Rectal Administration Of Vitamines?

[Seraphim-Gabe]

Hi, I've been battling digestive problems for years. I've been scoped, and had plenty of tests done, and I've never been officially diagnosed. However, I'm unemployed, and poor right now, so I unfortunately forced myself into a high gluten diet over the past few days, and have had really bad symptoms that lead me to believe that I have a gluten intolerance, or celiac disease.

Over the past few years, I've been prone to skin diseases. I get canker sores several times a year, I am very prone to skin fungi, and have had strange colored stools that randomly "leak" a dark yellow/orange substance into the water. The symptoms come and go, and I have also suffered from depression, and extreme lethargy at times. I also was affected with C. Diff, and the doctors thought it was odd that it colonized my intestines, considering that I haven't had a strong history of antibiotic use, and I was generally healthy at the time. All of my symptoms combined with what I recently experienced lead me to believe that I am affected by a gluten intolerance.

My diet over the past 2 days is as follows:

Day 1

Wheat cinnamon/sugar toast for breakfast

Ramen noodles for lunch and dinner. 2 packages

1 column of ritz crackers

1 Beer

Day 2

Pancakes

Ramen noodles for lunch and dinner. 2 packages

About 10 ritz crackers

1 Beer

The evening on the second day, I started to get profuse gas and liquid foamy diarrhea, extreme gas, and I had to use the bathroom about 10 times throughout the night. I know this isn't a healthy diet at all, but I don't think it's normal to have these extreme symptoms. I don't think it was food poisoning because everything that I've had to eat has been cooked thoroughly, and were pretty simple meals.

I don't have much money, and I can't afford to go back to the doctor to tell me what I probably already know. I'm going to attempt a gluten free diet, and I'm pretty bummed about this. All of my favorite foods have gluten in them, and it seems that most gluten free foods are expensive! I'm sure everyone knows that here though. I think it's going to be hard to balance my daily needs on my budget, and I don't know what to do! Even though I'm not working, I don't qualify for food stamps because of what little emergency funds I have in my savings account.

My plan is to limit my diet to simple and cheap veggies, fruit, rice and tuna. I'm not going to afford to eat all of this every day, so I would like to take a supplemental vitamin to assure that I get all my nutrients. (I was taking a vitamin before, but if my intestines aren't absorbing it..) I can't afford the gluten free vitamins, and I have an idea to get around the small intestine.

I'm not opposed to taking my normal vitamins rectally, but I couldn't find any information online about this. If taken rectally, will all of the vitamin be absorbed? Are there any long term health hazards that would come from this? This is a serious question, and I'd appreciate serious answers!

Thanks! Ross

[Katie B]

Hi Ross,

You're probably best to stick with the gluten-free diet and take an oral vitamin (I'm taking Centrum Forte). Once your intestines start healing they'll be able to absorb the nutrients. I don't think taking vitamins rectally would work - your large intestine is meant to move things through and not to extract nutrients so you'd have to somehow get the vitamins into the small intestine which would be pretty much impossible (although I'm not a doctor).

Regarding expensive gluten-free foods - I don't really eat a lot of them. You can easily eat rice, protein, fruits and veggies and don't necessarily have to buy all of the substitutes. Once you start feeling better you won't want to go back!

Since your intestines will be healing you might want to watch out for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth as well and you might want to eat more protein and fat than carbohydrates.

[lovegrov]

There are plenty of mainstream and generic gluten-free vitamins. In fact, virtually all vitamins I know of are gluten-free. Just take them orally.

richard

[ravenwoodglass]

I agree with the other poster. Taking them rectally isn't going to work as it is your small intestine that absorbs the nutrients. If you live near a Wegmans their daily should be safe and it is cheap. Other chains may have inexpensive multis that are safe also.

As for food, beans and rice are cheap and nutritious. Frozen single ingredient veggies can be found for as little as a buck a bag. Most areas have food banks of some sort also. While they don't cater to folks with special diets most have stuff like tuna, pnut butter, rice, canned veggies etc. Just tell them you can't have gluten and to leave out the bread and cakes. I have volunteered at my local one and we give out a lot of bread but for folks that can't use it we sometimes will give them extra stuff that they can. Our bank gets venison at times and we have even had stuff like turkeys and hams and ground beef. Occasionally they will even get gluten free stuff from the local health food store. Do call them before you go as some have limited hours they are open.

[kareng]

Nature Made vitamins at Walmart and other places are gluten-free.

There are some threads on here about eating inexpensively. Beans, rice, canned veggies, fruit,etc. You don't need bread & crackers. You can get the Quaker Rice cakes for your pb ( large size, not small ones)are . Chex has many varieties that are gluten-free. Coco & fruity pebbles have boxes coming out labelled gluten-free. Some have found corn pasta at overstocked or dollar stores. Pasta sauce on rice is good. Rice, salsa, canned tomatoes, beans & corn together is good. Bananas are usually cheap. Potatoes and carrots are cheap.

Not good for you but a lot of candy and chips are gluten-free. We have lots of discussions on here for that.

They take a little bit of fixing, but you can make extra to microwave tomorrow.

Forgot! Corn tortillas and Asian rice noodles. Cheap. Use corn tortillas with a little cheese and microwave. Make a sandwich with them. Lots to do with them.

[T.H.]

I don't think you'll absorb much of your vitamins rectally, unfortunately. And on top of that, some studies done on celiac patients where they did rectal swabs with gluten ended up with the celiac patients having an auto-immune reaction. Not damage to the intestine, but the body did start 'ministering its defenses' as it were.

Some of the vitamins you can get are, I think, gluten free, even if not labeled so. You may just have to check on the websites for the vitamins you are hoping to get, or call the company and check.

For cheaper gluten-free eating, the following might help:

Open Original Shared Link - she is not gluten free, specifically, but she started out with recipes that were for people on a shoestring budget. She always cooked foods in season, when they are cheaper. We used some of her recipes, although we'd leave out some of the sauces/spices that were more expensive or we didn't have. It was a place to start.

Also, this guy: Open Original Shared Link

He hasn't updated in over a year, but he was writing about gluten free dishes on a poor student's budget. So he might also have some ideas.

For more bang for your buck, I'd look at beans and rice, Or beans and corn. These go together well, nutrient-wise. Chickpeas can offer some interesting different kinds of foods that might be affordable, too. If you can get an onion and dried chickpeas, you can make a cheap, baked falafal. Just soak the chickpeas, grind them up (food processor, mortar and pestle, rock and bigger rock, whatever you've got). Grind up some an onion with it - like maybe 1 1/2 cups soaked chickpeas to 1 small onion. add maybe a tsp of salt. and 2-3 TB of chopped parsley to grind into it, too, if you can get it, or grow it. When it's a thick paste, just make small golf-ball sized balls out of it, put them in a baking dish and bake at 350 for 15-20 min, turning once. If you have oil you can put in the baking dish to help it not stick, that's great, but if not, no problem.

They turn out kind of like hushpuppies - very nice. good with sour yogurt, if you happen to get that on a massive sale, but fine alone, too. Good amount of calories and nutrients.

Soup is a great budget stretcher. Just get your veggies and the tuna, or beans, and put them in a pot to simmer together for a while with a little salt. It'll be filling, if low calorie. You can add some cooked rice to it (try to get brown, if you can afford it) a bowl at a time.

A bulb of garlic would be really useful if you can do it, too. you can stir fry any veggie with a few teaspoons of water, just ad a tsp or two added again whenever the pan goes dry, until it's cooked. With a little chopped garlic and salt, it can be really nice.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes would be good when they're on sale - good source of carbs and calories. And if you can get an oil - even a cheap olive oil, that would be very good to pour over a salad. Veggies that you eat with just a little fat you will get more nutrients out of than veggies that you eat without any fat. They don't know why, but it seems that we absorb better when there's a little fat involved (interesting study on that one, actually).

If you need to conserve calories, veggies and fruit that are cooked, just a little, will use less calories digesting (yeah, another study. What can I say, I enjoy research. :-) )

If you can pick up some veggies at a farmer's market, you can sometimes get some good deals. And if you can afford some organic ones, you can get more bang for your buck. For example, organic beets - you can saute the green leafy tops as well as eat the roots. Carrots - you can use the green leafy tops as parsley in soups, if you wash and chop them. but don't do this with non-organic - the tops get too many pesticides to still be good to eat, then, as I hear it.

Oh, and carrots - rub the tops across your hands and wait a bit before deciding whether to eat them. A small percentage of the population have a contact allergy to some substance in carrot tops, even if they eat carrots just fine.

Hmmmm...if you get some cheap ground meat ever, cooked and pureed sweet potato mixed with it, plus a little rice, can give you something to bake in the oven like a meatloaf.

For leafy greens and some of the veggies - many of them you can use the parts that most people discard. Like kale - take the green leafy parts for the salad, and then take the stalks and stir fry them. Potatoes - if you peel them, save the peels, add salt, and bake them into potato peel chips.

And if you have a yard, see if you can safe up enough for a few herb seeds to buy in the spring - or even see if anyone is growing herbs and might be willing to let one flower so you could have the seeds. You can just put them in your yard, or maybe ask friends if they have plastic pots they were going to throw away after buying a plants or two, and fill it with dirt (heck, you could just go dig some up somewhere) and plant the herbs that way. It's a cheap way to get something that's too expensive to get at the store, yeah?

And if you have a little time - look into your local flora and fauna. If you don't live in a big city, there may be some wild forage that you can get access to. For example, I live out in the desert, and discovered that all of our cactus fruit out here is edible. It's not great tasting, IMO, but it's food, it's sure as heck gluten free, and it's free.

Even if you live where it's winter now, there's at least things like, say, pine needle tea. You can find a lot of information about that on-line - Easy to make yourself, just pine needles and water, and it's high in vitamin C and A, if I remember right.

Wishing you good luck - it's a chore to eat gluten free on a very low budget - but it's still very possible.

[Skylark]

My plan is to limit my diet to simple and cheap veggies, fruit, rice and tuna. I'm not going to afford to eat all of this every day, so I would like to take a supplemental vitamin to assure that I get all my nutrients. (I was taking a vitamin before, but if my intestines aren't absorbing it..) I can't afford the gluten free vitamins, and I have an idea to get around the small intestine.

Gluten-free foods are seriously overpriced. I hardly ever buy them. As Karen said, if you eat a lot of beans and either rice or corn, you'll get plenty of protein. You can get big bags of rice for very little money at Asian food stores. Dried beans are $1 a lb around here and you can make a big pot of nice soup from a bag, especially if you can afford onions and a little garlic to season it. Around here corn tortillas are cheap too. I usually buy Mission brand because they are made on dedicated lines separate from the flour tortillas. Potatoes are another good staple. Also don't forget peanut butter. It's good on rice cakes, in celery stalks, or on apple slices.

Seasonal veggies are usually cheaper and you can watch for caned and frozen veggies on sale. The other day I even found whole chickens on sale for $4-$5. I would go easy on the tuna, certainly not more than twice a week because of the mercury.

Most vitamins are gluten-free. Centrum states that theirs are gluten-free on the website.

Open Original Shared Link

Good luck with the diet. I really hope it works for you!

Oh, and by the way rectal vitamins wouldn't work well anyway. Many vitamins are actively taken up by specialized biochemical systems in the stomach and small intestine. You would completely bypass the intrinsic factor system for B12 and I don't think you could absorb iron. That's why even seriously ill people are given feeding tubes or IV nutrition.

[ravenwoodglass]

And if you have a little time - look into your local flora and fauna. If you don't live in a big city, there may be some wild forage that you can get access to. For example, I live out in the desert, and discovered that all of our cactus fruit out here is edible. It's not great tasting, IMO, but it's food, it's sure as heck gluten free, and it's free.

Even if you live where it's winter now, there's at least things like, say, pine needle tea. You can find a lot of information about that on-line - Easy to make yourself, just pine needles and water, and it's high in vitamin C and A, if I remember right.

If you do decide to 'wild hunt' for produce or these types of things please make sure you know what you are picking and consuming. Some wild plants are protected and you don't need a huge fine if the wrong person sees you picking something. The pine needle tea is a good idea but be aware that some are poisonous so make sure you know very well what you are using. That goes for other plants also. Some edible plants look much like ones that are toxic.

[GFinDC]

If you like fishing or hunting you can get some grub that away too.

[meatslayer]

Day 1

Wheat cinnamon/sugar toast for breakfast

Ramen noodles for lunch and dinner. 2 packages

1 column of ritz crackers

1 Beer

Day 2

Pancakes

Ramen noodles for lunch and dinner. 2 packages

About 10 ritz crackers

1 Beer

Are you serious?

That is about the worst diet I think you could eat right there!! At least your here looking for help. No matter your income you have to fix what you eat. Your on the right track with fruits and veggies. At in some rice, beans and you'll improve a ton. I have no comment on where your considering taking your vitamins. Good Luck and I hope you can find a job!

[Skylark]

I believe that was a gluten challenge, not his regular diet.

[ravenwoodglass]

Day 1

Wheat cinnamon/sugar toast for breakfast

Ramen noodles for lunch and dinner. 2 packages

1 column of ritz crackers

1 Beer

Day 2

Pancakes

Ramen noodles for lunch and dinner. 2 packages

About 10 ritz crackers

1 Beer

Are you serious?

That is about the worst diet I think you could eat right there!! At least your here looking for help. No matter your income you have to fix what you eat. Your on the right track with fruits and veggies. At in some rice, beans and you'll improve a ton. I have no comment on where your considering taking your vitamins. Good Luck and I hope you can find a job!

I think he is undiagnosed and ate what he had and noticed his symptoms getting more severe. At least that is what I got from his orginal post but I could be wrong.

[lovegrov]

I believe that was a gluten challenge, not his regular diet.

Yes, but even as a gluten challenge that's a terrible diet that could do strange things to you by itself. In a gluten challenge you should eat normally but with plenty of gluten.

richard