Are you a good re-absorber or a poor re-absorber in your gut?

My wonderful colleague Ashleigh Jones and I presented a workshop for Queensland dietitians on, “If not FODMAPs, then what?” We presented how diet investigation in IBS can be personalised right from the start by noting what symptoms and what suspect foods each person has. It was wonderful to see so many dietitians interested in diet investigation. After 40 years of work and research it is inspiring to know so many are engaged in this interesting area of dietetics. We were able to tell stories of what happened to real people. The detail of the talk is covered in our new book, Your Diet for Your IBS. Following is an excerpt from the book.

Here is a new idea for you to think about. Are you a good re-absorber or a poor re-absorber? Food passes through the gut as a liquid while it mixes with enzymes, allowing all the useful nutrients to be absorbed. Towards the end of the gut food enters the large bowel. Here the body does something that is really amazing! It reabsorbs most of the fluid back into the blood system and the normal mostly formed bowel motion passes out. This happens in most people, but it will be a different story if you have IBS!

Being a good re-absorber means you reabsorb water better than normal, so you have a drier bowel motion and may even become constipated. If you are a poor re-absorber you do not reabsorb well, and you have loose bowel motions. It is not clear why you may be a good, normal or poor re-absorber. There are many changes along the gut pathway depending on many factors including your gut flora, fibre intake, and whether there is wind passing along as well. Sometimes people with IBS go from constipation to diarrhoea as part of their particular IBS symptoms.

You can read more about constipation and about looseness as these are two common but important symptoms you may have as part of your IBS. You can benefit from the useful information written about these, as part of the wealth of information in the book. Click here to purchase your copy as a PDF or as a hard copy, or click here to purchase via AmazonKindle.