hi Linzi,

well i usually avoid taking any medicine unnecessarily, but i don't think canesten will do any harm even if u don't have thrush.
it's a single dose and anyway if someone has it they always say their partner should take it too as a precaution, even if he/she didn't catch it.

i took colofac as well about 10 years ago, it helped relax my guts so to speak but there were always incidents where it didn't help, i mean it didn't guarantee any more bad stomachs.
so after a few bad stomachs which were unaccounted for - no dodgy/too much food, drink etc. at all and STILL pains i got so mad that i thought if i can't rely on it when it matters i might as well forget it..and threw all the tablets out ;-)

any suggestions, well..i have tried those "good bacteria" powders which seemed to reduce the IBS incidences, but that was years ago as well so i can't remember exactly.

what i did though was to have a test done to find out about food intolerances (alternative doc, think the thing was called a 'vega' machine)..i got a whole list of stuff (milk, wheat, tomatoes, sugar etc.) and just tried to avoid these for a while.

i think the bloating was gone totally at the time (oatcakes in the morning instead of toast etc.) but it's quite time-consuming to always watch out what u can eat or not (and all substitute foods, gluten free etc. were so much more expensive) that i than relaxed it quite a bit.

then i actually did get thrush and took canesten, and since then i haven't had an 'IBS bad stomach' any more. can be a coincidence, of course.
but it did make some sense to me as i had read that thrush can actually be one of the causes for IBS, and it's in everyone's guts. think they call it candida, and everyone has it naturally, but it only causes trouble if there's an imbalance, like when it gets too much. don't quote me on that though, better read up on it yourself..that's just what i remember myself.
it also made sense to me because the same food would be fine one day and give me an IBS incident the next. so i thought it can't actually be the food (although an intolerance would increase the likelihood cause your body can't deal with it, not cause it's 'bad' food). it's something in the guts that digests it ok one day and rejects it the next.

so long story cut short, even all my 'intolerant' foods haven't caused any more IBS stories since i took that thrush tablet.
and i just tried to explain it to myself by thinking maybe it has got rid of the excess thrush in my guts and so lets me eat all normal foods without causing trouble.

but i am not a doctor of course, and other IBS cases may have completely different causes etc...just thought i might as well share what worked for me.

Emily