# LEAP or not to LEAP ?



## Joanne (Feb 3, 2000)

I am really getting desparate. I have had IBS-C for about 30 years. Over the past 10 years I have developed more and more obvious food intolerances. It's gotten so bad that there are only very few foods that I am able to eat. Because of that I am eating the same things everyday. I know that is not good but I don't know what else to do. How do you rotate almost nothing?I feel like the only one in the world that has such a limited diet. Am I alone or is there someone else with the same problem?Joanne


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## WD40 (Jun 7, 1999)

What are the signs of the intolerance? Rather, what symptoms do you have when you eat foods you seem to be unable to tolerate?


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## Mike NoLomotil (Jun 6, 2000)

Ditto the question. Chronic constipation is not a symptom commonly associated with food or chemical hypersensitivity reactions....the opposite is usually the case since the reaction elicits mediators whose effect usually includes not only pain elevation and smooth muscle tone changes...but leads to an exagerrated evacuatory response.There are other systemic symptoms, though, which is why we ask...all that is food or chemical intolerance does NOT automaticall produce diarrhea. Many people get systemic symptoms only (headaches, fatigue, even aggravation of joint inflammtion and alergic conditions like asthma).So it is possible to have some form of food or ehcmical hypersensitivity which is CO-MORBID with chronic constipation of some other cause. This has been seen.But usually the two would be comorbidities not a cause-effect relationship.So what makes you beleive you have food intolerances?I will be back tomorrow to read.MNL


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## Joanne (Feb 3, 2000)

I find it very hard to describe my symptoms. I will try. When I eat bananas or kiwi I get nauseated. That is very easy to describe. When I eat anything with honey in it I feel very unsettled in my small intestines. So much so that I will never eat that certain food again. Tried smart beat margaine once and had that same problem. The list of foods that disagree that way are many. Seems like my body doesn't know what to do or how to handle the foods. It's the same thing with medication. I am unable to take any medication at all. That includes OTC, herbs, etc.That's about the best I can do to describe my problem. Doctors don't know what to do with me. It's very frustrating.


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## Joanne (Feb 3, 2000)

I need to clarify something. I used to have cronic constipation. About three years ago I had a herina surgery and that really helped the constipation. Now if I eat enough fiber I manage fairly well with that anyway.I used to have alot of bloating years ago until a doctor put me on a fiber diet with metamucil. That did away with the bloating and helped the constipation until I got a hernia.Also there are a few medications that I can take. Very few.


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## Mike NoLomotil (Jun 6, 2000)

Joanne:Thanks for taking the time to try and be specific as this helps understand a little better. Basically what you are describing is that you experience abdominal discomfort and sometimes even feel nauseous fairly soon after you eat certain foods. Some you can identify with confidence and I suspect that it is starting to seem like you are having this discomfort so frequently that it seems to be worsening...like almost anything will create discomfort, or maybe even it sometimes feels like it is almost all the time and all you want to do is go NO THANKS to just about any food if you could.Would that be sort of how you feel?If so then that does sound like what doctors like Professor Brostoff might describe as "loss of oral tolerance". "FOOD ALLERGIES AND FOOD INTOLERANCE: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO THEIR IDENTIFICTION AND TREATMENT", Professor Jonathan Brostoff , M.D.. Allergy, Immunology and Environmental Medicine, Kings' College, London http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/089...6487508-3420903 and http://www.greenleaves.com/bookcat/by_brostoff_jonathan.html Now, what a healthcare provider who works with people with this kind of developing problem would do is take a thorough medical history and then have you keep a dietary intake and symptom log, hourly coded and every food or liquid or medicine or treat or chemical you ingest would be recorded, along with the exact time and severity of any symptoms when they begin, for a period of at least 10 days to 2 weeks. Sometimes 30 days is better. It can be very difficult to discern patterns of repeatability with non-allergic food or chemical sensitivity.There are medical situations you can suffer which can leave you with an impaired ability to digest food properly for awhile, or even a residual "irritated bowel"...low level inflammation in the upper bowel where you digest food....which is very hard to detect as it is localized in a not easily accessible place.This may show up in the history and then the doctor can zero in on it as a causal basis for the symptoms.You could also have events which suggest that the normal balance of helpful bacteria in the GI tract may have been disrupted and this can account for a clinical "loss of tolerance" as well. Some are essential to proper digestion, which in turn means they are essential to proper function of the guts immune system...and the two are codependent.As we age, some people also start to lose their tolerance to the chemicals and additives in processed foods as our bodies detoxifying mechanisms become less efficient and the long term load of chemicals ingested has its effect&#8230;the average American ingests 20 POUNDS of chemicals per year, and a fast-food fan can easily DOUBEL THAT. This is a lot of chemicals to process. This can, for one example, result in a state of low level chronic irritation in the upper bowel where food is digested which in turn makes it hard to process other foods without discomfort.One could even have been exposed to a pathogen which has taken up residence, and while keeping low profile is disrupting things himself.There are many mechanisms whereby subtle dysfunction in the normal bowel function will manifest itself locally and constitutionally. There is sometimes a tendency to take a bit of a ham-fisted diagnostic approach... "X ray clear...blood work clear...barium enema clear....upper GI clear ...etc." looking for obvious pathology and when the obvious is absent stop there for lack of familiarity with what else to do.Sometimes things require remembering something the famous William Osler, MD once said: 'if you talk to the patient long enough, [she] will tell you exactly what is wrong with [her]."Sometimes the best work is done in the history and observation phase, and leads a doctior like and integrative medicine doctor to more subtle and less obvious clues which lead to more esoteric approaches and separate the red herring from the smoking gut gun.Also sometimes a history leads to such unexpected things as a dose of certain antibiotics and BOOM belly feels better...whereas someone else might resort to pills and boilerplate dietary instruction which will just make matters worse.Anyway, the subject of, and how, start to lose oral tolerance to things in the diet is far broader than is typically considered by the average person, so I do suggest you get a copy of at least that first book by Brostoff. he covers the subject in the Kings' English for the layperson..though I have had many doctors also say "This book is golden...it is so helpful to me with my patients with these weird constitutional symptoms which elude scrutiny!" or something like that.This may give you some ideas on how to proceed to maybe first sort out what it is in the diet which is the real culprit, since the reactions can be delayed onset, dose-dependent, and prolonged so we often mismatch what is actually doing it and wrongly assume it is what we just ate unless we do a careful diary and oral challenge routine.Probably raises more questions than answers but I learned long ago that this is the road we have to take to a solution when the obvious has failed to materialize.







MNL


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## KLG (Jul 8, 2002)

Hi Joanne,I know you say you have barely anything you can eat so you probably haven't been eating dairy then. I used to get D from milk years ago and thought I was lactose intolerent. Pills, Lactaid milk, nothing helped, so I cut down my milk intake to just putting it in my coffee or occasionally in cereal. I thought it was just really stubborn lactose intolerence (ha.. if there is such a thing). Lats summer I experienced my first IBS-C episode. Never attributed it to milk especially being C. Low and behold I have given up milk and dairy and have been completely symptom-free, Milk used to cause my spasms, as they would usually go nuts afetr the coffee. I now drink coffee with rice milk or soymilk and have had no spasms. I recently read in a book about the food industry that said that 40 percent of all children who suffer constipation when taken off milk no longer had a problem. I am not sure why, intolerence perhaps?Good luck. I also know of a good site called www.mealsforyou.com. You can search for recipes and exclude some of the common triggers such as wheat, soy, dairy, etc. Gives you a checklist and you check all that you need to aoid and it will give results of recipes free of those ingredients.Kari


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## Julia37 (May 9, 2001)

> quote:When I eat bananas or kiwi I get nauseated. That is very easy to describe. When I eat anything with honey in it I feel very unsettled in my small intestines.


Joanne,This sounds like it could be fructose intolerance or sensitivity. Honey is mostly fructose. I have this and I do much better with no sugars, fruits, or sweet veggies like carrots. It's a project, but worth it. YOu could try avoiding these things for at least 2 weeks and see if you feel better.Good luck


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