Corn

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Tor
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Corn

Post by Tor »

Hi all,

I changed brand of gluten free bread last weekend, and this seems to have induced a flare. The bread contains corn/maize starch. I think I've had reactions to corn in the past, and have tried to avoid it over the past months. But isn't the starch devoided of proteins/allergens? How are your experience with corn and corn starch?

After beeing gluten and dairy-free for almost 6 months, I now seem to react strongly to small amounts of dairy and corn. It might be the same with gluten, but don't know of any accidents with gluten. I plan to provoce with gluten in a month or so, but now I need to get things stabilized first.

-- Tor
Life's hard and then you die
Lilja
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Post by Lilja »

Hi Tor,

I have been glutenfree for exactly 2 years, and tried some taco shells the other day for the first time in this period. I didn't have a flare, only very loose stools the next day. So, I will avoid corn for a good while still.

PS: I noticed a while ago that my grandchild had undigested whole corns in his daiper, and read afterwards that corn is hard to digest - even for people with "normal" digestion.

Lilia
Collagenous Colitis diagnosis in 2010
Psoriasis in 1973, symptom free in 2014
GF, CF and SF free since April, 2013
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tex
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Post by tex »

Tor,

Some of us react to the primary protein in corn/maize. Corn gluten is known as zein. I had to avoid corn and all of it's derivatives when I was recovering, but after I had been in remission for a couple of years I was able to reintroduce it into my diet. Corn is very difficult to avoid because ingredients derived from corn are used in so many processed foods and drinks.


Lilia,

It's the pericarp (the outer shell) of corn that's difficult to digest. That's why farmers usually run corn through a roller mill to crack the kernels before feeding corn to younger livestock. As they get older, cattle develop the ability to digest the pericarp, as their rumen develops.

Often, what appear to be kernels of corn in stool will actually be the intact pericarp. The starch will have been digested because when immature corn kernels are sliced off the cob for canning purposes, the endosperm end of the kernel is removed, leaving the starch accessible to the digestive system through that opening in the pericarp.

Tex
:cowboy:

It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
Tor
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Post by Tor »

Thanks, Lilja and Tex. I've changed back to the old kind of GF bread and allowed myself 3 days on 9mg budesonide. I think that will fix it the D for now.

I've also done some research on the net. It seems like celiacs quite often react to corn as well - and it's not necessarily only the protein which can cause problems.

--Tor
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tex
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Post by tex »

Tor wrote:and it's not necessarily only the protein which can cause problems.
That's certainly true because when the small intestine is inflamed, it loses the ability to produce adequate amounts of many/most enzymes, and that compromises our ability to digest many carbs. The first enzyme lost, for example, is lactase, and that happens very quickly, so that's why everyone who has enteritis is lactose intolerant. Loss of the other enzymes occurs more slowly, as the inflammation continues. This is obviously not an autoimmune issue, but rather an enzyme deficiency problem resulting from enteritis. As the inflammation diminishes, this enzyme production problem is slowly resolved, and production resumes, in reverse of the order in which the enzymes were lost.

Tex
:cowboy:

It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
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