# What do you have to avoid after the LEAP test?



## careena (Nov 3, 2001)

Sorry if this has been covered. If so please point me to the post







I know each of you that have done LEAP probably have a different list of foods to avoid but would any of you doing the program mind telling us specifically what you can't eat? Thanks.


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## Mike NoLomotil (Jun 6, 2000)

Hi CareenaI am so sorry I just saw your post...been on the main board this morning at am out of time.Please take a rwead on my post to this thread this morning which may answer your question in part http://www.ibsgroup.org/cgi-local/ubbcgi/u...t=030148#000014 Once you read it if you have more questions please com back and post them here and I will check tomorrow when I have more time.MNL


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## ohnometo (Sep 20, 2001)

What I cannot eat is Apple, sodium benzonate, mustard, coconut, green beans, cranberry, cottage cheese, and a few others items...Not a big price to pay for the relief I have today...


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## WD40 (Jun 7, 1999)

My no-no foods are plum, saccharine, zucchini, lecithin (the reds) and corn, msg, grapes, grapefruit, strawberries, chicken, basil, honey, cashews, and tea (the yellows).By far the hardest to avoid are corn and msg (they are in everything!) Chicken and strawberries seem to be dosage dependent so I'll allow myself very small portions once a month if I really must taste something!







Lecithin is the biggest gut killer for me.


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## yodiss (Mar 24, 2002)

My reds are: lecithin and millet-- yellows are: apple, bay leaf, cherry, cola, lima bean (no big loss), papaya, pear, phenylthylamine, tuna, wheat (







) and white potato!!!


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## bobby5832708 (May 30, 2000)

My foods to avoid arein the red) Cocoa, Mushroom, Onion, Sesame(in the yellow) Benzoic Acid, Cane Sugar, Cauliflower, Cherry, Coconut, Corn, Cows Milk, Dill, Garlic, Goats Milk, Nutmeg, Papaya, Rye, Sodium Sulfite, SpinachThis eliminates damn near everything I used to eat. I had to make major changes to my diet and I am glad I did as the symptom reduction is about 90%. There is no way I would have figured out what foods to avoid by myself.The ingredients that are the hardest for me to avoid are Onion and Garlic (used as flavorings in many prepared food products and almost always used in restaurant food), Corn (includes Corn Oil and Corn Syrup), Cane Sugar (if it isn't the Corn Syrup it's the Cane Sugar that's used to sweeten damn near everything), Cocoa (I love chocolate -- I don't eat it any more! It takes lots of will-power not to eat a Milky Way bar), and Benzoic Acid (also Sodium Benzoate and Potassium Benzoate -- preservatives).


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## Mike NoLomotil (Jun 6, 2000)

Bubby...You hyave my sympathy on the corn and onion....these can be very insidious, just like sy as well...if its not corn extract in there it soy in there..or both....Yikes! I also know what you mean about them Milky Ways!Every time I stopped at a rest area on my trip up north a few weeks ago I would go to the snack machine to see what was there...and in EVERY ONE there is Miss Milky Way and all her twin sisters...calling to me...beseeching me, nay, seducing me with with the promise of the delights which await beneath her diaphanous wrapper!!!







See? You think YOU got it bad!







MNL


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## careena (Nov 3, 2001)

Thanks everyone. I was just wondering if there was any commonality (is that a word?) in the food you had to avoid. It doesn't look like it to me. I'm sure that has been studied by people who study such things.







What a bummer to have to live like that though.







I bet it's hard not to eat the foods on the avoid list.


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## ohnometo (Sep 20, 2001)

It's not to hard to follow the directions with the food you have to avoid...It is worth it to me because my IBS had control of my life...but it is much better today


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## Mike NoLomotil (Jun 6, 2000)

Carreena:You bring up a good point for anyone considering following a Disease managment Program for their IBS symptoms: _____________________________________"I bet it's hard not to eat the foods on the avoid list. " _____________________________________First, though, for me here is the rest of the worst, effective 8.20.02:Strong reactions:chickencocoagreen peamangomushroomsesameModerate Reactions:American CheeseColaCornEgglemonLentilPeachSaccharineSoybeanWhite PotatoYeast MixIt can be difficult avoiding these things even when you WANT to...especially with the prevalence of "corn" and its processed products which are widely used in everything, as well as "soybean" which is the same...everywhere.And cocoa of course, being an essential element in chocolate, the ultimate natural high http://www.chocolate.org/ One thing we often forget is that food was, and remains, the most reliable source of immediate gratification from cradle to grave. No matter what we can reach for our personal comfort foods and enjoy...and the problems all seem a little less woeful.In people who lose oral tolerance, like this IBS subpopulation, irregardless of the pathogenesis of the loss of oral tolerance, the net effect is the same...some foods and chemicals come to cause symptoms as the body begins to react inappropropriately to them.And the worse and more frequent a patient's symptoms are, the higher the probability that there are one or more foods on the reactive lists that the person is consuming daily.Then the higher the probability that one or more of these foods could be foods which are biochemically psychoactive. Not always, but often, there are foods to which the person has become somewhat habitually-consumptive for comfort or pleasure (endorphinergic, exorhpinergic, serotonergic, etc)...sometimes even exhibiting addictive eating behaviors.In other cases, like myself, just unwise eating patterns tend to lead to more loss of oral tolerance. There is a relationship between frequency and dose of a food consumed by people who has become prone to losing oral tolerance and the probablity of losing oral tolerance to foods which they previosuly tolerated increases with exposure.In my case I originally used to overconsume Italian-type foods and grew very intolerant to specific ingredients I was consuming daily...and had daily severe symptoms which never went away no matter what diet I followed as there were too many to isolate. Until I went on a "stoneage diet" which then showed me graphically the relationships between my diet and my syptoms when they subsided. This then led me to the people who work with food and chemical intolerance and ultimatley to remission.But one of the cardinal rules once one is "clean" is rotation of the foods. Not to overconsume them but to rotate them. I did not used to be reactive to chicken until I started to get lazy after a few years and it was too easy to just grill up chicken almost every night. And throwing the sesame seeds on the pork for seasoning which I ate when I was not eating chicken. And I was not reactive to corn so I was not diligent about exposure at all...corning-away with abandon...and when symptoms started to slowly reappear, well, voila....you see my new list and my renewed committment to dietary rotation. Hoist on mine own petard, as they say.







On the other hand, several years of avoidnce of crtain foods showed that a degeree of tolerance had been reattained, so I reintroduced them into my diet in place of the ones I had carelessly overconsumed and, voila, back to normal. Now I rotate much more carefully. Many patients end up with the same experience.Benjamin Franklin did warn us that "Experience is a dear school, but fools will learn no other way."Advice I now dispense freely from my own experience.The point is that any lifestyle modification program which involves modifiying that which the palate craves involves a challenge to the strongest human attachment. This behavioral change must be constantly reinforced until it becomes newly habitual. Breaking old habits indeed is not easy, but when placed in the context of the severity of my symptoms, and most patients who do begin to use the protocol end up with the same view, once you truly realize that there is NO in between...there is no way to get relief by "cutting down" anymore than one can get relief from lung cancer danger by "cutting down" on smoking, or an alcoholic can be saved from the consequences of alcoholism by "cutting down" their drinking, once this is truly realzied and valued, the new lifestyle beocmes the new habit, and is from that day forward easier to live with than the alternative: the IBS is indeed waiting to rear its hoary head should we fail to follow instructions.For some the process of transition is easier, as either they are not that attached to their reactive foods, or they do not have tha many, or they are so desperately ill that they will sacrifice anything to feel well. These people have the best outcomes and the lowest recidivism.The greater problem is with the person with modest symptoms and several foods to which they have become attached or even addicted. Rationalizing then becomes easy, and cheating begins early, and recidivism can be rampant if the dietician or doctor does not know what signs to watch for and then watches for them often.This is what makes my experience with people in these programs so similar to my many years of experience with people in smoking-cessation programs...not all that different behaviorally except that in some cases the dietary changes can be even harder than the smoking cessation. On the other hand, what we have going for us is that the benefits of the change in behavior are more obvious more quickly than are the benefits of smoking cessation. The emphysema or cancer you do not get is not as dramatic as the severe pain and diarrheic attacks you now do not get!keep on keepin on mi amigas y amigos!







MNL


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