Image by grobery via Flickr
Some of my food issues were confirmed. Fat, especially hot fat (a touch of melted butter on a piece of toast, the dollop of olive oil used for sautéing veggies) doesn’t agree with my system. It could be lard or canola oil. Lean red meat or dash of olive oil on mixed greens. Lamb (one of the 2 “safe” foods from my total elimination diet) or non nonfat sour cream. As far as my digestive system is concerned, fat is fat, and that’s that. Kinda cans the Mediterranean diet for me.
Acidic foods like tart apples, tomatoes, vinegars, and oranges, even eaten in small quantities (a bit of salsa as a condiment, a small relatively sweet clementine orange) make my already unbalanced tummy much more acidic. Even with prescription and non-prescription acid blockers, my insides can feel bathed in battery-acid.
I get the “hungry hollows” even when I’m not hungry. These extremely sharp pains are a probably a result of stomach acid “sloshing” around without food to cut it. Certainly, when a scope was done several years ago, there were scars on my esophagus and stomach lining from “acid burns.”
Three of the stranger symptoms of my over-acidic digestive system and the resulting acid reflux issues are wheeziness, tightness in my chest, and a lump at the back of my throat. I thought these were being caused by various things such as my allergies, or the return of childhood asthma-like symptoms. I was on meds for my acid reflux, so my doctor and I never made the connection. Until I switched acid reflux meds, and these symptoms “miraculously” disappeared! I now judge the acidity of my tummy by these markers as much as by acid reflux itself.
My system may have an issue with carbs or starch beyond the simple eat too much of these = gain weight. For example, the weight gain when switching out yeast-based bread for potatoes or the lack of improvement in my overall health when removing gluten, or yeast and sugar.
Anecdotally, gluten and starch have been cited as contributing to pain. I’ve read many accounts of a lessening of pain by reducing/eliminating consumption of gluten, carbs, and starch.
Not much if I follow some the of elimination diets.
The last few weeks I’ve been mostly “eating at will” and suffering the consequences. So, for example, I ate only bran muffins and Alexia crinkle cut oven baked fries (dipped in full fat sour cream) for several days.
And, I won’t even mention what I ate while I was binging — stopping sugar creates even more of a craving because, for me, sugar in all it’s forms, is an addictive substance!
You poor thing, what CAN you eat?