New York: A new study by researchers at Michigan Medicine, US, suggests that the Mediterranean diet may offer significant symptom relief for people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a common digestive disorder affecting 4–11% of the population.
While many IBS patients prefer dietary strategies over medication, the widely recommended low FODMAP diet—though effective for more than half of sufferers—is known to be highly restrictive and challenging to maintain.
To explore more accessible dietary options, the researchers previously introduced a simplified version of the low FODMAP diet, targeting only the most symptom-triggering components. Building on this work, the latest study, published in Neurogastroenterology and Motility, compared the traditional low FODMAP diet with the Mediterranean diet in a randomized clinical trial.
The results showed that 73% of participants following the Mediterranean diet reported improvement in symptoms, compared to 81.8% in the low FODMAP group.
“While effective, restrictive diets like low FODMAP can be hard for patients to follow and may lead to nutritional deficiencies or disordered eating,” explained Dr. Prashant Singh, lead author and gastroenterologist at Michigan Medicine. “The Mediterranean diet offers a less restrictive and more sustainable approach.”
Popular for its cardiovascular and cognitive health benefits, the Mediterranean diet had previously shown mixed results in IBS treatment. However, this study strengthens the evidence supporting it as a viable dietary intervention for IBS.
Though the low FODMAP group showed slightly greater improvements in abdominal pain and overall IBS severity, experts say the Mediterranean diet’s accessibility makes it a compelling alternative.
“This research contributes to the growing body of evidence supporting the Mediterranean diet as a potential tool in the dietary management of IBS,” said Dr. William Chey, Chief of Gastroenterology at the University of Michigan.