>I was interested in what you said about staying off dairy for some time
>and then only having mild symptoms after eating butter. In the past I used
>to give up gluten-containing foods for months at a time, and found after
>four months or so, I could get away with eating a cake or pie without
>symptoms as long as I went straight back to my diet afterwards. If I ate
>gluten again the following day, all the IBS symptoms would return with a
>vengeance!

Well, that's where the leaky gut hypothesis makes sense, but like you I am
always skeptical about these things. The problem is that alternative health
professionals believe in things like leaky gut, but some doctors have looked
at me like I was speaking a foreign language when I brought it up and had
never even heard of it. And then you have doctors that DO believe in it. 

I know from my own experience in the past two or so years that if I eat a
food too often, like avocadoes which I was eating daily, I can't tolerate
them after a while. Sometime the symptoms are subtle, sometimes they are
extreme (to me) like the dairy was. Right now I seem to be reacting to the
rice protein I would have as an occasional splurge.

>Our bodies are strange and wondrous things ;-)

Yes they are, but given the proper nutrition they also have the ability to
heal themselves and for that I am so thankful.

>Cheers,

Persephone