oh, so sorry that you have such an uncomfortable situation to deal with.

I know it’s one more thing to make, but have you considered water kefir? you can have the grains delivered to you and you might enjoy using herbal tea as the flavoring agent.

https://revolutionfermentation.com/en/blogs/water-kefir/5-scientific-benefits-of-water-kefir/

My diagnosis is 15 years old of IBS which is a very general term. The "syndrome" part can take many forms and can be complicated by other issues. I had an x-ray to rule out a blockage which I do not have. I have further tests mentioned scheduled for the upcoming weeks to find out if there are additional problems. IBD stands for Irritable Bowel Diseasr and includes Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, neither of which I have yet to be diagnosed with but my father had a blockage which required surgery and he developed ulcerative colitis although that is in remission for him. The IBD diet I mention is one of several diets that are used as part of IBS/IBD treatment, as per the handout given to me at the GI doctor's office. The diet I was already familiar with was the low FODMAP diet which is similar and recommended for IBS and other inflammatory digestive diseases. You can Google that for more info.

Interesting article in the NYT about a man with chronic diarrhea. He was somsick they feared he would die. After many tests, a GI doc finally figured he was having a bad reaction to his blood pressure meds … Olmastarten ( sp). Something to consider if by any chance you take it. Sorry for your struggles!

I miss JessyF.

Buckwheat isn't pretty, but if you don't mind the color, it makes good GF pancakes.

Isn't there any kind of hippie coop within an hour? I boggle trying to understand MI which is renowned for vegetables and home canning, fermenting, etc., but your area so not. Keep looking! They‘re out there somewhere!

Yes there is a hippie area and it is an hour away, so that's why it's not easy to get that stuff. When I used to live in a larger metro area out east I could get "hippie" stuff at the local Wegman's plus the local health food store. I shopped regularly at the food coops when I lived in East Lansing and Grand Rapids. Not here. Not saying not in Michigan, the metro areas have great food, a veritable foodie mecca, particularly the college towns, but not my rural area. A few stores have tried to open but none lasted. All we have are pot stores here now . . . there is a food coop a half hour away I am going to hit up, I go there to my gp doctor and eye doctor. I got fresh refrigerated flax oil and refrigerated acidopholus there the last time. It's an hour round trip just to go to one store so I am not inclined to do it on a regular basis. There's a lot of stuff here, but just not the refrigerated fresh fermented stuff. That stuff doesn't last so not much impetus to offer it if it doesn't turn over.

There are so many potential things that can go wrong with your gut. I have one friend with Crohn's, she lost her mother to colon cancer, my other friend has rheumatoid arthritis that affects his gut, there are polyps, cysts, gall bladder issues, leaky gut syndrome, even internal shingles which I have had at least one symptom of but it is extremely difficult to diagnose, so not much can be done in that realm, and then of course all the cancers, and I'm sure I'm leaving something out . . . diverticulitis. I can't even keep up with all the new syndrome names . . .

I've got buckwheat flour in the freezer, hubs loves the pancakes and I make one type of whole grain bread with it. I also have buckwheat noodles. I've been sort of eating low gluten for years. Never been a kasha or quinoa lover but I can tolerate it. Buckwheat and quinoa tastes overly grassy to me. I can eat it but it's a struggle.

Yes, I can sympathize. A couple of years ago, right after the Covid shut-down, i started with the same symptoms. While my lower GI had always been finicky at times, I dealt with it. This time was different. Went through all the usual tests with my family GP to rule things out, and then off to the colo-rectal specialists who scheduled a colonoscopy. They knew i didnt have ulcerative colitis, but the only way to determine microscopic colitis is via a colonoscopy and it was determined I have that.

I hope your colonoscopy will help determine what is going on with you. IBS isnt fun. Sometimes it goes away on its own, sometimes simple OTC meds can control it. I tried OTCs at first and they did nothing. Tried again many weeks later and after a couple of days, they worked. Go figure. I try to eliminate foods most of the time that affect me badly, but I enjoy eating many things too much to leave them totally out of my diet.

I used kasha just once or twice and thought it tasted like the inside of a trunk that had been stored in the attic. i don’t think it was rancid.

I do love soba noodles.

i think this https://www.seriouseats.com/soba-noodles-with-eggplant-and-mango-recipe is an Ottolenghi recipe that i love. i’ve added shrimp to it for a summer meal.

Maybe right now it's worth a couple hours on the road to lay down a good stock of what you want? Some fermented things can be frozen. If they're live, many of them can be reused or added to. Retail fermentation kits are stupid expensive, which is why I asked about hippie coops. Do you or your doctors know others in the area on similar diets? Maybe you can put together a fermenting coop? Maybe find someone who regularly goes into the city who wouldn't mind bringing back goods for the group?

I second Lisa's recommendation of water kefir. If you can tolerate it, milk kefir is my favorite. I've bought the grains here.

I can sympathize. Last fall I had 6 weeks of the opposite extreme. I saw the doctor and we suspected a parasitic infection but the tests did not confirm. The one we suspected can be hard to confirm, so I'm still pretty convinced. Antibiotics won't kill it and could make gut health worse, so I had to ride it out. One thing I did discover was papaya enzyme. I got this brand but my grocery store had a smaller bottle for $4. I added it to my routine of probiotics, carrots and pepitas. I noticed the biggest difference when I read beyond the dose and to the instructions to chew the tablets rather than swallowing them. They have a mild fruity flavor and are dry but not chalky as I had feared. I read some about the papaya enzyme (a digestive enzyme) and it appears to be recommended for IBS also. For $4 and a fruit derived supplement, it might be worth a try.

Thanks for the recipe Lisa! Sounds intriguing. I have all the ingredients. Coincidentally, I bought an eggplant and some frozen mango pieces for smoothies at the store the other day. Two things I usually don't buy because they are so expensive compared to the apples and bananas and cabbage that we usually eat. For example, the eggplant was 4 dollars compared to a big cabbage which would have been about 1.50. But anyway, I'm going to have to cook outside my comfort zone so might as well get started. I'm not a picky eater, just a frugal time-crunched one . . .

That's my biggest negative about this diet, having to spend so much more time on food prep. Hubs is so conservative, he can't get his brain around out-of-the-box dishes so he isn't much help. He does help some with the dishes though, so there's that. I am so very very busy and being sick has just made it worse, so really don't have time to be driving all around the state for supplies. But times are so much better than when I was a kid. No one in my small town had even heard of bagels, for example. Now there really is a plethora of stuff available and a lot of other stuff can be ordered online. The cost is the main issue with that, but it is what it is. It's just the fermented stuff. That's not easy to come by even in the metro areas, the good stuff with the real still-live cultures. I just do not have the time to add another food preparation task to my already overstuffed "to do" list. Hubs has taken up yogurt making as a hobby in retirement. Luckily I can get good kefir, it's just expensive. If the water kefir is easy maybe Hubs will give that a try.

When my best friend was diagnosed with IBS, her gastroenterologist put her on the low FODMAP diet, and also suggested she cut as far back on gluten as she could reasonably do. He said the very worst foods in the fodmap group were apple, pear, onion, and garlic, and she would see quick results quitting those immediately and entirely. He was right. If you haven't tried skipping those four things, it might be worth your consideration.

lisa, that is one of my all time favourite recipes. Yum!

My DD2 had a diagnosis of IBS and was basically told there's not much she can do about it. She tried fodmap and no gluten (she was also vegan, so cooking for her was fun - not). She also started seeing a therapist because many said IBS was caused by stress and she is an intense student.

Coincidentally, I heard a local naturopath interviewed about that same time and we thought, what the heck. He had her restrict her gluten intake and gave her something called Bio Gest to take after meals that contained digestive enzymes. The rationale was to let her gut heal for a while and then slowly introduce gluten back into her diet. It's been about a year and the change has been amazing. The other day, after gorging on gluten, she had a minor attack and said, "wow, I'd forgotten how bad I used to feel".

LPink, DH grows milk kefir. Easier than yogurt, it lives on the counter (if you use it often) and is super forgiving. I could send you some grains, they'd ship fine I think. I was going to try dehydrating some...you could be my guinea pig :).

I think at some point I will perhaps get into this "kefir-ing" but not right yet. I am just super busy. Don't know if I will be any more successful than I was at "sourdough-ing" which I tried at the beginning of the pandemic. The problem with that was, we just don't eat enough baked goods to make it worthwhile expending the time and energy maintaining a starter. Even the lowest maintenance options. We just don't eat a lot of baked goods. I'd love to eat more, but it just can't happen for a whole lot of reasons.

On the flip side, kefir sounds like something we would consume on a daily basis, either water or milk. I can get good dairy kefir with live cultures at my local grocery, but it is something like 4-5 dollars a pint so I don't normally buy it. But I will take you all up on the offers of help at some point if I can. Kefir water sounds great because I actually don't like plain water. Practically have to force it down. For whatever reason plain water does not sit well with me. I often drink flavored soda water but that's not the cheapest way to stay hydrated.

Am slowly recovering the use of my digestive tract. Ironically, I don't eat many of the fodmap foods anyway, not a fan of onions and garlic, although I do eat them in small amounts, and I rarely eat fresh pears or apples. Hubs eats and apple a day, but not me. That's because of the aforementioned dislike of drinking water, so I often dilute water with fruit juice, and that's how I have tended to consume my fruit calories a lot of the time. I drink a lot of cider and apple juice, don't know if that contributes to digestive issues, I think not but I can certainly cut down on the apple juice . . . the other fodmap no-no that I eat regularly though, is beans. But I've been eating beans my whole adult vegetarian life. I think with them the issue is being well-soaked ahead of time, and cooked, and the skins broken down or sieved out. Also the time of day you eat them, earlier is much better since stuff moves through your digestive tract (when it is functioning properly) faster during the day when you are up and moving. I have been limiting my bean intake and also pureeing the beans, which takes some of the digestive issues off the table . . .

I'm so sorry for what you're going through. Digestive issues are the worst. I spent probably more than 10 years suffering through some kind of digestive problems. I finally had a doctor ask me how my gut was at the beginning of the year and I fessed up. She had me do some tests (blood and solid waste) and it turns out I had H.Pylori and Giardia and a few other overgrown bacteria strains. She put me on antibiotics and a whole bunch of gut-rebuilding supplements and I'm like a new woman. I mention this because I thought for years it was just how my body was, but turns out there was a treatable condition and I just needed to find a doctor that knew to suggest the right test to figure it out.

That said, yes, in the past I went through some phases where I ate very restrictive easy to digest foods for some digestive issue or other. Lots of broth soup with rice and easy to digest well-cooked vegetables. I remember cutting out dairy and acidic foods and hard to digest vegetables. Nothing raw from what I remember. I think at some point I was able to add back in oatmeal. It wasn't ideal. I think I maybe could do eggs, but check with your doctor of course since I'm definitely not one.

I also have digestive issues. I won't go into the details except for things that haven't been mentioned. The only food that turned out to be a problem was sugar and sugar substitutes. I drank iced tea for years with Sweet and Low. I stopped it cold turkey and that eliminated most of the pain. I can eat some sugar now. It came down to the fact that about 99% of my issues were caused by stress. Thanks to the pandemic, I was able to stop doing a lot of things that I thought I had to do even though I hated them. It sure is nice to not have diarrhea three or four days a week. The other thing is that I'm addicted to food and overate most every day. Learning to stop at one serving has really helped a lot.

I am sorry you are going through all this and I went completely gluten-free over a year ago and I can tell it has made a huge difference in the way my joints feel.

While I can get most of the things I need nearby, the Costco I go to is over an hour away and I made the trip yesterday and stocked up on a lot of stuff. I think sometimes you just have to do things like that.

lpink, how are you feeling?

I'm a lot better. I have had two tests, two more to go. So far nothing other than this IBS has turned up, but the biggie, the colonoscopy, is yet to come . . .

I've been buying all kinds of new foods for my diet. All things I like but never buy anymore because I am on a limited income and they are expensive. Things like seaweed, kefir, gluten free pastas, Thai curries, bean sprouts, the low acid coffee, gluten free baking mix, specialty grains, zucchini and summer squash out of season . . . and the lists go on.

I'm going to make that Ottolenghi soba eggplant and mango dish tomorrow night.

A lot of this is vaguely macrobiotic. I like all this kind of food but don't like spending the dosh, having to spend a lot of time shopping and tracking down ingredients and then the preparation. I just cook because I like eating . . . But I've made some good meals--Thai pumpkin curry, vegetarian shepherd's pie with sweet potato crust, (maybe should be called "gardener's" pie), roasted chicken and sweet potatoes, home made chicken barley soup with approved vegetables, turkey meatballs a la grecque with lemon, olives and greens over pasta, and tonight, chicken enchiladas with tomatillo sauce.

Pink, if you do make the eggplant tomorrow, hrere’s a trick when cooking eggplant in oil. First heat the cubed eggplan in a microwave. I start out with 2-3 minutes and then do bursts of 1 minute. the eggplant will look a bit soft snd slightly soggy and it will not absorb so much oil while sauteeing.

https://www.thekitchn.com/why-microwaving-eggplant-is-better-than-salting-232674

I feel your pain. For a long time I thought I had IBS and was also losing weight and also losing energy. It finally dawned on me I'm lactose intolerant. Wasn't hard to figure out once I stopped my fave drink in all the world. Milk. I cut way back on cheese.

Now I have to take D supplements which gave me back the energy, and sit in the sun several times a week.

Have you ruled out lactose intolerance? It's very common as we age.

Yeah, I am mildly lactose intolerant so only eat hard cheeses. I also cut out milk and many other dairy products. Have fallen down on my D supplements though, need to start that up again probably. In warmer times, I'm out in the sun every day.

Great tip Lisa! I salt eggplant usually, but trying to also cut down on salt, so this will come in very handy! The spongy texture/bitterness and tendency to absorb a lot of oil are two of the main reasons I'm not a big eggplant fan. That and it costs a lot of money and has very little nutrients. So the cost per return on nutrition is low. I've tried growing it, without much success. Even the little Japanese ones . . .