Apt with Dietician

[thedell19]

Saw my PCP yesterday and since I am still gradually losing weight- he set me up to see a Dietician- so I dont know what to expect because I have never seen one before-

I have started to make a food log again so I can show her-

I know I dont eat a lot of fruit so could I be losing weight because of a lack of vit c?

I dont eat a lot of veggies but I started to eat some greenbeans with meals (very well cooked)

Any advice would be great because I think I am eating more but losing weight-

I am working two jobs about 55-60 hrs per week and this could be causing me to be run down maybe and lose weight?

Thanks all

[tex]

Andrew,

You may just need more calories. Do you have any idea what your average daily intake is?

Most of the most popular veggies don't provide a lot of calories, (except for things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. Some fruits are a little better in that department.

Carbs, (especially the grains), are loaded with calories. Adding some rice to your diet, may help. Snacking on corn chips, (if you can tolerate corn), or potato chips, certainly works for me. If you want to add some more "empty" calories, wash the chips down with a soft drink that's made with cane sugar, rather than HFCS, (HFCS is plenty fattening, but I believe that cane sugar is a lot healthier, if you're going to eat sugar). I'm not saying that this is a healthy thing to do - I'm just saying that it will usually add weight. LOL.

I would hope that your dietitian will have some better suggestions than I have.

Tex

[thedell19]

tex-

I probably am not getting 2000 calories-

I have started to snack on potato chips and other sweets from kinnickinnck (doughnuts, bagels, english muffins) and I thought that would help- maybe it is starting to I have noticed my stomach is a bit bigger but not much.

I also want to make my own rice milk and now have recipes so that I can make a protien powder shake with the rice milk banana or something- but dont really tolerate the rice milk powder we have because it has FOS which helps growth of both bad and good bacteria in your gut-

[mle_ii]

FOS which helps growth of both bad and good bacteria in your gut-

Where'd you hear that? Good I've read about, bad, well I guess that would depend.

[tex]

Here's a thread where we discussed the FOS issue about 7 or 8 months ago.

http://www.perskyfarms.com/phpBB2/viewt ... hlight=fos

Tex

[Matthew]

Wayne

As always, thanks for digging in to the archives. Their is such a wealth of information on this sight with just a few clicks in the search function.

It is still MHO that FOSS promotes bacterial growth but does not differentiate between good and bad. Certainly at the point that I tried it, it must have sent the bad into overdrive.

It has been very interesting to read about VSL#3 and Flora-Q. I never have any problems when I avoid even the smallest slip in my diet. It would be a joy, if the theory works, to be able to relax .

Just a bit.

To your continued recovery.

Love

Matthew

[thedell19]

Well my Apt with the dietician is tomorrow- I hope we can figure something out.

Is anyone taking multi-vitamins? I know my vit C is probably lacking and vit E is good for inflammation-

I think Freeda vitamins are GFCF and corn, rice etc free since they are legal on the scdiet.

[mle_ii]

Here's a thread where we discussed the FOS issue about 7 or 8 months ago.

http://www.perskyfarms.com/phpBB2/viewt ... hlight=fos

Tex

Interesting, wish I'd been as educated about FOS/probiotics back then as I am now. I have a few comments for sure on that thread. :) What I didn't see were any articles or studies refered to saying that FOS helped promote bad bacteria. Almost every study talking about prebiotics/FOS/Inulin etc mentioned a preferential bias towards the good bacteria. But I'd really like to read articles/studies showing otherwise.

[mle_ii]

Wayne

As always, thanks for digging in to the archives. Their is such a wealth of information on this sight with just a few clicks in the search function.

It is still MHO that FOSS promotes bacterial growth but does not differentiate between good and bad. Certainly at the point that I tried it, it must have sent the bad into overdrive.

It has been very interesting to read about VSL#3 and Flora-Q. I never have any problems when I avoid even the smallest slip in my diet. It would be a joy, if the theory works, to be able to relax .

Just a bit.

To your continued recovery.

Love

Matthew

Matthew, you had mentioned some articles/studies showing that FOS fed both good and bad bacteria. Do you have links to any of those still?

FWIW I can see a reason why FOS (or even a probiotic) might cause a bad reaction at first, but I would think that after taking it a while (with a good high number probiotic) I can't really see why it could cause problems. That is unless the FOS/prebiotic contained proteins that you were intollerant to. Even then given the miniscule ammounts and the high amounts of probiotics counteracting this immune response I would think it'd be pretty darn rare. But then we are pretty rare folks... well, at least part of me still thinks so.

This is the same sort of stuff they give to folks with IBD and adverse reactions are rare here as well. Think about how much damage has been done in this case, you think our guts are leaky, these folks have holes in their guts that a bacteria could drive a truck through.

Even with all this in mind, I can still see why one would react even to these things.

Oh and one of the great things you mentioned in the old thread is the WHY of how this dysbiosis occured. Unfortuneatly the science/medicine isn't quite there yet. There are many, many reasons why this can happen. The most significant for the general population would be what bacteria the mother has (and whether you were cesarian and/or breastfed) and the other being whether one takes antibiotics. Beyond that there are loads of reasons why, and a lot of those reasons why are a cycle that needs to be broken somewhere. Indeed part of that cycle are the very grains that we are made to think are ok for us.

Thanks,
Mike

[Matthew]

Mike

I have several links to more scientific articles but they are several years old and no longer work.

In the mean time this is the first one that I found and it tweaked my interest enough to look for others.

http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info ... arides.htm

I will have to look for the others when I have more time.


Matthew

[moremuscle]

I found Matthew's link to the article in Elain Gottschall's book/site interesting. I especially like her metaphor for the GI tract in the following quote - a rain forest! It is very beautiful to visualize the GI tract this way and I cetainly wish to keep the beautiful natural balance in my rain forest and try not to mess it up. To me it makes much sense that a balanced intestinal environment would equate an optimal healhty environment.

I did take a probiotic that contained FOS for a few months back in my early days after having been diagnosed with MC. I attempted to restore a healthy balance by using this probiotic. I didn't notice and change in my itnestinal health due to taking it - none adverse or positive, so I decided to stop taking it.

After having been introduced to the Paleo Diet I admit I have become somewhat "strange" in that I prefer not to take any supplements but to find natural sources of every nutrient my body needs. By natural I mean sources that are not supplements but rather true foods.

Quote from Matthew's link above:
"Even if Inluin/FOS did display specifity for
beneficial bacteria, do we know enough about the complex microbial ecology
of the human GI tract to deem a species of bacteria better than the
others? The GI tract is much like a rain forest with a very complex web of
life. What would happen to a rain forest if, in our arrogance, we decided
to spread a chemical that fertilized one specific type of tree? Would the
overgrowth of one species be beneficial? Our GI tracts have adapted to
house a variety of microbes and to disrupt this balance might be
detrimental to our health. With these concerns, we recommend staying far
away from any product with Inulin/FOS."

Thank you for the inspiration. I treasure the rain forest metaphore.

Karen

[mle_ii]

Mike

I have several links to more scientific articles but they are several years old and no longer work.

In the mean time this is the first one that I found and it tweaked my interest enough to look for others.

http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info ... arides.htm

I will have to look for the others when I have more time.


Matthew

I'll take a look at the studies they linked to. FWIW some of the logic is pretty poor in this article. Specficially with regards to the comparison to sugar Consuming the few grams of FOS is nothing like the amount of sugar most folks consume so the analogy there is broken. As they pointed out FOS/Inulin is a great many foods, so pointing out that it feeds bad bacteria so we shouldn't consume it is also busted.

As I said I'll look at the studies to see what they found. Problem with some of these studies for sure is that they are most likely invitro and not invivo, so just because some bad bacteria consumes FOS/Inulin doesn't mean that it's happening the same way in the body. The bad bacteria have competition for food, and that competition fights back. Make sure that the good outnumber the bad and the fight is going to be on your side.

Oh and I agree about the rainforest analogy for sure. And unfortuneatly we know as much about the wildlife in a real rainforest as we do in the GI rainforest. Which isn't much.

My hunch is that we are on the right path. Call it a gut feeling. ;)

FWIW I've been getting a lot better. I'm actually having enough energy to work out again, my BMs are all normal though a bit more on the constipated side than I would like. I'm gassy, but most of the time not painful gassy. The only reason I was off this weekend was because of a "gallbladder flush" I tried the weekend before.

Mike

[tex]

Mike,

Regardless of whether you perceive the sugar analogy to be inappropriate, or not, you have to admit that Elaine Gottschall's credentials were/are very impressive. She held degrees in biology, nutritional biochemistry, and cellular biology, and pioneered many/most of the concepts that we have found to be so helpful in treating our own digestive system issues. The sugar analogy notwithstanding, most of her logic in that article is right on target.

http://www.scdiet.org/1about/gottschallbio.html

IMO, FOS is just one more of the many "smoke and mirrors" tricks that the self appointed food "experts", (IOW, the manufacturers of nutricueticals and associated products), continue to try to play on us. It's not really a question of whether or not FOS, (or anything else, for that matter), is good or bad for us. The real issue is that all of this foolishness is beside the point.

The point is, we don't really need any of that stuff - it's just manufactured, and promoted, to inprove the bottom line of the companies who deal in this sort of thing. The self-serving "food experts" have convinced us that we need to be concerned about all the minor details of the nutrients in the food we eat - IOW, that we need to be eating nutrients, rather than "food". That's just plain false! All we have to do, to be healthy, is to stop eating nutrients, and start eating food again - real food - the kind that our digestive systems were developed to digest.

When we eat real food, the nutrients will take care of them selves - we don't have to be concerned about them. Everything we need to be healthy, is right there waiting for us - in real food. And that includes FOS - it's in there too.

At least that's the way I see it. FWIW.

Tex

[mle_ii]

My point is that just saying FOS/Inulin is bad is the wrong thing to say. I can understand the point about this as a food additive or a supplement being wrong, but even in that case there are still cases where things like this are theraputic. If one cannot eat those foods that contain FOS/Inulin then one should supplement. Just like if one cannot absorb B12 someone should take a B12 shot or vitamin. Not saying it should be the norm, but for getting someone healthy again and "breaking the cycle" sometimes things have to be done to the extreem. The cortisol that a lot of folks are taking aren't natural by any means, it comes from animal and plant sources. So perhaps folks shouldn't take the cortisol medications. Just playing devils advocate here, I don't think we should. Just like I don't think we should be dependant on a supplement. We SHOULD be able to get all that we need from our foods, but obviously we can't or don't.

This whole idea of what is natural or not is just plain silly. Heck you've even pointed out how our foods that we eat today are nothing like the foods we were intended to eat. The meats, vegetables, fruits, etc are full of chemicals, genetically engineered (in the selection method, not even talking about gene engineering), transported, stored, etc. The water we drink is nothing like it used to be. Even the air we breath.

So who's to say that a supplement might even be required given all the crap our bodies have to digest.

If we weren't living in the environment of today then I'd say hell yeah, no supplements required. But until we're all able to eat organic foods (what ever that really means), drink pure water, breath pure air, what should we do? Will that time ever come or do we need some help to keep our bodies going?

So in the end I agree with you for the most part, really wish we could be there and do that. I'm just not sure that we can yet without some help.

[tex]

Mike,

I hear you, and I agree that there are exceptions to every rule, and, in fact, we, as a group, and as individuals, are exceptions to a heck of a lot of rules. I also agree that with a disease such as MC, any method of achieving remission as quickly as possible, (as long as it does not entail unreasonable risk), is worthy of serious consideration. Once remission is achieved, then treatment programs can be modified, as desired, of course.

Outside of malabsorption issues, though, I really believe that the basic foods still supply all that we need for good health. For example, protein-rich foods, such as eggs, meat, fish, etc, still supply all nine of the essential amino acids, that we cannot produce within our own bodies. True, feedlot beef, and caged broilers, may not have nutritional profiles that exactly match the profiles of paleo period wildlife, but there has always been a lot of variation between the nutritional compositions of various prey species, and also between various species of nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. We can allow for those differences the same way that our paleo ancestors did, by eating a varied diet.

While there have certainly been many changes to the food eaten by humans, during the past hundred thousand years or so, the basic, unprocessed foods are still capable of supplying everything that we need for good health. All we have to do is eat a reasonable mix.

That said, I will admit to being a hypocrite, since I am currently taking a multivitamin, (got in the habit back when I had a severe malabsorption problem, and never quit), Lutein, (for minimization of macular degeneration, since I have druesen), glucosamine sulphate, (to help rebuild joint cartilage, since I earn my living, in part, by carrying and stacking bags of corn, for hours at a time, which tends to wear out knees and hip joints at an accelerated rate), and an occasional B-12, (for good measure).

Since I no longer have a malabsorption problem, and I eat plenty of animal protein, (though I don't include much variety in my diet), I truly believe that the multivitamins, and the B-12, are totally unnecessary, and I'll probably stop taking them, when the current supply runs out. I think that we tend to take a lot of this stuff, simply because we believe some of the hype we hear, and we don't want to take a chance on doing without it, "just in case" we're missing something in our diet. (I'm speaking for myself here, not necessarily anyone else).

Tex