If you or your kid is an irritable bowel syndrome sufferer, it is instinctively obvious that diet plays a major factor in deciding how well or how sick you feel on any given day.

The first thing you might want to do is stay away from insoluble fiber. Insoluble fiber or roughage of this type stimulates your digestive system pretty strongly, which is not good if you suffer from IBS. This is one situation where it is not good to force your kids to 'eat their broccoli.'

What you need is soluble fiber as this form of fiber is still remarkably good for you with the ability to provide all of the vitamins and nutrients you need, but at the same time, it does not naturally irritate or stimulate your gastrointestinal tract. What you are looking at here is a food group that contains foods such as rice, pasta, noodles, barley, soy, cornmeal, potatoes, yams, carrots, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, chestnuts and avocados. You will probably understand that these are all foods that are most commonly considered to be starchy foods, which is exactly what we are talking about when discussing soluble fiber foods.

Make foods of this type the main cornerstone of your irritable bowel syndrome diet and you have already taken a significant step towards reducing the severity of your symptoms and the regularity of attacks.

These foods are soluble because they have the ability to absorb excess liquids whilst passing through your colon, meaning that whilst they prevent diarrhea, they also gently stretch the muscles of your digestive tract as they pass through (gentle because the fluid makes these materials soft).Consequently, eating foods of this nature promotes normal digestion.

Sufferers of Irritable Bowel Syndrome also suffer if they eat. red meat, dairy products (even low-fat yoghurt is likely to irritate your stomach), egg yolks, French fries, onion rings, croissants, pastries, biscuits and so on. In effect, anything that is high in unsaturated fats should be a no-no or at least make sure that you eat high-fat foodstuffs only very, very occasionally and that if you do so, you are prepared for some kind of adverse reaction.

Avoid coffee (caffeine causes your stomach to contract, but even decaffeinated coffee should be avoided), alcohol, carbonated drinks and artificial sweeteners as well. Stay away from Colas. In the case of a child all of your IBS symptoms could be caused by carbonated drinks.

Try all of these measures before you try drugs and see if your IBS does not get better or even cure itself.