I received my report from Enterolab last night. Hard to figure out what to eat considering that I am also fructose intolerant.
A) Gluten Sensitivity Stool and Gene Panel Complete *Best test/best value
Fecal Antigliadin IgA 50 (Normal Range <10 Units)
Fecal Antitissue Transglutaminase IgA 37 Units (Normal Range <10 Units)
Quantitative Microscopic Fecal Fat Score 422 Units (Normal Range <300 Units)
Fecal anti-casein (cow’s milk) IgA antibody 40 Units (Normal Range <10 Units)
HLA-DQB1 Molecular analysis, Allele 1 0201
HLA-DQB1 Molecular analysis, Allele 2 0301
Serologic equivalent: HLA-DQ 2,3 (Subtype 2,7)
C) Egg, Yeast, and Soy Food Sensitivity Stool Panel
Fecal anti-ovalbumin (chicken egg) IgA antibody 7 Units (Normal Range <10 Units)
Fecal Anti-Saccharomyces cerevisiae (dietary yeast) IgA 7 Units (Normal Range <10 Units)
Fecal Anti-Soy IgA 16 Units (Normal Range <10 Units)
It apparently says I can eat eggs, but in the interpretation it says not to for 12 months. There is nothing left. Meat and potatoes I guess. Dr. Fine doesn't seem to like those either. Help! I just wanna cry!
Well, at least that explains why your symptoms have been so persistent, and why you have such a problem trying to gain weight. With that elevated fecal fat score, a lot of your nutrients are going right through you, unabsorbed.
Are you sure you read the interpretation correctly - that Dr. Fine advises you against eating eggs? I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to eat all the eggs you want, without any problems. Eggs were one of my mainstays, when I was having such broad food intolerance problems. I ate at least a couple of either hardboiled or poached eggs every day.
Everything else tested positive, except for yeast, which makes me question the fructose intolerance diagnosis, but I will point out that I know absolutely nothing about the accuracy and/or reliability of the fructose intolerance tests that you used.
Please don't let Dr. Fine's vegetarian/vegan lifestyle choice affect your diet selections. With your list of intolerances, you will need to eat a lot of meat and potatoes, if you're going to eat a diet that will allow your gut to heal, while still providing you with enough nutrients to go about your daily activities, and hopefully increase your weight.
Protein is essential for healing, and you need the carbs in the potatoes for energy. I survived on a diet of meat, (mostly pork, since beef caused minor reactions), eggs, potatoes, and a little rice, for a couple of years, while my gut was healing, and I was able to gain weight, in the process.
Whatever you choose for your diet, at least now you have some concrete information to base your choices on, and that's more than half the battle. I wish you the best of luck with your diet plan.
Tex
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.
This is where I got the idea of Dr. Fine not recommending eating eggs even with the result on the test: (This is from the interpretations of the results )
Interpretation of Fecal anti-ovalbumin (chicken egg) IgA antibody: Levels of fecal IgA antibody to a food antigen greater than or equal to 10 are indicative of an immune reaction, and hence immunologic “sensitivity” to that food. For any elevated fecal antibody level, it is recommended to remove that food from your diet. Values less than 10 indicate there currently is minimal or no reaction to that food and hence, no direct evidence of food sensitivity to that specific food. However, because 1 in 500 people cannot make IgA at all, and rarely, some people can still have clinically significant reactions to a food antigen despite the lack of a significant antibody reaction (because the reactions primarily involve T cells), if you have an immune syndrome or symptoms associated with food sensitivity, it is recommended that you try a strict removal of suspect foods from your diet for up to 12 months despite a negative test.
I'm going to ignore it and eat them anyway. My diet is so limited. I will eat the meat, potatoes, some rice and eggs like you did. You have given me lots of hope and inspiration, I really appreciate your words of encouragement. This is very difficult and knowing that positive results are possible is the only thing keeping me going. Seems to me I remember that you ate potato chips when you were healing. Think that is ok. I was eating avocados but have noticed that they have a lot of fiber which right now is not a very good thing for me. Hate giving up the calories though.
What are you thinking about the yeast/fructose connection?
I can understand your concern about the eggs, but that's just Dr. Fine's standard disclaimer to cover the remote possibility of a false negative test. Unless you have a real reason to suspect that you are intolerant to eggs, there's no reason not to eat them. I have to confess that when I was where you are now, I repeatedly suspected that I might be intolerant to eggs, and I couldn't keep from "testing" myself fairly often. I never could prove anything though, so I finally gave up and quit worrying, and just continued to eat them.
The "1 in 500 people cannot make IgA at all" rule obviously doesn't apply to you, because your positive IgA tests prove that you are capable of producing it.
My comment about the yeast/fructose connection is based on a WAEG, together with this line of "reasoning":
You tested negative for yeast intolerance, which means that you almost certainly do not have a yeast overgrowth. (Yeast intolerance is caused by yeast overgrowth). Yeast thrives on simple sugars, and if the body is not utilizing them, then that leaves the door open for yeast to step in and take over the unused sugars. Since that doesn't appear to be happening, you probably aren't fructose intolerant.
Besides, true fructose intolerance is a hereditary problem, and a permanent condition, and it's rather rare - something like one in 10,000 people lack the enzyme needed to digest fructose. The condition that most people call fructose intolerance is actually fructose malabsorption, (which is not hereditary, not permanent, and not rare), and as many as one in three people are at risk for that problem. Treatment for hereditary fructose intolerance requires a rigid, 100% fructose-free diet, whereas fructose malabsorption can be controlled simply be limiting the amount of fructose intake. IOW, there is a threshold level above which a patient will show symptoms, but as long as the fructose intake is kept below that level, it can be well tolerated. The H2 breath tests that are commonly used, only offer a guideline, and shouldn't be considered as an ironclad diagnostic tool.
Anyway, those are my thoughts, for what they're worth.
Tex
P S Almost forgot the potato chips . . . Yes, I ate potato chips occasionally, but they always made me somewhat uneasy, because I was always concerned about the oils they were cooked in, so I was afraid to eat then regularly. The "healthy" varieties, that were cooked in sunflower or cottonseed oil seemed to bother me, whereas plain old Lay's original potato chips, seemed to be OK. After I discovered that fact, I ate the Lay's potato chips fairly regularly.
I was DX'd with Fructose malabsorption, but they even used the word intolerance meaning malabsorption and since then I took 2 weeks of fluconozole. Maybe that helped the yeast thing. Maybe I can eat fructose now. I don't know. They said that I would probably be able to add some back in but they wanted me off very strickly for 2 months. It's only been a little over a month. I think I "became" FM when they gave me the neomycin. That was when I turned the corner for the worse. That probably gave me a horrible overgrowth of yeast and thus the FM. I'm just gonna have to hunker down and eat meat and potatoes and continue to pray a lot. Hopefully this will pass...soon. Thanks again.
As I mentioned elsewhere one can get a false positive on Fructose Malabsorbtion if you have SIBO. I'd make sure that is ruled out for sure.
The one comment about fructose intolerance being hereditery (sp) is true, but one can develop fructose malabsorbtion due to other reasons. Liver damage, SIBO, possibly some viruses, heck food allergies might cause one to look like they have a fructose intolerance.
Mike is quite correct, of course - fructose malabsorption can occur at anytime, from a myriad of causes. I suspect that many of the things that can cause temporary lactose intolerance, for example, can cause it, including just about any type or enteritis, even the flu, or other intestinal viruses - anything that adversely affects the epithelial cells in the intestines, is a potential candidate.
For a while I seemed to have a problem with fructose, but it was only temporary, and for a long time, fructose was the only sugar that didn't make me sick, (as long as I didn't ingest too much of it).
It seemed to be - don't know why. Maybe I had SIBO and/or candida overgrowth. It just dawned on me that I lied though, I could also tolerate maple sugar.
The reason I say that I could tolerate limited amounts of fructose then, is because I could tolerate drinking one or two cokes per day, but more would make me sick.
Tex
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.
I think Coke is sweetened with sucrose which is a combo of fructose and glucose which is supposed to be more tolerable for people with FM. Tex, it could be that you could tolerate the sucrose up to a point. Glucose is supposed to be tolerated by FMers. I hope I am just temporarily FM because of the gluten and casein intolerance and maybe because of the Neomycin trigger. My new doctor said that I probably have always had the gene but a virus triggered it to rear its ugly head. That's what I thought I had when this all started 9/11/99, a virus. Others around me had it too. Their's went away but mine didn't. We'll see if my doctor will test me for SIBO. I wonder if he will since I had a stool test in May that said I had osmotic D. Wouldn't I have had secretory if it was a bacterial infection?
Almost all non-diet soft drinks are sweetened with 55-HFCS, (55% High Fructose Corn Syrup), these days, but you're right - that composition is very close to sucrose, which is 50% fructose, and 50% dextrose. Supposedly, the composition of 55-HFCS is 55% fructose, 41% dextrose, 2% maltose, and 2% higher saccharides. The industrial users of HFCS, (especially soft drink manufacturers), claim that the body can't tell the difference between HFCS and sucrose, but there are many dissenters who claim that HFCS acts more like fat in the body, than sugar.
You're right again, about me being able to tolerate sucrose in small amounts. I was always able to eat GF chocolate chip cookies, (made with rice flour), which contained small amounts of sucrose, as long as I didn't overdo it. If I tried to eat more than two or three small cookies, though, it was too much, and I got sick. I couldn't, for example, eat normal GF deserts - the sugar would get me every time.
I've always suspected that my problems began with a virus, also, FWIW.
I looked up the question about osmotic D, and according to Merck, intestinal bacteria cause osmotic D. Here's a good reference on the various types of diarrhea:
I'm confident that you'll get over the fructose problem, as your gut begins to make some progress in the healing process.
Tex
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.
WAEG stands for Wild-Assed Educated Guess.