One very unhappy vegan tummy...

[seekinggaea]

Alright, so perhaps this should have been posted to the vegan ibs community, but this community is more active and the responses are fantastic, so I thought I'd post here. I have horrible IBS (I will spare the gross details, but suffice to say I spend a lot of time in the washroom) and spend about 80-90% of the time with a stomache ache of some

Comments

[jenhowell]

First of all, I identify. I've had similar stomach issues going back to age 13, and going vegetarian when I was 25 made a dramatic, immediate improvement (I wish I could say going vegan did the same thing, but oh well. No meat is clearly a good thing at least

[dagda_ollathir]

This may sound out of the blue, but do you hold in your farts a lot? I kept getting a wacky painful stomach while I was on vacation because I was holding mine in, since I was around people almost all the time. Now that I'm home and "free" to release them, I feel fine.

[wonderfluff]

I would recommend eating porridge brown rice. Take some cooked brown rice and add filtered/spring water until it is in soupy consistency, cook on med to low heat. You can add in some soy sauce/low sodium to add in some flavor. It might help soothe your stomache lining. I'm not exactly sure though what would give you IBS. You might want to ask a DR. who is vegan?

[veggiesapiens]

"Congee" in China, "Okayu" in Japan, and various other names.

Might sound boring, but you can add other things to it (though in your case you probably want to be careful).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congee

[saffroncisco]

Have you tried macrobiotics? I strongly recommend it. If you pursue it and stick with it, I am willing to bet it would make your IBS disappear.

You can be vegan and macrobiotic too -- the macro menu is essentially vegan already. (Macro menus occasionally include fish, but it's not as though eating fish is required. I certainly don't eat it.)

If you don't know where to begin, try here: http://www.hipchicksmacrobiotics.com/ . Her book is inexpensive and a fabulous resource.

[whisperdryad]

when I am doing bad intestinally I find that dishes based in brown rice are soothing and easy to deal with ... say, brown rice cooked with soymilk and a few chopped up apricots (but mostly just rice) or rice noodles with something or ricecakes just plain ... also bananas. other fruits or even veggies don't help as much.

when I'm doing bad (my background is basically the same as yours) I also drink a lot of tea ... warm liquids seem to help everything (I noticed that really cold ones can make my stomach cramp! silly) the main tea o' me for this is the Yogi ginger tea ... has black pepper and licorice in it, makes things feel better most of the time.