Yet Another Reason to NOT Snack Between Meals

Are you familiar with IBS?  Or perhaps you suffer from IBS?  IBS stand for Irritable Bowel Syndrome.  Those who suffer from IBS may find themselves battling bouts of diarrhea followed by constipation, and endless hours of gas and bloating.  It’s a very frustrating condition because until recently there wasn’t a solid plan for treating it.  In another post I’ll discuss more about the FODMAPs diet plan for helping those with IBS.  But for now, it’s just a quick post about one important dietary habit that can help those with IBS and also those with SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth).

Stop SNACKING!

Bold statement, I know.  I mean every diet article written in the tabloids at the supermarket checkout seems to tell you how you could lose 20, 30, or 50 pounds with their meal plan that always involves snacking.  It’s a big gripe of mine.  Snacking.  Are we all growing children?  Are we pregnant women?  Are we undergoing chemotherapy?  Are we older adults who have lost a significant amount of weight that we need to replace?  No??  Then quit snacking!  I strongly feel that snacking is what kills any weight loss diet plan.  We do not need to be eating every 2-3 hours.  This doesn’t lend itself to weight loss.  Yes, part of what sets your metabolic rate is the existence of food in your system – because your body works a little harder when it’s having to digest food.  This doesn’t mean that you’re going to drop weight like crazy just because you shovel more food in your mouth every few hours.  In fact that opposite normally occurs.  You end up eating more food than you would if you had just eaten three meals each day, and completely counteract any beneficial effect it may have had on your metabolism.

But I digress.  This post is not just my campaign to stop snacking.  It really is to help those with IBS and/or SIBO.  So the function we are looking at is called the migrating motor complex (MMC).  The MMC helps to keep the small intestine free of debris and excess bacteria by activating a cleanse every 90 minutes when we are not eating.  So when you avoid snacking between meals, your body activates this migrating motor complex to help keep things moving through your intestines and to keep bacteria from migrating to the small intestine when it belongs in the large intestine.  It’s sort of like the itsy bitsy spider (bacteria) which was trying to crawl up the water spout (your intestine) and down came the rain and washed the spider out… well not out, but back to where it belonged.  Snacking negatively effects the MMC because there’s no need for this cleanse to happen if you are sending more food in there because theoretically the food should be working its way down through your intestine and also keeping bacteria where it belongs – not always the case, though for those with IBS.  Stress is the other key factor that affects this MMC, and is also why we often talk about the gut being linked closely to our brain.  Stressful situations will often manifest themselves in some irregular intestinal function.  Ever noticed that?  Maybe you will now.

So what’s the take-away message?  If you suffer from IBS or SIBO, you need to quit snacking between meals… and of course find ways to manage your stress levels.  If you don’t suffer from IBS or SIBO… you still need to quit snacking between meals and manage your stress levels, though you won’t have the benefit of intestinal cramping and gas to remind you to do so.