Search Weight Loss Topics:

Home » Diet » Is Something in Your Diet Screwing With Your Stomach? Here’s How an Elimination Diet Could Help – Discover Magazine

If youre one of the unlucky 11 percent of people currently living with the symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, youve probably wondered if your diet plays a role in when you feel good and when you dont. (And even if you dont think you have IBS, theres a chance you do it's estimated that only 30 percent of people with the condition actually see their doctors.)

Luckily, theres a simple way to go about testing yourself for different food sensitivities, and it doesnt necessarily require setting foot in a doctors office. (Though, as with any medical advice you read on the internet: Please talk to your doctor before doing anything dramatic.)

Its called an elimination diet, and the premise is simple: Eliminate all but the most benign foods from your diet. That means cutting out all the things that make different people sick, from the most famous culprits dairy and gluten to more surprising contenders like onions and mushrooms.

If, after a while, youre feeling better, then it was probably something in your diet that was giving you trouble. Then, to figure out which, you add foods back in, one group at a time, to see what happens. (And if you didnt feel better, well, then at least you know you tried.)

Heres a quick run-down of why this works its not just trial and error. (Though, admittedly, its a little bit of that, too.)

Youre probably already aware that some people are lactose intolerant, that beans give you gas and that too much fruit can cause diarrhea. But it wasnt until more recently that scientists began to figure out what these foods have in common when it comes to how they upset peoples stomachs.

It turns out these foods and lots of others that give people tummy trouble all have a really pesky carbohydrate in them. These carbs are small molecules, and theyre rapidly fermentable meaning the bacteria in your gut turn them into CO2. What's important to know is they're carbs that are hard to digest.

There are four main types of carbohydrates that fit this bill: fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols. They're often called FODMAPs for short.

Now, its not that FODMAPs directly cause symptoms in some people and not others, like a true allergy or intolerance. FODMAPS are hard to digest for everyone. But how a body reacts to them does vary from person to person. For instance, different people will have different gut microbes that might ferment different foods in different amounts. And when people experience luminal distension medical-speak for your intestines are getting pushed on from the inside out from gas or other blockages, some will simply feel the pain from it more than others thanks to differences in their nervous systems.

Some of the worst FODMAP perpetrators in a North American diet are oligosaccharides (the O) called fructans. Theyre commonly found in foods like onions, garlic, artichokes and wheat. Other high-FODMAP foods include fruits like apples and pears (polyols), veggies like broccoli and peas (oligosaccharides) and dairy products like milk and yogurt (disaccharides).

You don't necessarily need to learn that mangoes are high in fructose (a monosaccharide), beans are high in galactans (an oligosaccharide), and ice cream is high in lactose (a disaccharide). There's an easier step-by-step way to figure out which foods in which groups are going to affect your digestive system the aforementioned elimination diet.

The first step is the elimination phase sometimes called the substitution phase. Cut all the foods that are high in FODMAPs out of your diet, and swap them out for low-FODMAP alternatives. There are a ton of these lists online that can point you in the right direction. Instead of a banana, have some cantaloupe. Have sorbet instead of ice cream. Green beans, not kidney beans. Its a lot to keep straight and requires some serious meal planning and attention to ingredients, but its certainly doable.

Keep this up for 2-6 weeks until your symptoms noticeably improve. But dont keep it up forever, even if you feel better. Its probably not all the FODMAPs that are giving you grief, and a balanced diet is really important for good nutrition. You need to know if you can eat apples and broccoli, you know?

So next youll want to introduce one FODMAP group back into your diet at a time. For instance, since milk, yogurt, ice cream and ricotta all have lactose as their disaccharide, you can bring those back in all at once. And dont be timid: You want to be really confident in your this is fine or this food makes me sick decision!

If your symptoms return, that FODMAP is O-U-T. Wait a few days for your system to recalibrate before trying a new group. And if the FODMAP didn't give you any trouble? Congratulations! But still wait a few days before trying the next one, just in case.

If youre an expert Googler, you should have no trouble finding out which foods fit into which FODMAP category. But you can also ask your doctor for a recommendation for a dietician who can help guide you through this process.

In the end, hopefully youll have found just one or two FODMAP groups that you can avoid without too much trouble.

If you want to get really precise, you might revisit the foods in your trigger group in different quantities, to see how much you can tolerate before your symptoms show up. For instance, you might identify onion as a trigger but maybe you can tolerate it enough that you can still dip your fries in ketchup (which always has onion powder in it), you just can't get a slice of raw onion on your cheeseburger. Or maybe you can stomach enough garlic to eat pepperoni on a pizza but if you eat the leftovers three days in a row, you'll start to feel sick.

The goal is to test everything in increments, so you can confidently learn where your limits are. With that knowledge in hand, you might find yourself with bowels that aren't so ... irritable.

Read the original post:
Is Something in Your Diet Screwing With Your Stomach? Here's How an Elimination Diet Could Help - Discover Magazine

Your Full Name
Your Email
Your Phone Number
Select your age (30+ only)	30313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120
Select Your US State	Select Your StateAlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWashington,DCWest VirginiaWisconsinWyoming
Program Choice	Select Your ProgramInjectable HGHInjectable TestoteroneInjectable SermorelinInjectable Weight LossInjectable HCG DietInjectable Vitamins
Confirm over 30 years old	Yes
Confirm that you resident in USA	Yes
This is a Serious Inquiry	Yes
Message:

Home » Diet » Is Something in Your Diet Screwing With Your Stomach? Here’s How an Elimination Diet Could Help – Discover Magazine