolves so you avoid any heartburn risk. And that’s why you always have to take it on an empty stomach; and that’s why there’s a little bit of a delay from it. So it’s not the thing to turn to if you have  pain right now and you need help and you can’t wait. You want to go to something like   peppermint tea for that. And if you need immediate help, you don’t want to use the capsules — you want to use some kind of a tea.

So, with IBS you’re sort of mitigating symptoms by preventing them, but then you also need some kind of safety net, if you suddenly need something now, despite your best efforts. How do you relieve the symptoms now if you can’t wait? You’re in pain now and you need help now.

LARAH: Okay.

HEATHER: The peppermint tea is for that.

LARAH: Alright. So that’s interesting. So peppermint tea will be okay to have after a meal, if you feel bloated?

HEATHER: Yup.

LARAH: But the capsule, just take it on empty stomach. That’s good.

HEATHER: Yup, any kind of tea. If bloating and gas are people’s symptoms, then fennel is actually a better tea. That’s a better carminative that is really going to help your body to reduce and expel bloating and gas. It’s a bit of an antispasmodic, but not as powerful in that regard as far as the peppermint. So I tell people peppermint for pain, fennel for gas and bloating, and ginger for nausea. And you can mix and match all of those. Brew them all together in the same cup of tea. You can key it to your symptoms. The teas will be a preventive as well — just not as strong as the concentrated oil and the capsules. But if you need immediate help and you’re suddenly not feeling well — you have a full stomach — go immediately to a tea, like peppermint or fennel tea.

LARAH: Okay, it’s interesting because when I look at the low FODMAP Monash University app, it says that a cup of tea made with fennel is actually high FODMAP because it contains fructans. So if people are sensitive to fructans should they still have fennel? What do you think?

HEATHER: I’d be cautious, and I think there have been some conflicted studies on FODMAPs and fennel tea.  They’ve got different results.

LARAH: Okay.

HEATHER: I’m waiting to see if they come out with another result. It seems to vary which is interesting. You could try it cautiously and see how you do on it. Fennel’s really quite an ancient and traditional remedy for bloating and gas or all kinds of digestive upsets. It’s used around the world as a general digestive after a meal. So I don’t know if there’s something in it that is like negating the fructans in there, or if it’s just a matter of individual tolerance, but I would say, try it. If you know you have trouble with fennel oil or fennel seeds, then be cautious or just stick to peppermint.

LARAH: Yup, that’s funny because when I grew up, my mom always had fennel seeds in the cupboard for digestion, so it was just normal. I was kind of surprised when I saw that fennel (tea)* was actually not good for digestion because I thought that’s what they were for.

*1 teaspoon of fennel seeds is low FODMAP (Monash University app – February 2017)

HEATHER: That’s why I question it too. There’s something that doesn’t quite make sense there.  It’s been in use for too long across too wide a geographic range in the world as a digestive aid. And it does help so many people with bloating and gas that I’m curious about the FODMAPs aspect of it. I’m interested to see how that plays out — or to get more feedback from people because I really don’t have much feedback from people on the FODMAPs aspect of it. The feedback is basically just, “Yeah, it’s great for bloating and gas,” so I don’t know. That may be an area where there’s a million shades of grey and it’s really going to come down to the individual person.

LARAH: Yes, yes, very much so.  So, I guess, you know, you can give it a go, and then if it doesn’t work then don’t have it.

HEATHER: Yeah, try peppermint. If that doesn’t work, ginger is another one. Chamomile can help people. It can be a low sedative, so you can use it at night. They’re just digestive aids. So any kind of herbal tea across the board is probably going to help a little bit — just keep the kind that you use and that you like. It can be decaffeinated Chai that will have inside, cloves and cinnamon that will be a digestive aid. So find what you like that works for you and that is appealing to you, so you actually use it. Use what works for you. That’s what really matters in the end.

LARAH: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, what works for you, exactly.

HEATHER: Right.

LARAH: You can just get ideas from your friend or your neighbour — whatever they do…

HEATHER:  Right.

LARAH:  Hoping that’s it’s going to work for you. You have to see what works for you.

HEATHER: And trust yourself on that, too.  If you think something helps you, trust your gut. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a logical reason why. They’re probably is one, you just haven’t discovered it yet. And the same thing if you think that something is hurting you. It doesn’t matter if other people tell you that there’s no logical reason why that would hurt. Just ignore those people and listen to your gut. If you think something is hurting you, avoid it. If you think something is helping you, use it. In the end, you are the only person who’s living with this disorder, and it’s your body; it’s your health; it’s your life. You are the one who has to be happy with this so don’t let others influence you on that. Not me or anybody else. Trust your gut.

LARAH: Yup, very good advice. Thank you, Heather. So, can we now talk about your website? It is a very successful website. It’s very comprehensive and has a lot of information. Can you just explain to the listeners what they can find on your website? And also, can you talk a little bit about the local in-person support groups that are available in various countries?

HEATHER: Sure. The website, at this point, is an enormous, gigantic patient support site for people with IBS. And that is literally what it is meant to do, is to give people help with Irritable Bowel Syndrome across a spectrum. So I’m getting a diagnosis — what that involves, tests you might need, other disorders that can mimic IBS, doubts, questions to ask the doctor, what IBS is… What does the brain-gut disorder mean? What is the underlying pathology? What are the symptoms? It’s got sections on is there medical help available and prescriptions you might be given. Are there natural supplements that you could take? Herbal remedies, stress management, gut directed hypnotherapy, which is an entire topic worthy of its own shelf. They help all kinds of IBS symptoms, yoga, stress reduction, research library section. There are support groups. There’s an enormous dietary section. There’s newsletters that go out that strictly ask questions from people. We really try to make it a comprehensive resource for IBS. All of the different treatments that are available, what they involve, what they might help, anything that you could do to change your life, to change your body, to change your health… Anything that impacts IBS, there’s information on the site about that so you can get all of the avenues for help from getting a diagnosis, feeling confident that you have a diagnosis that’s accurate — do you have IBS? Then move on to what are the treatments possible here. What treatments do I want to try? All of them, some of them, or focus on one of them? And how do I manage symptoms and how do I now live with this disorder? You’ve got your diagnosis. Here’s how you can treat it. What’s the best way to stop the symptoms and keep them at bay and then live a normal life? How do you travel, for instance? Go to restaurants? How do you deal with friends and family, work and or social things? There’s help for people dealing with that as well.  And then just really sort of being a part of the community to know that there are other people out there with the disorder that you’re not alone. There are other people’s stories on the site to share information and suggestions. So, really, hopefully, it helps people to feel less isolated and that they’re not just struggling with something that nobody else in the world is going through.

LARAH: Yes, this is such a good point because a lot of people they do feel isolated when they have this condition because this is not something that people tend to talk about when they have digestive issues or they have constipation or diarrhoea. This is not your usual table conversation.

HEATHER: They don’t. They don’t mention it and it’s shocking how many people have this problem or have someone close to them in their life who has this problem.  And I don’t think that I would have any idea about if I wasn’t in this position. If I was just living my own personal life of IBS and had no other aspect of it in my life, I don’t think I would ever come across anyone else who would have it because I simply wouldn’t know. I really would be coming across people every single day who have IBS, but like you said, they don’t talk about it…and I wouldn’t be talking about it. So you do feel completely isolated. You’re the only person in the world who has this. Nobody’s ever heard of it.  Nobody knows what it is. People think you have to eat weird. You’re strange or stressed out about something and you’re making yourself sick, and now you’re back at the doctors. So people just keep it to themselves. They don’t share, they don’t talk about it, and, really, their close family and friends are the only people who might know about it, and that just adds to the burden. So the more that people can talk about it, the better.  Tell your friends, tell your family, you can tell your boss, co-workers, and the more that people know about this, I found, the more helpful they tend to be, and they’re surprisingly understanding and sympathetic. The more information they have, the more likely they are to be able to support you, and then you don’t feel so alone.

LARAH:  Yes, and the message is: You’re not alone. There is support out are there. There are lots of people just like you.

HEATHER: There are. It can be hard to find them. It can be hard to find the in-person support groups that you were asking about. That is a struggle. They form and they dissipate pretty quickly. It can sometimes be a little more helpful for people to join online communities and post, or just read through message boards or the Facebook communities. There can be local in-person support groups. Those can be harder for people to get going and to keep going. But any avenue that you have to somehow make contact with other people with IBS, even if it’s just on Facebook and even if you just start reading through other people’s posts and you’re not actually posting anything yourself. It’s just very comforting to see that other people are going through the same thing.  And you can also get really helpful information. What helps them or what’s a good tip that they found or something that they shared? Sharing tips and tricks like that can make a world of difference.

LARAH: Yes, and you have created some support groups as well. Are they like meetup groups?

HEATHER: There’s message boards on the site that people can join and participate in online — and then there’s some Facebook groups. There aren’t any active in-person meet up groups that I know about. At this point, they tend to come and go so people will form them and then they’re meeting for a little while and then they sort of die off. It could be wonderful if there was a way or just kind of a central resource just to keep those going, but they just don’t tend to last. In-person groups really don’t tend to hang in there. People get busy and they just stop going and they kind of disappear.

LARAH: Yes, you almost like need an organizer in every city.

HEATHER: You do, and then people have to keep coming and it just sort of comes and goes and comes and goes. The online ones are probably more likely to be continuous sources for people. But, you know, if someone wants to start a little support group within their area, we have information and things that we can email them or mail them that will help them with that — how to go about doing that. It can be a good resource for people if they can get a group up and running. They just don’t tend to run for too long, that’s the only problem. People just have trouble getting to in-person support groups continuously.

LARAH: Yes, that’s right. And then there might be people that start to adopt the diet, which is correct for them, and, therefore, they don’t have those symptoms anymore so they don’t feel like they need to come to a support group.

HEATHER: Now, this happens, yeah. And it’s good and bad. You get a support group and people get help and they don’t keep coming.

LARAH: Yeah.

HEATHER: Yeah, I know.

LARAH: Hahaha.

HEATHER:  Any avenue that works for people — any avenue that people can get help through, I’m happy with.  The more the better. It doesn’t really matter in the end what it is that helps you. It’s that you found it and it works for you.

LARAH: Yeah, Absolutely.  Whatever works for you, that’s what you should follow.

HEATHER: Right, it is. It’s finding a cure. You know, you have a wealth of treatment advocates. People get so upset and they are isolated and frustrated and hopeless sometimes with IBS. They’ve tried everything and nothing works. And you have to really make them some sort of stop, calm down, take a deep breath, and now, take another look at all of the treatment avenues that you really have. You probably have a lot more options than you realise, and maybe even some options you tried didn’t work for reasons you didn’t understand. Maybe there’s a way to try that again and it will work. Maybe you weren’t on the right dosage of something. Who knows? There are variables throwing a wrench in the works. But there are so many different things that you can do from dietary changes — and there’s a wealth of dietary changes that you can make that can make a huge difference. There are dietary supplements that you could take that can make a huge difference. There’s prescription medications for some people; they can be wonder drugs. Stress management can make a world of difference. People can have anxiety as their main trigger of all dietary issues so you have to manage that. Drug therapy has decades of clinical research and can be the front-line approach to that instead of a last resort.  There’s so many different things that people can do, working with their doctors or dietitians, and also on their own, to manage their symptoms. I don’t ever want anyone to feel like they’re hopeless, or that they’ve tried everything but nothing has worked because, in the end, that’s almost never the case. There’s always something that they haven’t tried; there’s always something that will help them. They just need to find out what all those options are.

LARAH: Yes, reach out, really.  There is help out there.

HEATHER: Yeah, reach out. Your doctor, your dietitian, go online, go to the library, get books, talk to your friends and family, start gathering information. Just get as much information as you can and come up with your own plan. Decide what treatment avenues you want to pursue. You’ve got to have information before you even know which direction you want to go.

LARAH: Yes. And talking about books, can you now just tell us about the books that you have published and where they can be found?

HEATHER: Sure. They are found all over — in regular bookstores, online. I have two books right now and one is a comprehensive look at IBS — all of the ways to manage it. It’s called First Year: IBS. It’s meant for people in their first year of diagnosis, but really, it’s better for people trying to get a grip on the disorder.  So even if you have had IBS for years, First Year: IBS is really helpful for anybody trying to get a handle on IBS, regardless of how long you’ve had it. They’re still struggling and not really sure what’s going wrong with their body or how to deal with it. That is a book that is from a patient, to a patient, so it’s got medical information and researched studies incorporated, but it’s very much written for the patient from the point of view of living with this disorder. How do you live with this? How do you even know you have IBS, and if you do, what does that mean?  And now, how do you move forward with this diagnosis? How do you live a   normal, happy, healthy life with IBS? That’s what I’m really trying to cover in First Year — give people the tools so that they literally could do that for themselves — figure out how to manage their disorder and stop the symptoms so that they can be happy.

The other book is called Eating for IBS and is a full-on cookbook. And that really grew out of dietary information of soluble versus insoluble fibre, avoiding the trigger foods.  What does that mean in practical terms and how do I cook around that? How do you make a recipe based on soluble fibre and what do you mean, carefully incorporate insoluble fibre? I don’t understand that. How do I avoid dairy in this recipe and lowered fat content? So, it’s literally a hundred-and-seventy-five recipes that give concrete examples of how to work around these guidelines and how to work with them if you’re not cooking. How do you eat at a party or in a restaurant or travel? How do you just manage your diet in your daily life in a way that can help IBS and not hurt it.  It’s something you can use as a baseline for all IBS symptoms, and that can be the dietary changes you need to make. If you need to go gluten-free on top of it because you are gluten intolerant, or perhaps coeliac, you can factor that in. If you need to go low FODMAP on top of that, you can factor that in.  So it is two different books that are sort of different avenues for help. One is very much dietary focused in cooking which is a big interest to a lot of people with IBS.  And then another more comprehensive book of all of the ways that you could manage it — a dietary chapter, but all the other ways that are not dietary focused. It is two different choices of books.

LARAH: Thank you, Heather. And this sounds like they’ll be great tools for people that have been diagnosed with IBS. They’re lost and don’t know what to do. So I will put the links to your books in my show notes so that people can find them.

HEATHER: They’re supposed to be user friendly — something that is sympathetic and empathetic so you don’t feel that you’re all alone or being talked down to by some authority figure. Or dealt with remotely for someone from a medical point of view for someone who really doesn’t understand it personally — what they’re going through day-to-day and how this is impacting their life. It affects people personally and you have to address them personally. Sometimes it really helps you understand them personally what they’re doing through because you’re going through it yourself.

LARAH: Yes, you want to get the advice from someone that has experienced what you have experienced so they can understand, as well, how you feel about it — your psychological state as well as your physical state.

HEATHER: Yes, and you can’t minimise those things. IBS has a huge impact on a lot of people lives that has been just dismissed or minimised for years, and I think a lot of people with IBS are very tired of that. That’s not how it should be. It can be a really serious disorder; it can devastate people’s lives. You can lose your job, have to drop out of school. It may not literally progress to something that will kill you, but it can sure make you feel like you want to die. Those people need help.

LARAH: Yeah, especially if they can’t see a way out. They don’t know that there is help.

HEATHER: That’s a perfect way to put it — here’s a way out. There’s lots of ways out. Don’t give up hope. Here’s all the different things you can do to get help, get out of the situation, and get your gut back on track and keep it there.

LARAH: Alright, well thank you for sharing all of this precious information that has been so useful. Could you now share with the listeners where they can find you, where they can reach you?

HEATHER:  Well, through the HelpForIBS.com website. We have full contact information for phone numbers, for emails. You can probably reach us through Facebook as well, but direct email would always be best. That’s our main patient support, customer service, email address and I check in there as well. Somebody can send to that address and I will get it. We try to be really accessible so people should be able to call, email and get through to us.

LARAH: Perfect. Thank you. And the link will be in the show notes as well as the link of the books and I will share the products that you developed as well because they sound like they could really help a lot of people.

HEATHER: Yeah, for me, mitigating symptoms. You can’t get rid of IBS; there’s no real cure for it at this point, so what do you do to enable you to live as if you have been cured? How do you fake it? How do you keep your symptoms at bay to such an extent that you feel like you’re living everyday without IBS?  That was the whole point of the products, of the books, and, really, of everything.

LARAH: Yes. Well, thank you so much, Heather. I really appreciate you being here today.

HEATHER:  Well, thank you.

LARAH: That was a very interesting episode with my guest, Heather van Vorous. Heather shared a lot of good information including the importance of fibres and the difference of soluble and insoluble fibres, as well as how fat can affect IBS symptoms. She also explained the benefits of some of her very popular products that she has available on her site, and also on Amazon.

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For now, this is all. I send all the best to you. Be healthy. Keep safe. Until next time, take good care of yourself and goodbye.

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

 

About Larah

I have been suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome for many years, but it took a longtime to get a diagnosis, since then I have been following a low FODMAP diet, which has changed my life for the better. This is my story and experience with IBS and the low FODMAP diet.