When Should You Eat If You Have IBS? If you actually knew just how many people were dealing with irritable bowels syndrome at any given time, you would probably be shocked. As a matter of fact, it is considered that up to 50% of all individuals are going to be suffering from some kind of IBS symptoms at some point in their life but many of them will never seek medical attention. The simple fact of the matter is, there is not a single problem that is identified as being irritable bowel syndrome and as a matter of fact, it could be any number of different problems that you may be dealing with. If you have had irritable bowel syndrome for quite some time, you probably already recognize the fact that the foods that you eat are going to affect your symptoms in some way or another. More often than not, you will recognize whenever foods are a problem, as your symptoms to become worse but you might be surprised to learn that you may also be eating foods which are causing your irritable bowel syndrome symptoms to go away to a certain extent. Just because you don't recognize that that is the fact, does not necessarily mean that it is not true. Believe it or not, it also has a lot to do with when you eat as well as what you eat in order to affect your irritable bowel syndrome to your benefit. For example, most of us tend to eat meals whenever we have the opportunity and it is very rare that we actually sit down to eat a meal at the same time each day. If you are dealing with symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, however, it is important for you to make sure that you are eating regularly, whenever that happens to be for you. It is also important for you to split up your meals into smaller batches if you are having a difficult time with diarrhea. Many times, just eating smaller meals throughout the day may be enough to help you to overcome a problem with diarrhea. The opposite, however, is also true and if you are suffering from constipation as a result of your irritable bowel syndrome then you might want to eat three larger meals every day and include plenty of natural fiber in those meals. This is often enough to cure the constipation and to get things moving along properly again.