Recently diagnosed LC newbie, first GI appt. on 6/6

Post by **tex** » Sun Jun 05, 2011 7:05 pm

Karin,

I'm glad that you're feeling better today. Many of us find that keeping a food diary with details of what we eat, when we eat it, and how we react to it, (complete with types and times of bowel movements), and other symptoms, can be very helpful for determining food sensitivities. Some of us react within 10 or 15 minutes of eating some foods, while others react a day or two later, to certain foods. We all have our own threshold for sensitivity levels, and our own reaction times.

I kept a log starting well before I adopted the GF diet, and I found that as long as I was still ingesting any amount of gluten, I seemed to react to anything and everything, on a pretty much random basis. It's very easy to miss a regular source of traces of gluten in our diet, and a trace is all it takes to trigger a reaction for most of us. We have to check the labels constantly, on every processed food, vitamin, supplement, or whatever, that we buy, because some manufacturers change ingredients with surprising frequency.

The worst problem occurs when labels are just plain wrong, and they fail to list an ingredient. That happens more often than many of us realize. Many processed foods labeled as gluten-free are not. When tested, they often contain way more than the 20 parts per million limit that the guidelines recommend, and in this country that's no big deal, because we do not have a government regulatory policy which effectively enforces rigid gluten-free standards, thanks to the FDA's lax handling of the process. Under current law, barley and rye, and their derivatives, (such as malt), do not have to be specifically listed as allergens, even though we are just as sensitive to them as we are to wheat and it's derivatives.

Pharmaceuticals are not even required by law to list gluten or other food sensitivities on the label. Many manufactures do, but all allergen labeling of pharmaceuticals is basically done on a voluntary basis. That's why our job is so tough, and why making our meals from scratch, and/or buying an absolute minimum of processed foods, (with a minimum of ingredients), is by far the safest policy. As a rule of thumb, anytime a product contains more than 5 ingredients, the risk of mislabeling, and the risk of misreading a label, increase substantially.

Tex

ant · Post by **ant** » Mon Jun 06, 2011 3:55 am

Dear Valerie,

Welcome from Hong Kong. Good luck with your GI meeting. Seems like you have a great attitude that will help you find your way to remission.

My reading of things that it is possible to go into relatively quick remission if the MC is caused by drugs (like NSAIDs) and you stop them, but for most it takes a long hard journey to eliminated food intolerance and gradually heal the gut. Food intolerance varies from person to person (and the number of different intolerance seems to have some correlation to genes)

Best wishes, ant

ant · Post by **ant** » Mon Jun 06, 2011 4:03 am

Dear Karin,

Welcome from Hong Kong. Glad you are feeling better today - this disease can be like snakes and ladders.

..... but, over the long term, with perseverance, it will get better .

However gluten is out and so is lactose

My GI doc kept talking about cutting out dairy due to lactose, but from my Enterolab results (and many research articles and discussion here) it seems that it is the casein in dairy that causes the immune reaction for people with MC.

Best wishes on your journey to remission, ant

ant · Post by **ant** » Tue Jun 07, 2011 7:14 pm

.....as well as Gluten, Soy etc. causing the inflammation.

(Just released my previous post was ambiguously worded.)

best ant

Nancy · Post by **Nancy** » Wed Jun 08, 2011 8:11 am

I follow the scdiet and was wondering if the 24 hour cultured yogurt would be out if you are going dairy free?

sarkin · Post by **sarkin** » Wed Jun 08, 2011 8:16 am

Nancy,

Your instinct is right - the yogurt is not "dairy free." The protein is not affected by the culturing process (it's the sugar that gets 'digested' by the culture)... so if you are avoiding that protein (many of us are), the yogurt would not be a safe food.

I had the SCDiet book many years ago, and wish I had not lent it to someone - some good ideas (though I would have to tweak for my current diet).

Best,
Sara

MBombardier · Post by **MBombardier** » Wed Jun 08, 2011 10:26 am

All you SCD ppl have probably found this site already...

http://www.scdrecipe.com/recipes/view-all