@jepps
Also people on other posts in this forum have suggested Bone broth for healing and Water Kefir for replacing probiotics, does anyone have experience with these? I react very badly to Glutamine so have been wary of Bone Broth, also I have a slight histamine reaction from milk kefir so not sure if the same would happen with water based?
Years ago, I was a low carb paleo eater, then switched to high-fat (still low carb) primal. It was during this time that my IBS-C started getting especially bad. I was intermittent fasting for awhile, because the research behind it sounded good, but it wreaked havoc on my GI system. I just can not handle huge amounts of food at one time.
I wouldn't say that I'm cured, as my IBS-C occasionally flares up a little, but it is drastically better now than it was then. What helped me might not help you, so I will tell you what I did and you can decided if any of it makes sense for you.
1) smaller more frequent meals
2) eliminate (or at least drastically reduce) non-soluble fiber. I had been eating a lot of vegetables, especially salads, and it turned out these were doing more harm than good. I switched to soluble fiber only (like pectin), which I could tolerate just fine. Even now, I am careful to not consume too much non-soluble fiber. I'm also no longer low carb, which I realized after a year that my body wasn't tolerating very well. I function much better with higher carbs.
3) I made bone broth and consumed it almost daily. I understand that you have a histamine issue. The long you cook bone broth, the more histamine it has. Some histamine-sensitive people are able to consume it if they don't cook it the whole day, but maybe cook it for an hour or two. Still better than nothing. If you still don't tolerate it, have you tried just buying grass-fed gelatin? Great Lakes is a great brand. You can stir it into some other kind of soup, or make a 'jello' out of it, or take it however you like. My husband went through a period where he had a lot of trouble with histamine (the problem disappeared on it's own) and he used these pills called Histame that often helped a lot. I think they contain enzymes that the body should produce to break down histamine.
4) I took a lot of probiotics, both in homemade lactofermented foods like yogurt (which are transitory and not super helpful) as well as human strains (like Mutaflor, Miyarisin, Reuteri, etc...) which do colonize the gut, produce vitamins, and effect neurotransmitters. Unfortunately, you probably won't get a lot of benefit just from lactofermented stuff like water kefir, but if you tolerate, it's worth a try to see if it improves anything.
Over time, I slowly got better. I went from being doubled up in the fetal position in pain and not having BM for months to being more or less regular and not really having issues. The improvement was a slow process, it will not get better overnight. I never had any testing, so I don't know if I had/or have leaky gut.
Prebiotics (like unmodified potato starch aka resistant starch) do feed the good bacteria, but it can also feed the bad bacteria, so you have to be a bit careful with it. My husband tried taking the potato starch but he had some GI problems with it. However, after doing a really intense Mutaflor protocol, he tolerates it just fine now (he uses it to keep his blood glucose in check when he eats a bigger carb meal). I've read that it might not be a good idea to take resistant starch until after you are confident you've got your gut flora in good shape.
