Hi Folk,
I have a lot of food intolerances... But I don't even know all of them... I mean I know I have fructose malabsorption, that's for sure, even on paper.
I'm not surprised you have many food intolerances. Hence the question I asked. I start to see a strong link between the many food intolerances I have and a strong bacterial component to it.
My main food intolerance is fructose too, and it seems an awful lot like that is based on fructose malabsorption. I didn't have it tested as I'm fed up with begging doctors to take me serious and do some testing and end up in the best case with "wright, it seems to be so but we can't help you any further...".
Fiber in my case seems to make everything worse.
I learned there is a lot of difference in the sort of fiber in my supposed "fructose malabsorption heavy case".
The idea is the following: due to my supposed fructose intolerance and me not knowing about it for decades plenty of fructose ended up in my large bowel. Fructose is kind of rocket fuel to bacteria, just like glucose is. You can grow bacteria way faster on those than on starch, fiber...
But it ain't supposed to arrive in large quantities at the large bowel. It should be taken up almost completely in the small bowel, where there normally are very few bacteria. So there they can't grow on it. And if it's "gone" (into the blood stream) before it arrives in the big bowel, it won't be rocket fuel for bacteria.
Now if you have got fructose malabsorption then with a modern diet you will get daily large loads of fructose reaching the big bowel. Then those bacteria that grow fastest on fructose will know an explosive growth compared to those more specialized in digesting fiber. The gut microbiome will become very disrupted / unbalanced and pathogenic species may well seize control of the large bowel.
Modern diet is extremely heavy on fructose compared to what it was only two centuries or even generations ago. Especially in the US fructose is the sugar of choice to add to virtually everything including prepared meat. It's sweater and cheaper then sucrose. Luckily in Europa it's a tad less bad as sugar beets do better over here compared to corn as a base of sugar. And sugar beets give sucrose which is only 50% fructose. Fructose intolerance gets a lot worse if the ratio fructose to glucose grows over 1 as glucose helps fructose absorption up till a 1:1 ratio. Still, we are here in the historical conditions that supposedly healthy fruit is year round available, where it used to be very season depending. If fruit would have created an unbalance in gut microbiome in old times the fructose loving bacteria would have been wiped out during late winter and spring due to lack of fresh fruit. Now they can selectively grow worse and worse year round and even be passed from mother to child. That allows for specialized nasties.
Once those "quick fuel" loving bacteria get settled in in the gut, they can eat other carbs too although less efficient then the specialized gut bacteria. But those ain't around much anymore. So even if you eat "slow" fiber, the quick fuel loving bacteria are in such large amounts that they still have a competitive advantage for a very long time. A specialized diet can very slowly improve odds for the good slow bacteria, but one mistake and the nasties seize control again.
Now most patients get a "flush all that food" reaction aka diarrhea. I get an alternation between diarrhea and constipation and that is where I learned constipation can be surprisingly bacterial based too. As I said in previous comment: making the gut environment dry makes bacterial grow slow a lot and decreases the speed at which bacteria can enter the blood stream through a leaky gut. Just like diarrhea, it ain't an ideal solution to a bacterial problem.
Adding probiotics increases bacterial growth too. As the immune system in the gut has to be fairly indiscriminate as long as there is a serious problem going on, it still will fire a lot if bacterial count goes up. One can say "but those are good bacteria", but I feel the immune system in the gut hasn't got the luxury to recognize if individual bacteria are good or bad. It seems to react to "we have a serious problem in the gut or we have plenty of bacteria entering the bloodstream through a leaky gut". Then it must react to it no matter what type of bacteria it are.
So here is where undigestible fiber makes the difference: if it is truly undigestible it won't feed any gut bacteria at all. I dare to say you are very likely tolerating lettuce well. That has very few digestible fiber. Same holds for green or white celery but mind you: it is a known strong allergen so that can be problematic.
Psyllium has IMO mainly undigestible fiber so I looked it up for you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyllium:
"Psyllium is mainly used as a dietary fiber to relieve symptoms of both constipation and mild diarrhea
I didn't read it yet but it seems in line with my experience.
"The soluble fiber in psyllium is
polysaccharide arabinoxylan, a
hemicellulose."
Ahh, cellulose is very hard to digest. That may better explain why it's good for both constipation and moderate diarrhea then the given "The milled seed mucilage is a white fibrous material that is
hydrophilic, meaning that its molecular structure causes it to attract and bind to water. Upon absorbing water, the clear, colorless, mucilaginous gel that forms increases in volume by tenfold or more. " I don't see why that would help diarrhea...
I believe you need a product which is very fine dust like, as that provides a better surface area to weight ratio (for if my supposed working mechanism of providing bacteria surface area to bind would be correct). You can break open a cap to see what's in it. And as said: read if the formula adds any digestible fiber. Avoid those.
As to coffee, coffee contains acetaldehyde. You may be in the same boat as the author of following post
https://www.healthrising.org/forums...s-discovered-something.6126/page-2#post-35003. He seems to have near the same food intolerances as I do.
I think the acetaldehyde is from the burning of the coffee. See if lightly roasted coffee is better tolerated. Green tea should be tolerated a lot more despite containing some caffeine too. I'd be interested to hear your experiences here.
As you seem to have likewise problems as I have, I'll give a short overview of what I am intolerant to:
- Fructose, the worst one! Stay away from dried fruits as they are fructose bombs. Fruit aint healthy for fructose intolerant people. Read labels as it's added to virtually any food product.
- Too large quantities of carbs so that undigested carbs enter the large bowel (mashed potatoes are a lot worse then cooked potatoes for me as you tend too eat a lot more carbs in the form of mashed potatoes as the same weight contains a lot less water then cooked potatoes)
- All sorts of digestible fiber and that includes: wheat and rye (I think inulin is the bad part) (oat, quinoa, rice are well tolerated by me) (old spelt wheat sourdough bread is tolerated fairly well too; spelt wheat is less aggressive and the sourdough method seems to remove some digestible fiber), legumes, celery root, black salsify, beetroot, cooked carrots to some extend and many sorts of cabbage.
- My intolerance improved so that I can eat again small amounts of cabbage. Raw seems to go better. I start to tolerate beet root better too.
- edit: beer with and without alcohol is liquid wheat: avoid! probably avoid any liquid high in calories including some high caloric vegetable juices (haven't tested those yet).
- edit: they are FODMAPs too, but onions and garlic are really bad for me too.
Basically, it's fructose plus the entire FODMAP series and added celery root, black salsify and plenty sorts of cabbage. Note that green or white celery is not on that list as it has very few calories to offer to bacteria.
Note that much of the above is more personal experience and thoughts then science, but it works for me.
You might try my papaya method too. Despite containing fructose, in my case eating small amounts with each meal has low enough of fructose and it improves my digestion a lot. See for the topic I created in the gut section of the forum.
Meat heavy diets tend to give constipation too due to the lack of fiber. That may be another source of constipation. If psyllium works with a regular diet then it should improve stool with a meat heavy diet too. A meat heavy diet will have other challenges as well...
Please feel free to share any experiences as I feel we might learn from each others experiences.