Trying to understand bloating, gas and stomach upset.

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Goesalot
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Trying to understand bloating, gas and stomach upset.

Post by Goesalot »

Hi everyone. Hope all had a blessed Thanksgiving.
I have been gluten free for about 3 weeks now. I am also getting very very small amounts of lactose. Most in the form of a bit of creamer in my one cup of coffee in the morning. I also avoid eggs (they are bad news) and most nuts. Nuts seem to upset my stomach and because I have stomach erosion I am wondering if this is all part of my LC. My breakfast consists of an apple about midmorning. If I eat anything earlier my stomach doesn't feel good. I tried bananas but that was an awful stomachache. I have been D free for about 1 month now, ever since I had my colonoscopy and was diagnoised. Even though my D has stopped my bowl movements are far from normal. I tend to have a small amount everytime I urinate. When I do go more it is like paste. Does this mean that I am far from healed? How do I know when my gut (and stomach) are healed or do I just assume that doesn't happen? I am due for a follow up appt at my GI doc but am unsure what to tell her. I don't want to say great because I am not sure it is great just because the D is gone for now. I only ate a very limited diet over Thanksgiving because we were traveling and I didn't have any gas or bloating or stomach upset. I ate something different on the ride home and then I felt gassy and bloated with stomach upset. How do I know if that comes from the LC or if it is just a simple process as some foods having that reaction to. everyone (ex: beans and gas)
Ruth
Looking for health and wellness to all no matter what ailment they have to deal with.
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Gabes-Apg
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Post by Gabes-Apg »

Ruth
in this early stages of inflammation and healing, an apple might be too high in fibre and not the ideal, as sugars (including fruit sugars) can be an issue for many,
Nuts can also be troublesome they are high in fibre and hard to digest . its not stomach erosion per say, it is that the lining of the gut is damaged, and inflammed.

whether you have a small amount of lactose or alot of lactose it will cause inflammation. Dairy namely the caesin element of the creamer is highly inflammatory.
when the gut is inflammed it is best to avoid all dairy.

the consistency and 'leakage' when you urinate is a sign that there is still quite a bit of inflammation, so there is some healing to happen
how you will know when you are healed? when you have minimal symptoms, ie near normal BM's most of the time and minimal symptoms digestion wise, minimal symptoms elsewhere like joint pain, brain fog, fatigue etc.

whether it is a direct LC reaction or other inflammation, inflammation is inflammation, is damaging to the gut, affects digestion.
people with IBD's are more sensitive / reactive to inflammatory foods. inflammatory foods can be high histamine foods, hard to digest foods, fibre, and trigger foods like GLuten, Diary, Soy, Eggs etc.

hope this helps
Gabes Ryan

"Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned"
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Goesalot
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Joined: Sun Nov 08, 2015 4:04 pm

Post by Goesalot »

Gabes, Thank you for the info. It really does help. I feel like perhaps I only think these foods are a problem but then when I eat them I realize that I do feel different, as in not as good as I feel when I don't eat them. This disease certainly has a learning curve. I will continue to try to stay on the elimination diet by leaving the cream out of my coffee and not eating any nuts of any kind. I am doing good with the gluten and I know I can do it.
Ruth
Looking for health and wellness to all no matter what ailment they have to deal with.
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tex
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Post by tex »

Ruth,

Trust me, we all doubt that we are actually sensitive to certain foods if they don't cause us to immediately become seriously ill. Sometimes the signs can be very subtle, and the problems can be difficult to pinpoint even though we might be keeping a detailed food and reaction journal. Back when I was trying to recover (over 13 years ago), I wasn't even aware of the EnteroLab tests, and I wasn't aware of any MC discussion and support boards, so I had to try to figure out what would work for me as an elimination diet without any guidelines to go by. It took me a year and a half of trial and error testing to figure out what to eat (the whole time I was only avoiding gluten 100 % of the time), but after I cut out all suspicious foods, I began to improve relatively quickly, so I knew I was on the right track.

For coffee, some of us drink it black, some of us use almond milk, a few use coconut milk, and some of us (like me) use a couple of sugar cubes. Don't use artificial sweeteners such as asperame, because virtually all of us seem to have problems with most artificial sweeteners while we're recovering, and aspertame seems to be the worst of the lot.

Incidentally, regarding coffee creamers: as Gabes pointed out, despite the fact that many coffee creamers are labeled as "Non-Dairy", they contain the ingredient "sodium caseinate". Sodium caseinate is the biochemical name for casein, which of course is the very ingredient in all dairy products that typically causes MC patients to react. How they can get away with labeling those products as "Non-Dairy" is beyond me.

Tex
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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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