# Lactose Intolerance Help and Advice



## Guest (Feb 1, 2017)

I'm not sure why it took 40+ years to get diagnosed but I've had issues my whole life. I thought they all stemmed from Lactose intolerance (once that became a thing). As of Monday I now have a diagnosis of IBS. The last three years have been horrible as I had bariatric surgery and I went from IBS-C to IBS-A (mostly D). I never thought I'd miss being constipated so much!

Still lactose intolerant of course. I've never tried any of the enzymes or lactose free products so have no idea how well they work or if they make IBS worse. Any advice on these products and their effectiveness would be appreciated.

I am going on the FODMAP program soon with a dietician but my list of what I eat is so limited now it's more I'm hoping they'll help me add things in not eliminate more.

Thank you!


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## Nat_London (Apr 26, 2017)

I take lactaid pills (or the generic equivalent) pretty much everyday, every time I eat dairy, and I haven't noticed them making my IBS any worse. If I forget to take the pill though... bad things happen  But years ago before I cut out gluten and a hundred other things I could hardly tolerate dairy even with the pill. After a couple years of the elimination diet though my tolerance improved a lot, since my gut had time to heal without being constantly bombarded.

Also, I don't think the lactose is the only issue with dairy products being on the high Fodmap list, so you may want to try and cut all out of the major dairy products (milk, cheese, etc.) and just take the pill for times when dairy is an unavoidable ingredient. Give your system a bit of a break. Sadly that means cutting many things out...


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## richgel999 (Oct 25, 2015)

Lactose is a prebiotic. It feeds lactobacilli like gasoline, in a healthy/normal gut. Before I was treated for SIBO (which involved a lot of antibiotics), lactose was like a poison to me. After reestablishing a healthy gut flora lactose is more like a health food. I now make sure to consume some every day.

So if you're lactose intolerant, I would try slowly introducing yogurt with live cultures. I would also try probiotics containing multiple lactobacillus strains. See if you can tolerate inulin (like in a product named Prebiotin), which is a prebiotic that can feed lactobacilli. Onions also contain a ton of inulin.

Unfortunately, if your gut microbiota is really out of balance, things like lactose and inulin can feed the wrong bacteria which can be quite annoying or painful. I would recommend finding a practitioner that understands how to use tools like gut stool tests, ubiome, etc. to figure out how your biome is out of balance and how to normalize it.


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## ccoleman (Apr 10, 2017)

Not all lactose free milks are low FODMAP and therefore suitable for IBS. Let's see which ones are and which ones are not. In all cases, read the ingredients, just in case high FODMAPs ingredient such as inulin, fructose etc. have been added to these lactose free milks.

As always try small quantities first, to see if you can tolerate these milks or not.


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