Restrictive diet

Hi everyone. I guess I'm just having a bit of a down day with my symptoms. I just wondered with everyone here, with your symptoms, how restrictive do you find you have to be with your diet?

I've discovered I am sensitive to wheat, as well as caffiene, anything acidic and fatty.

I dunno, a diet with no wheat, very little fat and acidic stuff just seems very restrictive, and sometimes I can feel a bit disheartened, and I hope I don't have to be like this forever. Although when I stick to this diet, I do feel well again so I suppose I should be happy that I have found something that works, and helps me, but part of me is also hoping I'm not going to have to be this restrictive forever :(

Unfortunately, I've gone down the prescription meds route, and a few different PPI's but they don't seem to work for me.

couchtater said...
Is this gerd related or allergy related?
My diet is restricted from peanuts, peanut butter, and very greasy foods. I've found after my surgery through trial and error that these will cause irritations to me. Nothing else affects me.

You will be restricted for about two to three months after surgery from those things.

Hi, to be honest I'm not sure, maybe a combination of both :S Wheat seems to be a food intolerance/allergy, and fatty and acidic stuff tends to aggrivate acid problems. I haven't had surgery though, usually if I follow a strict diet I can keep the acid problems away, but it's a VERY strict diet, sigh. Maybe I'm just moaning too much, and had a bad day. I caved and ate quite a lot of chocolate yesterday and am now paying the price lol. Sometimes I can go weeks or months of being good then have a bad moment. I did only give up wheat a few weeks ago though so maybe it's still taking time to get out of my system?

Judy -
You need to find out if you have celiac or just a wheat allergy. My allergist considers intolerances or sensitivities to be allergies. Celiac and allergies and intolerances can all develop and are not necessarily something you are born with.

The gold standard for celiac is still the biopsy. If you have celiac you have to avoid wheat and gluten religiously. With the intolerances you can have a little. That's where I am.

Are you sure it's really wheat allergy? Have you had skin test? Lots of things are added to wheat products. I'm very sensitive to the sulfite preservative used in the frozen dough used for pizza crust and all the baked goods made in grocery stores. (They don't really mix their own dough!)

You can do a "challenge test" if you are only suspecting wheat allergy. Find a pita bread that has no extra stuff added, no other grains, etc. Cut a small piece of one, about a tablespoon worth. Eat that and wait 20 minutes. If you have no reaction you can eat two pieces and wait another 20 minutes. Then you eat 4 pieces, then 8, then 16 and stop. If you don't have a reaction you can figure it's not the wheat but something that was added.

The blood test for celiac is not highly accurate, gives false negatives. Eat a bit of wheat instead of avoiding it in the days before the test. If you avoid wheat it will surely show up negative. You should also get a scratch test for wheat. Allergy is not the same as celiac.

The people I know with celiac get severe symptoms - belly pain, vomiting, diarrhea - from eating wheat.

Allergy could trigger gastric reflux (GERD), hives, itching, also belly pain, but should not be as severe.

There are preservatives in refrigerated and frozen doughs. These are as likely to cause intolerance reaction, often migraine headache, as a reaction to wheat.

Check out this post for a list of alkaline (anti-acid) and acid foods.

https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=45&m=1942384

You may be cutting stuff out of your diet that you don't need to. For example, I've found that for me onions and spices actually suppress acid reflux.

Here's something easy to try that might work for you. Go buy some chewable calcium pills or some of the calcium supplements that you swallow with water. Take/eat 2 every hour for 4 hours and see if this helps your acid reflux.

Before I switched my diet to where I was eating mostly alkaline foods, I would take up to 10 calcium pills at a time (5000 mg of calcium) to stop my acid reflux. It worked great! I think on some days I even took up to 20 calcium pills (10,000 mg). However, I found that if I took too many, I would get diarhea. That's why I'm suggesting that you start off with just 2 pills per hour.

Calcium is a great acid neutralizer and you may find that this will work for you. I actually take the calcium-magnesium-zinc supplements now as all three minerals are great acid neutralizers.

And instead of chocolate, you might want to try molasses. Molasses is an alkaline (anti-acid) sweetener that has tons of calcium and other minerals that neutralize acid. When I'm craving something sweet, I will pour some molasses into a bowl and just kind of dab away at with a spoon until it's gone. People think I'm wierd for eating molasses this way, but I don't get acid reflux!

I had to try molasses a few times before I developed a taste for it since it has such a strong taste. However, I've found that I can satisfy my sweet tooth with molasses and no longer crave chocolate. As you can see from the list of foods I previously posted, sugar and cocoa, the main ingredients in chocolate are highly acid-causing. Molasses is in the More Alkaline category which means its a fairly strong anti-acid.

Thanks for the tips guys :)