food reaction times- Maybe Diet help?

[thedell19]

Hello all-

I have been doing fairely well recently which I am very happy about. However for 2 days now I have had D or very soft serve BM's. Maybe it is too early to worry about but I would like to try and put a finger on it.

How long does it usually take for a food reaction to make you dash to the bathroom?

On Sat night I ate tomatos (cooked) on pizza (no cheese) and felt relatively fine afterwards. Then Sunday afternoon after I ate a late lunch I had explosive D and then again after I ate dinner (had a little mayo which I dont often do but never had trouble with before).

Woke up this morning had soft serve with stomach cramps etc.

I got a script refilled and started taking it Sunday. Do you every worry that when your GF meds go through the med counter would they pick up gluten on the counter?

Man I really dont miss these days!

[kate_ce1995]

Was it GF pizza? I assume so. I sometimes feel a bit off after pizza even with a gf crust. I'm not sure if its because I otherwise don't eat a lot of grain.

But I will say, if I react, it is about 18 to 24 hours after eating gluten. I get all queezy and then I'll have softer poop for a while even after the queeziness goes away.

Katy

[mle_ii]

Boy I wish I really knew. From what I'm learning, or have learned, there is no exact timing. I'm guessing it could be immediate like say minutes to the extreem of days.

I'd say this all depends on the why you are reacting and the environment of your GI. Since both of these vary so much I doubt that reaction times could be consistant across the board.

So for example let's say that the reason you react to a food is an IgE reaction or say Ecoli, and let's also say that it gets far enough into the intestine that you don't throw up, well this would most likely be an immediate reaction where you'd get D.

Then on the other extreem let's say that it's something like bacterial overgrowth or an IgG reaction in the colon. This wouldn't be as immediate and might take a while to build up to a reaction that you really take notice of like say a day or more later depending on your gut motility. And if your bacterial overgrowth were due to methane producing bacteria you might not even see this reaction until a week or so later.

This makes it extreemly difficult to determine food intolerances by gut reactions. Heck in the case of bacterial overgrowth it's not even that we have an intolerance to a given food, but how the gut bacteria react to that food instead.

Mike

[tex]

Andrew,

I agree with Mike, that there seems to be a lot of variability. Back when I was reacting regularly, (IOW, before my gut healed), I always thought that it took me more than a day, (usually two to four days), to react to gluten. This leads me to believe that I was actually reacting to damage to the small intestine, rather than the gluten itself, (IOW, I'm probably a celiac who does not immediately react to gluten).

If you read about my oat challenge, though, then you know that I react to avenin, (the prolamin in oats), in approximately three hours after ingesting it. However, this happens only if I still have antibodies circulating in my system. IOW, it took several weeks of eating oats, before I built up enough antibodies that I started having symptoms. I am guessing that these antibodies are still circulating in the blood for as long as a year after the last instance of ingesting oats, so that if I eat oats at any time during the next year, (well, about 10 months, now), then they will probably give my GI tract a thorough flushing, approximately three hours later.

A number of people here have commented that they react, (with D), approximately six hours after ingesting an allergen.

There's always the possibility that you've just picked up a virus of some type, which may run it's course in a few days.

Tex

[mle_ii]

And Tex to even throw another wrench into the works. Let's say that you have no issues with oats (no reaction in that you have no immune reaction) but you have a potential for developing bacterial overgrowth due to some issues with the gut or foods that you eat. So the first time you eat it, no reaction, eat it again and maybe no reaction or a bit of a hard to notice reaction. Then lets say you try it again for the third time and you get a definite reaction. In most cases one might think, oh I have an immune reaction that took time to build up. But in this case it wasn't what happened is that you ate oats and given that oats have some carbs that your body doesn't break down or break down all of, the bacteria have a chance to feed on this and grow in numbers and due to your potential for bacterial overgrowth the numbers go up in your upper GI tract. Feed them again and they grow more and more, and I imagine it's not linear but exponential. So we've built up the bacteria, they produce the endotoxins in larger numbers, suppress serotonin, consume food that would normal be consumed by you and you feel like crap. And wrongly assume that you have an alergic reaction, but instead of bacterial overgrowth.

And I'm not saying that's the case with you or Andrew, but that there is this potential and that we can end up reading this wrong. It's really too bad that Drs don't have this down to a better science.

What's of further interest is that with bacterial overgrowth one could end up with a short term food intollerance/allergy that will go away when the bacterial overgrowth is fixed.

Mike

[thedell19]

thanks tex and mike

At any rate I am getting food allergin/intollerance test (through Biotek like Mike) and that should be able to tell me more about what I might be reacting to.

Tex- I was at the Drs office Thursday and might have picked up a bug that didnt hit until yesterday?

I guess it is too many things to consider. But my gut bacteria should be OK because I take probiotics every other day and roughly (100 billion CFus)

[mle_ii]

thanks tex and mike

At any rate I am getting food allergin/intollerance test (through Biotek like Mike) and that should be able to tell me more about what I might be reacting to.

I hate to say it, but I'm not as convinced anymore as I was with regards to this testing. I hope you're not paying for this personally if you do get it done. One reason is that I'm not sure anymore exactly what it's telling us. And it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know from other testing. I wish I could add more and difinitively say that it's good to test for or not good to test for. I'm more on the fence now with this testing than I was before. Learning about bacterial overgrowth has me questioning this a lot.

Tex- I was at the Drs office Thursday and might have picked up a bug that didnt hit until yesterday?

I guess it is too many things to consider. But my gut bacteria should be OK because I take probiotics every other day and roughly (100 billion CFus)

Not sure if this last bit was in response to having bacterial overgrowth, but if it was then taking a probiotic won't nessesarily help any if you do have bacterial overgrowth.

Mike

[cludwig]

Hey Mike,
Why won't taking a probiotic help if you have bacterial overgrowth?
Love,
Cristi

[Matthew]

Thedell-

Eating pizza is kind of like play Russian roulette in that unless the restaurant has a hermetically sealed room with an air lock and every employe wearing a fresh tyvack suit to make your pizza contamination seems almost certain. Having worked in a pizza shop many years ago and seeing the amount of wheat flower thrown about, cross contamination is inevitable and it is no surprise that the several times you have ordered pizza that you have gotten sick.

Many of us over the years have found problems with nightshades. Tomatoes are a member of the nightshade group.

Many of us have found that balancing protein and carbohydrates has been a key to feeling well. A Pizza without a good amount of protein would be off the scale for many of us.

To your recovery

Matthew

[mle_ii]

Hey Mike,
Why won't taking a probiotic help if you have bacterial overgrowth?
Love,
Cristi

Actually I don't see anyway that it could help and in fact I can see how it would be counter productive.

Bacterial overgrowth can only be treated by decreasing the number of bacteria in the small intestine. This would be a natural or medicinal antibiotic and/or treating the original cause of the bacterial overgrowth. The orginal cause might be low stomach acid, low bile acid, slow gut motility, intestinal sphicters not working correctly, intestinal blockage, constipation, low digestive enzymes, too much food for the stomach and small intestines to break down, eating too often (not given the intestines a chance to clear the bacteria), and I'm sure there's more.

Where probiotics help is after an antiboitic, for too much "bad" bacteria in the colon and/or not enough good, not enough bacteria in the diet, travelers diarrhea, and perhaps more that I can't thing of right now.

Mike

[cludwig]

Hi Mike,

Interesting. I feel like right now I am only controlling symptoms....not curing anything. So wouldn't the same thing apply to taking an antibiotic...if the original cause isn't fixed? Don't you need to fill in the colon with the good organisms after you have killed off the bad?

How is your antibiotic treatment going and are you still taking a probiotic? I hope it is going well.

I get a bunch of test results back at the chronic fatigue clinic on Wed. so I'll let everyone know how it goes.I hope to figure out what my "original cause " is.

Love,
Cristi

[mle_ii]

Hi Mike,

Interesting. I feel like right now I am only controlling symptoms....not curing anything. So wouldn't the same thing apply to taking an antibiotic...if the original cause isn't fixed? Don't you need to fill in the colon with the good organisms after you have killed off the bad?

How is your antibiotic treatment going and are you still taking a probiotic? I hope it is going well.

I get a bunch of test results back at the chronic fatigue clinic on Wed. so I'll let everyone know how it goes.I hope to figure out what my "original cause " is.

Love,
Cristi

Right, controling symptoms is what gets us into trouble a lot of times. But there are certain circumstances where taking an antibiotic is the cure. Though if there is an underlying cause that doesn't get address then you either get it again or need to change your diet significantly. Foods that digest quickly, no residue, no fiber, no undigestable components. So for sugars that would mean pretty much glucose only, perhaps fructose with glucose, veggies and fruits need to be cooked, no fiber, perhaps digestive enzymes (etc), HCL (?). Notice anything familiar here, pretty much the diet most of us have come to use to get more regular bowels.

In fact one treatment for bacterial overgrowth that sometimes gets used if drugs don't work is called an Elemental Diet. It's basically liquid food in a can, all predigested so the bacteria never get a chance to consume it as you digest it almost instantly. This is only done for a certain amount of time and has a good result as far as studies have found, but you need to be under a drs supervision as it is a very limiting diet and you need to make sure that you are getting enough calories, vitamins, minerals etc for your bodyweight/metabolism.

And yes, getting the good organisms is good once you've killed off the bad. Though this is controversial as well. What defines good or bad? Seems it's not as clear as one might think.

The antibiotic treatment is going well thus far, I feel that it helped me a lot, but didn't get me to where I want to be. I've still had a few days where I wasn't ok at all and was like it was before. I'm thinking that the treatment worked to some degree, but I might need a longer course or a different antibiotic to get me to normal all the time. Perhaps a week or so of the rifimaxin (sp) will get me there. And I didn't take the probiotic during treatment, but I've started back up just the other day after my last does of the antibiotic, going between 2 different ones that I have every other day.

Mike

[thedell19]

Mike!!!!!!!!!!!

I ordered the tests yesterday thru my Drs office. What other tests did you get that helped more than the Biotek one?

So do you not think it is a good idea? I really dont know my food intolerances beyond gluten and casein; tomato bothers me as does peanutbutter sometimes... Basically I think I need to cancel it soon if it is a waste of money... and how much was it if you have to pay for it on your own?

[mle_ii]

Mike!!!!!!!!!!!

I ordered the tests yesterday thru my Drs office. What other tests did you get that helped more than the Biotek one?

So do you not think it is a good idea? I really dont know my food intolerances beyond gluten and casein; tomato bothers me as does peanutbutter sometimes... Basically I think I need to cancel it soon if it is a waste of money... and how much was it if you have to pay for it on your own?

I know, I know. :(

Until I get at the real root of the problem I can't say what test helped me most, but the test for bacterial overgrowth using lactulose and testing for methane and hydrogen would be one if it pans out for me.

I can't say that it wouldn't be a good idea, but as of today with what I know and if I had to pay on my own I wouldn't do it. If insurance was paying for it then perhaps, but like I said I'm not sure anymore what it really tells us. I suppose if you did both the IgA and IgG that the IgA would be useful, but I'm not sure anymore what the IgG tells us. Another problem that unless the proteins they test for have access beyond the gut wall then who really cares. But indeed if you have a leaky gut I can see what benefit this would be until you heal. But what indeed would be the orginal cause of the leaky gut.

But since I'm not a Dr, what does your Dr say? I'm guessing that since your Dr is ordering the test for you that they might see something there. I think this is more important than anything I have to say as I'm not treating you... which is a good thing. LOL

And as far as tomatoes and peanutbutter, I had similar thoughts, now I'm not so sure it wasn't really the bacterial overgrowth having a great picnic on the undigestable parts of those two foods. For instance tomatoes are fairly high in fructose, more than it has glucose. This can be a problem for folks with fructose malabsorbtion or bacterial overgrowth.

Insurance paid for my testing here so I don't remember how much it cost, and the cost probably wouldn't be the same if I did pay.

Mike

[thedell19]

Why are you taking an antibiotic?

If you are taking itfor your gut have you tried Xifaxin (sp) which is very good for travelers D, and many other stomach issues.