Personally I can't tolerate anything spicy, but that may be my food intolerances rather than IBS.
Can you eat oats, diabetes-wise,
@Radders? They are very good for IBS - I eat them every day and mine is pretty much under control now. I also find it helps to eat licorice, which sounds a bit odd, but it stops constipation without having the opposite effect! Peppermint tea - or just peppermints (Tic-tacs are virtually carb-free) - are helpful too, as mint relaxes your intestines. I drink peppermint and licorice tea, which is a bit of an acquired taste, but I love it!
When my IBS was bad I actually found that the best thing I could do was to ignore it and just plough on with all the food I eat normally - I mean, I have a fairly restricted diet, so I'm talking mostly plain food anyway, but I found that if I responded to the IBS by having a day eating nothing but toast it only helped for that day, and just made things worse in the long term, because it made me constipated not to eat normally and that would be followed by another bout of the runs, which would be followed by another day of just toast, and so on in a vicious circle.
You might find it helpful to limit yourself to low Fodmap foods (
more info. here and there's a
chart of low and high foods here) - it wouldn't work for me as there are too many things on the low list I couldn't eat because of my food intolerances, but I know other people who find it helpful. The low list might at least give you some ideas of things which are less likely to set off another bout of IBS, even if you don't stick to the diet completely.
