I'm up this morning too.... sigh.... Had a little bit of fun food wise with dd being home, but not much. But, it doesn't take much for me...
Dd will be volunteering this week at my school so I'll get to see her some. Dh comes home Wednesday but will be home less than a week this time. He's got food indulgences planned every night for us-- I will have to be very careful. He is really not liking the food in China which makes him crave things here. He is a great cook so he has the meals planned that he wants to cook. Plus at least one meal out. Guess I should have been more careful this weekend.
Have any of you heard of fodmaps (Fermentable Oligo-Di-Monosaccharides and Polyols)? I have been having absolutely wicked irritable bowel symptoms for the last few weeks (I have had them on and off for many years/most of my life), to the point where I started looking into what I could do besides take Bean0 and GasX. I came across a LOT of research debunking the notion of gluten sensitivity (NOT debunking celiac disease, which is a real medical condition), and supporting a newer hypothesis that what a lot of people chalk up to lactose intolerance or gluten issues is actually a sensitivity to fodmaps. It makes a lot of sense to me after I read the research studies, the problem is, to treat it you do an elimination diet on steroids. You have to eliminate all legumes and most pulses (lentils), cruciferous veggies (and various non-cruciferous ones like asparagus) plus onion and garlic, many fruits, wheat (including bulgur and couscous), most dairy, and of course, all sugar alcohols. I couldn't possibly survive on a diet that restrictive, especially since it restricts a vast swath of the foods I subsist on as a maintainer (notice that glucose, sucrose, fats and meats are all fine). What I'm wondering is if any of you who have IBS have tried eliminating only SOME of these foods from your diet, and whether it has helped you or not.
I have had a lot of beer and carbs (chips, pretzels, etc.) in the last two weeks but my weight is still exactly the same - 137 lbs. I find that if I overeat eat/drink one night and then don't the next my weight stays the same. I AM using the scale here and it's almost identical numbers to the one I have at home.
Now I want to adapt my body's new ability to maintain pretty constantly without weighing food, counting cals, etc. to my summer weight. I will weigh, measure, and all that tedious stuff when I get back to my house next Sunday.
Until then I'll lay off the beer and carbs entirely. I'll probably drop to under 135 as a result. It's finally warm enough that I want to eat fruit and salad, rather than forcing myself to do it.
Andrea, yes I've heard of FODMAPS, but didn't know what it meant. I thought it meant some sort of proprietary diet, as I was reading the word as "Food Maps." Like maybe you'd visit a storefront setup periodically and get charged a lot of money for their special branded food or get a shot now & then. You know the ways that quasi-medical professionals make money from our continual quest to lose weight.
Personally, I don't react well to sugar alcohols -- not at all! -- but for everything else, I have a cast-iron stomach and digestive system. This sensitivity to sugar alcohols is terribly inconvenient because when I get tense, I chew constantly on sugarfree gum. Let's just say, I try to indulge in gum very sparingly, except on work-from-home days.
Wowza - just read of FODMAPs for the first time. Seems that the digestive tract is being discovered anew.
I'm impressed with the notion of testing the breath for hydrogen.
Good luck, neurodoc, with running tests to discover to what you're sensitive. The article I read suggests six weeks of absolutely NO FODMAPs then to start the challenges. Six weeks is a long time without an avocado, lentil, or bean.
I had never heard of FODMAP before but I have had IBS in the past. Seriously, I don't know what I did to cause it to come on or what I'm doing/not doing now to have it gone for such a long time. It first struck me when I was pregnant with my DD (24 years ago) and it would attack at the oddest times but mostly in the middle of the night. I would have attacks off and on for years again with no apparent trigger. But I have not had an attack for several years now and I don't know why. I agree I could never have a diet that restrictive. But I wonder if you tried cutting one of those items at a time and map the results. Perhaps it is just one of those things on the list that is your trigger, Andrea.
Andrea-- I've not heard of it either but I've long suspected that gluten intolerance is widely over reported/diagnosed (except as you say with celiac sufferers).
I did have IBS in the past, but like Allison, I'm more or less under control. I went through years and years of diarrhea (even during pregnancy which is quite unusual). After I started eating healthier (but not right away-- like a year later), I went from diarrhea to constipation. So, that has remained my battle....
I'm sure it's not the preferred method but can you spot eliminate foods-- just a few or a certain type and see if it makes a difference? Or would that just not even help if you've got that? Is there a diagnostic test or just food elimination?
Andrea - I have no useful anecdotes and never heard of FODMAPS before today. I have been really interested in the new info on gut health, though. We started messing around with home-fermented vegetables a couple of years ago and I would say there's been a notable decrease in random GI "incidents" among the family since then. Sauerkraut, kimchi, beet kvass - all quite low-calorie, cheap, tasty, and easy to make. Maybe an option is try adding them instead of what sounds like a draconian misery of an elimination diet?
dagmar, two scales that read the same? Never heard of such a thing.
Andrea, I've read some of that literature with interest. In the past few years I've had numerous painful bouts of what my internist said was "likely" unsubtyped IBS. What I've noticed is that the association, for me, seems to be mostly with increasing stress and/or with flareups of the immune disorder that I've had for a number of years. The same internist said she considered the IBS a co-morbid condition and that I could try various dietary approaches, including a fodmap restriction. I've previously tried a gluten-free diet for several months with no benefit; of course now the research suggests that the situation is much more complex as you pointed out. But as a longtime vegetarian, a fodmap elimination is daunting; that's a large amount of my daily diet being eliminated. Maybe after I survive the wedding (IF I survive)...
Allison, the book that turned us on to it is "Wild Fermentation". I'm a long way from being ready to go into the fermented meat realm, but we are having a lot of fun playing with fermented veggies. DH planted a whole range of weird stuff that will be headed for the crocks later this summer.
Oh my goodness, Becky! I may go crazy with fermentation! I just spent the last half hour perusing all sorts of books on it and looking into purchasing a fermentation crock. I think I'll start with the kvess first as the recipe for that calls for a mason jar. I'll have to figure out a way to make the whey overnight that will not involve my cats licking it up...
Allison ... so good to have a convert! Bwahahahaha! We have crocks in 1, 2, and 3 gallon sizes, and DH is trying hard to convince MIL to give up her 5 gal sauerkraut crock! My summer project is going to be kombucha. I've heard the trick is not to do it in glass where you can watch what it's doing - it looks pretty yucky right about the time it starts to get good.
ETA: My sympathies for all suffering with GI "instabilities." My mom dealt with it for a long time and saw significant relief after getting her gallbladder out. Life's not fun when your guts won't play nice. The GAPS diet might be something that could be of interest as well. I have heard a number of near-family/friend anecdotes that it helped quite a bit.
Last edited by ICUwishing; 05-20-2014 at 04:37 PM.
I have the stomach of a labrador retriever (though I don't generally eat bars of soap, kleenex, plastic bags, or any of the other things they find so tasty) so I can eat pretty much everything. Except raw onions. Total misery if one piece of those is hiding in a salad and I eat it. The human body is a strange machine indeed.
Good luck to all those who are wrestling with gut issues or rediscovering their gut or trying to lose theirs - that's me!
I'm a long way from being ready to go into the fermented meat realm, but we are having a lot of fun playing with fermented veggies. DH planted a whole range of weird stuff that will be headed for the crocks later this summer.
