If you’ve heard of the low fodmap diet, then you might know that it’s the most common diet prescribed for people with IBS. However, in my experience it never cures IBS, and at best it helps a little and might give you some temporary relief. That’s better than nothing, but I’m still not impressed. I’ll explain why it’s not working and introduce you to the bigger picture.

We’ve been helping people solve IBS since 2005, and as you might be able to tell already, I’m not a big fan of the low fodmap diet. If it’s helped you, that’s great and I believe you. But I highly doubt that it’s helping you because you can’t digest fodmaps.

I never prescribe a low fodmap diet, but we’ve had many patients come to us already on a low fodmap diet and sometimes they want to continue it until we find out what’s really happening, but more commonly we see a lot of people who didn’t find the low fodmap diet helpful.

The low fodmap diet is fairly complicated, but we can summarize it in pretty short order. When you undertake a low fodmap diet you are essentially cutting out most gluten, most dairy, and most sugars. That’s oversimplifying it, and there are a bunch of other things that you cut out, but those are the big 3.

If this diet helps, then that’s probably why, not because of fodmaps. But you don’t cut out all gluten, or all dairy, or all sugar. So, you aren’t really completely avoiding those three things. And it allows a whole bunch of other foods, any of which might be the trigger of your IBS.

It also doesn’t address your microbiome, which is HUGE when it comes to IBS. And if your microbiome is a mess, then it literally doesn’t matter how great your diet is or what you eat, you won’t digest well until you get some expert help in treating and resetting your microbiome.

And that’s why I literally never recommend the low fodmap diet to my patients. We leave that to other doctors who aren’t expert in treating IBS. It’s a total shot in the dark, it’s far too broad, and if you want you can do far better and get far better results by dialing in exactly what is going on rather than implementing this super sophisticated philosophy for what is essentially an elimination diet.

Don’t be fooled. Just because you don’t understand it and can’t pronounce all of those fancy chemical names represented by the fodmap acronym doesn’t mean it’s a great diet.

There is a real answer out there, and that’s what we help people figure out. And we can help you too, but not by guessing in a video and making up a free answer. We’re real doctors, and we are real experts in IBS. And like any other doctor, we have to work with our patients to figure out exactly what is going on and what the treatment should be. And that’s what we do.

So, if you’d like us to do that, then fortunately we can work with you via telemedicine, as we have with thousands of other people for nearly two decades. If you’d like to get your life back, give us a call at 206-264-1111, and we’ll get you started on your journey to excellent health!

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