Situations
Different situations call for different care, even on the same low-fibre diet. Each of these pages explains what changes and why, and lists the recipes suited to it.
- Before a colonoscopy or surgery
A short, strict, well-evidenced stretch of low-fibre eating in the days before a procedure, with an end date already written down.
- Chemotherapy diarrhoea
A short, sharp problem that follows the treatment cycle, and eating that is meant to end when the cycle does.
- A high-output stoma
When a stoma produces too much, the problem is fluid and salt as much as food, and plain water can make it worse.
- After a low anterior resection
The one situation in this book where the usual advice partly runs backwards, and low fibre is not always the answer.
- A new stoma
The first weeks after a stoma is formed, when the opening is swollen and food is kept simple on purpose.
- After surgery
The weeks of lower-fibre eating that usually follow bowel surgery, and what they are for.
- During pelvic radiotherapy
Radiotherapy to the pelvis irritates the bowel in its path, and the dietary advice adds two axes to the usual one.
- A narrowed bowel
When the bowel is narrowed by a tumour or by scarring, the risk is mechanical, and the food rules change accordingly.