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I don't know what to eat any more

kangaSue

Senior Member
Messages
1,851
Location
Brisbane, Australia
I am having a real problem with food. What ever I eat gives me gas, stomach pain and hours on the toilet! I am scared to eat
There's a number of things that can involve these symptoms (including all of the autoimmune connective tissue disorders) but food fear, unintended weight loss and abdominal pain soon after eating are the classic triad of symptoms for Chronic Mesenteric Ischemia.

Delayed gastric emptying (gastroparesis) often goes along with all these and SIBO often results from the slowed GI transit times. CMI occurs due to a vascular abnormality causing a deficit in blood supply to the bowel, plaque stenosis (in the mesentery arteries) most commonly, but there's a couple of syndromes here that can also cause chronic fatigue symptoms and POTS, namely SMA Syndrome, MALS (Median Arcuate Ligament Syndrome - a big cause of CMI) and renal Nutcracker Syndrome. These are typically very low down on the list of differential diagnoses for GI problems and you can go years before a clued up doctor puts the pieces together, or more likely, you stumble across it yourself.

Have a doctor listen for an abdominal bruit but a Doppler Ultrasound of the mesentery arteries is a good screening measure just to rule these things in or out.
Yes I had the test and was positive. Came back high hydrogen.
I've seen it suggested that a course of any of the regular antibiotics (amoxycillin, doxycycline, metronidazole) then followed up with low dose naltrexone will eradicate persistent SIBO.
 

taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
Yes I have SIBO. I probably need to get this sorted but difficult to get the antibiotic prescribed in UK and have tried herbs but die off was horrible and made me crash! I also have the PEMT gene so don't know if this is contributing to SIBO. Might try antibiotics but GP wouldn't prescribe and will need to get them without prescription unless I can find private doctor to prescribe.

You can't get your dr to refer you to a specialist? It seriously sounds like more should be being done. I've been sent to 3 different dietitians due to my dietary issues.
 
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wonderoushope

Senior Member
Messages
247
have tried herbs but die off was horrible and made me crash!

When you have food issues herbs can be not so good. I severely reacted to herbs (from the naturopath) when I was at my worst. Herbs are quite potent and probably shouldn't be used until your stomach has settled.
 

Richard7

Senior Member
Messages
772
Location
Australia
Hi @tinacarroll27

From experimenting on myself I would say that for stopping SIBO the best thing seemed to be taking betaine HCL, ox bile and enzymes. These things simulate a properly working digestive system and make the small intestine less hospitable to fungal and bacterial infection.

The way I took betaine HCL, was that I ordered some (with pepsin an enzyme) and took one tablet with the first meal and two with the second and so on until I got sensation of heat shortly after eating and then dropped back one tablet.

Ox bile is a little complex because in a healthy person, at any rate, bile is mostly recycled with only a little making it through into the large intestine. It is bile that makes stools brown. The trick is to take a large dose at first (say 500mg per meal) and until you get bile diarrhoea and then use smaller doses and watch the colour of your stools. If they are too pale add more bile, if you get bile diarrhoea reduce your daily dose.

The deal with enzymes is a bit complex. I am lucky enough to get Creon porcine pancreatic enzymes on prescription that are pretty cheap. So I use Creon plus plant enzymes that contain the exopeptidases and maltases and invertases that healthy people have in there small intestines. I have done this with Klaire Labs Sibb zymes and Biocore enzymes from Swansons. I do not use enzymes that contain cellulases, chitinases and other enzymes that are not naturally produced by people.

I found that this combination was good at getting rid of SIBO and malabsorption diarrhoea.

When it comes to reactions to food in the large intestine I think that the idea is to reduce inflammation, to reduce permeability and probably to do something to get rid of pathogenic bacteria.

I found this video really useful in this

Some of the principles I took home from this and my reading around the literature where
1) to avoid acellular carbohydrates (in highly processed foods) as it seems that they break down the mucosal layer allowing the food and bacteria that are passing through your colon to make direct contact with the gut wall.
2) to avoid grains (or at least wheat, barley, oats and rye) and other things that increase gut permeability. The gut has to be permeable if allergens are to be presented to the immune system, so reduced permeability should mean fewer allergic reactions.
3) to take things that reduce permeability like quercetin, turmeric, and tea. see the table in the video at 8:38
4) to do my best to make sure that I am not low in zinc, vitamin A and vitamin D.
5) I have also at times taken selenium, NAC, glutamine, a lot of probiotics and Hip's anti anxiety mix of turmeric, flaxseed oil and N acetyl Glucosamine. the NAC is meant to help remove bacterial plaques, the NAG to improve the mucosa, I think Glutamine and selenium where both from Michael Maes.

I should say that I have not had SIBO since 2015 - when I got the betaine HCL, ox bile and enzymes working. At the beginning of this year I took two courses of antibiotics to get rid of b. hominis and suddenly could not tolerate most foods, or think clearly enough to remember all of the above. Comin back from this I found that the l casei group probiotics (l casei, l paracasei and l rhamnosus) seemed to do the most good I understand that the theory is that they are just commensal bacteria that displace bad stuff. I find that they reduce the severity of my PoTS.

I noticed on your profile that you take/took nystatin. I take it all the time, 2 or 3 per day. When I don't take it I end up with undigested bits of food in my stools, my doctor and I do not understand how this works. Nystatin is not just an antifungal but also an antibiotic, and other antifungals do not work - so I do not know why it works for me.

This year I found that I produce my own bile if I have liver or lots of hibiscus tea, so I no longer supplement with oxbile.

I hope this helps
 

percyval577

nucleus caudatus et al
Messages
1,302
Location
Ik waak up
Best title ever!

I have read somewhere that Nickel is important for the Gut Microbiom. Maybe this is a road to test,
although I experienced some gut issues when I took tryptophan in combination with VitB´s,
and just before that month I did so I had just taken quite some amounts of nickel.
 
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Seven7

Seven
Messages
3,444
Location
USA
The more you eliminate the more allergies you develope. I had good luck with the rotation diet, I was allergic to everything!!! Also I did gaps for a few weeks first to reset the gut, the a combo of gaps and rotation. And I can eat anything ( except colitis bad foods!) now.
 

Wonkmonk

Senior Member
Messages
1,006
Location
Germany
Broccoli belongs to the cabbage family and contains isothiocyanates and organosulfur compounds like sulforaphane. These are actually very healthy substances, one of the reason why foods like Kale are a nutritionist's dream, but they might cause problems in CFS.

So perhaps you might want to try another variety of greens, perhaps leafy vegetables like corn salad might be better tolerated.

The diet you are forced to eat is not nice to eat all day, but on the bright side, per my initial estimation on first glance, with eggs, fish and greens (lots of them) you get all essential nutrients you need, so it is not per se an unhealthy diet. Compared to the standard American diet, it's probably even considered healthy.

If you have to lose the greens, you definitely need vitamin C, because fish and eggs contain zero. You probably also need calcium and the fat soluble vitamins AEK (probably not enough in the eggs). Also note fish and eggs contain zero fiber, but this is not as important as the vitamins. All else should be ok.
 

overtheedge

Senior Member
Messages
258
@tinacarroll27
You might consider seeing a gastroenterologist, they may be able to make something of this or run unique tests
Also, could this be caused by a supplement or medication you're taking, one you have added or have adjusted the dose of recently?
Also, you might try blending some food after cooking it, I buy several pound of all kinds of veggies and steam them in my 8qt instant pot then blend them in a vitamix and pour them into wide mouth quart sized mason jars and drink them down after giving them some time to warm up in the microwave, pureed is much easier to digest from what I hear