Healthy diet leading to terrible bloating

[cristiana]

Hello fellow coeliacs and a Happy New Year

I'd appreciate some advice.

In December I gave up junk food and ate a new healthy diet, which had a lot of gluten-free oats, nuts, oranges in it, and a quite a lot of black coffee, rather than my usual lattes etc.  After a week or so I felt awful bubbling and bloating in the area which I would say is the ascending and transverse colon.  Earlier in the day it might start with stabbing pain, maybe just two or three 'stabs', or a bit of an ache in my pelvis area, and then by the evening replaced with this awful bloated feeling.   I can still fit into all my clothes, there isn't any visible bloating but a feeling of bloating builds from early afternoon onwards.  The pain and bloating has always gone by the morning.  BMs normal.  

I went back to my normal diet over Christmas, for a couple of days things improved, but the bubbling and bloating then came back with a vengeance.  I'm having an ultrasound in a couple of weeks to check my pelvic area and if that is clear I suspect may have to have a colonoscopy, but is there anything anyone can recommend to calm this bloating down.  I have been given an additional diagnosis of IBS in the past but it has never been this severe.   I have to confess that I might have had some gluten over Christmas, I ate a lot of Belgium chocolates which were meant to be gluten free but the small print reveals that they were made in a shared facility, so I have probably brought this all on myself!

Edited 18 hours ago by cristiana

[trents]

Making significant changes in our diets, even when it is in, what would we are told by the experts, a healthy direction, can be upsetting to our system until it adjusts. To make an analogy, it's like beginning an exercise regiment when we don't ease into it gradually. That's one thing that occurs to me as a response. And I think as we get up in years this becomes more and more true. We become less adaptable to change.

The other thing that occurs to me is that you may have added in things, that though they are nutritionally dense, may be things that you as an individual may have some degree of intolerance to. You mention nuts and citrus. Those are packed with nutrition but also high in histamines. And citrus is not only high in histamines but is also a histamine liberator. I know from personal experience there are some things I can eat occasionally, in limited amounts and I'm okay. But if I eat them too often or consume large servings they will give me an upset tummy or a migraine attack or both.

And you might also look at the possibility that you have developed diverticular disease. Nuts and seeds are a no no for that I understand.

Edited 13 hours ago by trents

[cristiana]

@trents - THANK YOU, that is a really helpful and interesting post.

I have had fairly extreme symptoms. Being a veteran hypochondriac I've been imagining all sorts and what you say makes me think I've probably been up to my usual catastrophizing!    That said, I foresee another colonoscopy appointment if things don't settle down soon., and if I have got diverticulosis I guess that is how they will find out.

I've just checked some statistics and I had no idea until I googled the condition that such a large percentage of the UK population has diverticulosis, i.e. 50 per cent by the age of 50, and that diverticulitis itself - i.e.  inflammation of the diverticular - affects 5-25 per cent of the population.

 Oddly enough I knew a young woman with it and she told me years ago that it felt like there was a baby's foot wedged into her stomach at times, just like when she was expecting a baby, and this is exactly how it feels to me at times (although I realise as a man you will not be familiar with this sensation!)   I also do have an umbilical hernia which I think plays me up.

On your other earlier points - I have read elsewhere that sudden intake of fibre can cause a lot of discomfort.  It reminds me of the time I swapped a chocolate bar with a muesli bar with apricots in an effort to be healthy, and there was a stone in it which broke my tooth!  No pain no gain I suppose! 

And re: new intolerances, that too is very likely.   I will start keeping a food diary and my husband has today bought me some peppermint tea, hopefully that might help disperse some of the bloating!

Thank you.

 

 

Edited 12 hours ago by cristiana