After years of increasingly bad Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), and many visits to gastroenterologists, I stumbled upon my cure: a high protein, whole foods Mediterranean Diet. This has worked wonders for me and my gastrointestinal health. Prior to my new diet, eating out was risky and even lunch meetings meant often having to run to the men’s room. Over the years this moved from an occasional mild annoyance to a major problem. With my new diet, I’ve gone over a year without a major problem. Of course, everyone is different; this diet might not work for you and it’s always best to have advice from your doctor or a nutritionist.

Please excuse me if some of the details below are a little graphic. My intent is to educate, not to shock. And I think details will be more helpful to anyone who might have a similar condition.

I’ve struggled with my intestinal health since at least my mid-twenties. Back then, it manifested in intense pain that would occur once every few months. This abdominal pain was so intense it was impossible to stand when it hit. It came in waves with about a minute of intense pain every five minutes. Over time, I came to understand that if I could move my bowels it would instantly relieve the pain. Unfortunately, this was often not easy, as trying to move your bowels when you don’t need to is no easy task. I had some limited luck with anal suppositories but more often I just had to let the pain pass, which it usually did within an hour or two.

I talked to many gastroenterologists about these episodes, most of whom where happy to prescribe medication, but the side effects of the medication always felt worse to me than the symptoms themselves. That’s saying a lot given how bad the symptoms were, but being groggy all day or having excessive thirst all the time just seemed more problematic to me than an hour or two of intense pain every few months.

Eventually, these symptoms went away. They were replaced with occasional and intermittent cramping and diarrhea immediately after eating. If I wasn’t near a bathroom I could contain this, just dealing with a few waves of bad cramping, and eventually the cramping would go away. Far from ideal, but manageable.

In addition to the pharmaceuticals, with their awful side effects, one thing multiple gastroenterologists recommended to me was to try a “Low FODMAP Diet”. FODMAP stands for a group of carbohydrates that is often poorly absorbed in the intestines:  fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols.

FODMAP is an elimination diet in which the dieter avoids milk, yogurt, wheat, beans, sweeteners, and some fruits. What’s left is meat, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, corn, rice, and many vegetables. I tried this diet several times but found it hard to stick to it. Ultimately, I did not find it made a difference, but it might have been my inability to strictly stick to it.

When COVID struck and we all had to work from home, my symptoms were especially bad. I was on two different medications, with no benefit. Over the past six months my excusing myself in the middle of lunch meetings was commonplace and disruptive. It was not uncommon for me to take four or more Imodium on any given day. It sometimes helped, but often it did nothing. Work from home was a godsend, as I could plan my meals better, and running to the bathroom was not as noticeable to others.

The Big Change

About a year and a half ago I received a complete health workup from Princeton Longevity Center. This full day workup revealed that while I was in excellent health overall, my fitness level, especially my cardio fitness, was less than desirable. As a result, I started a fitness regimen with an excellent local trainer. This included strength training and frequent cardio workouts geared towards people over forty.

From the beginning, my trainer stressed the importance of diet on my health and fitness, but I did not change anything about my diet at first. He specifically pointed out the recommendation for older people trying to build muscle to get 1g of protein per pound of body weight. Older people need more protein to build or maintain muscle mass than younger people do.

I started rigorously tracking my diet, especially the protein, to make sure I was meeting the minimum requirements. At the time my weight was 208 pounds. I soon started tracking calories as well, deciding that losing a quarter pound per week would help me get to a healthier weight.

After three months on this program and diet, I was much stronger than before, and clearly more muscular. My weight, however, stayed exactly where it was. My IBS was as bad as ever.

At about this time, I had a special gut biome test done by Thorne. This test claims to sequence the DNA of your gut biome and tell you what changes you should make to improve your health. The recommendations from it were clear — I should switch to a Mediterranean diet. The Mediterranean diet differs from the FODMAP diet in that beans, whole wheat, and yogurt are plentiful while red meat is not. I didn’t really understand this diet, and was not a big fan of fish, so I did not intend to follow this advice.

As luck would have it, I was headed to Crete for a week’s vacation. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, almost everything offered at the resort I went to was on the Mediterranean diet. In short, it was easy to stick to the diet for a week. Eating this Mediterranean diet, a few days into the weeklong trip, my stomach continued to be as bad as ever. I had to run to the bathroom during meals multiple times and it was disruptive.

By the end of the trip, however, I encountered something I hadn’t in years– a solid bowel movement. This may not sound like much, but for me it was really revolutionary. Even better, I had grown to enjoy my meals of fish, fruit, eggs, cheese, and yogurt. I found it fairly easy to reach my aggressive high-protein goals with these foods, yogurt in particular having much more protein than I had realized. My major vice is caffeine, and I have far too much tea and coffee every day, but that does not seem to affect my bowels.

By the time I came home I had had several pain-free days in a row and two solid stools. What’s more, even though I ate more calories than usual while I was on vacation, I came home to find that I had lost a few pounds! Here was a diet that not only helped my IBS, but helped me lose some weight! Because of the success of this diet, I’ve stuck closely to it ever since. My weight is now a healthy 170 and I have more muscle mass than ever before. I am in better shape than I was in my twenties.

Now cramping and diarrhea is non-existent as long as I stick to the diet. Of course, the diet is very hard to stick to while traveling or eating out. I try to be careful, and I also like to try foods in moderation to see what I might add to my diet. I find that I tolerate most foods very well, including most vegetables. I find highly processed foods are less well-tolerated, but it could be a specific ingredient in the food, and not the processing. I also tend to avoid greasy foods. Nothing will send me to the bathroom as quickly as a fresh piece of pepperoni pizza, although it’s delicious enough to be worth it occasionally!

The major thing I learned is that my IBS is primarily caused by my diet and not other things such as stress. Had I realized this earlier, I would have started a strict elimination diet starting with only eating rice and chicken breast for a few weeks and then slowly adding foods. Before I was confident that my diet was to blame, an elimination diet seemed like a lot of work and pain for little or no benefit.  

Over the years, I’ve met many people with similar gastrointestinal issues. Others have found relief in different ways, some by pharmaceuticals, some by exercise, and others, whose gastrointestinal issues are more triggered by stress, by meditation. I suspect each person suffering has a different solution. I share my amazing success with the hope that it will help someone else. If you are a long time IBS sufferer like I was, consider a high protein, whole foods Mediterranean Diet. It might just help.