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I have bowel issues, where I have feelings of incomplete bowel movements, often, sometimes alternating from constipation, and diarrhea, mostly constipation. I am straining when I have a bowel movement, I do get a "full" feeling, and dull pain, on the left side of my abdomen. It gets better when I have a bowel movement, but it starts back up once I eat something. I have not lost weight, in fact, im gaining weight, and there is no blood in my stool. I do have clear mucus in my stool often. My main complaints are the feeling of incomplete bowel movements, and the "full" feeling in the left side of my abdomen under the rib cage. Some days are worse than others. I am male, 25, and there is no family history of colon cancer. What is this im concerned thank you!

VSL#3, a probiotic marketed for IBD and IBS, abruptly removed from the Canadian market. http://www.vsl3.ca

Greetings all. I am the author of the IBS Audio Program 100 which after 8 years development was released in 1998. The program has been used in over 45 countries to date. I am now looking for help with a Hindi version of the program. All recordings have been professionally created and now I'm looking for help translating the booklet which accompanies the program. If you are a Hindi reader and writer and you think you might be able to help translate from English to Hindi, please contact me either through this site, or through www.healthyaudio.com In return we can offer you a free copy of the Hindi IBS Audio Program 100 when it is completed. A nominal fee, and the satisfaction of knowing that your help, will go towards helping many IBS sufferers for years to come. Kind regards Michael

IBS really ruined my whole life, and just like everyone here, I felt

My IBS symptoms started in October 2014.I had constipation, burping and excruciating pain under my ribs.I lost 35 pounds (15.8kg) in weight because I basically stopped eating due to the pain. I was off work for 2 months and spent the best part of 8 months in my bedroom. It was May 2015 before I was diagnosed as having IBS. In June 2015 I discovered the FODMAP diet and started by reducing all FODMAP groups. The symptoms reduced 90% within days. In the next few months I discovered my trigger groups were O (inc. wheat, onion, garlic,sweetcorn,brocolli) and M (inc .apples, pears and anything containing glucose fructose syrup). Over the next year I found my tolerance to O and M foods gradually improved but I still had to limit foods that were very high in these FODMAPs. (wheat, onions and garlic in particular), Then I decided to introduce a potent probiotic that did well in independent clinical trials. Its called VSL3 and it is very expensive. To save cost I only took half the dose but mixed it in a relatively cheap probiotic yogurt drink called Actimel. I took the VSL3 first thing in the morning before eating. This is because stomach acid is low at this point which gives the probiotic bacteria the best chance of surviving and reaching the bowel. This seemed to speed up my recovery and I was been able to eat wheat, garlic, onion and foods containing glucose fructose syrup in surprisingly large amounts without any symptoms. There is no instant cure for IBS. I believe it is predominantly a problem of bacterial species mix in the bowel. Changing the species mix in the bowel does not happen overnight. Both the foods we eat and some probiotics can change the mix but there is no magic formula that fits everyone. For me the mix of the FODMAP diet and VSL3 seems to have brought my IBS to an end. The key to defeating IBS is understanding it. I learnt a lot about IBS from my experience so have shared it in a blog to help others who suffer this awful condition. You can view the blog here.

Catching up on TV today I ran into an old research study that was presented in 2010 about the Placebo Effect and IBS. This was on CBS Sunday morning as their feature story on October 9. While I was disappointed that some viewers might get the wrong idea about IBS that it can be simply managed by fooling a patient into believing that a placebo medicine might work like an evidenced based one, I'm curious to know of anyone who might have been involved in this study. It's been widely stated for many years that IBS Patients have a higher than usual placebo response, yet there has never been any research that I am aware of, to explain why this is the case. Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome Ted J. Kaptchuk,1,2,* Elizabeth Friedlander,1 John M. Kelley,3,4 M. Norma Sanchez,1 Efi Kokkotou,1 Joyce P. Singer,2Magda Kowalczykowski,1 Franklin G. Miller,5 Irving Kirsch,6 and Anthony J. Lembo1 Study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3008733/