Fructose Malabsorption

[Strawberry-Jam]

Struggling recently with terrible gas, bloating, and acid reflux.

I burp first thing when I get up in the morning. I burp for hours at a time and sometimes have to get up and go to the toilet while at work so I can burp for 15 minutes and be reasonably comfortable again to work. I burp all night. I have acid reflux randomly and constantly. My BMs are regular, but always soft and sticky and hard to clean up after.

I half-heartedly removed most fructose from my diet during a few attempted elimination diets but the gas got hella worse after I gave up on the elimination dieting. I just saw, however, that aching eyes are a symptom of fructose malabsorption. My eyes hurt ALLA TIME.

So... what foods should I eat while I test this? I just recently bought some ginger candies for my reflux and now I'm thinking, crap, the cane sugar in them might just make this worse...

I'm thinking of doing a diet of just boiled meat and eggs, peeled white potatoes, avacados maybe, bananas, squash, and brussels sprouts. I am also trying to see if I might be super-sensitive to gluten CC so I am picking mostly things with peels and rinds that can be washed and removed. I know I will break down and have cashews sometimes and possibly seed/nut butters on rice cakes when I'm on the go and need food quick.

I have discontinued all supplements for the time being except for a probiotic. however, this contains fructooligosaccharides as a prebiotic. Should I avoid this too or maybe just cut back to one pill a day/every few days?

I also was taking l-glutamine but discovered there is carageenan in it (I read and re-read the label like 10 times but still missed that somehow) which I think may bloat me up. But the bloating started *before* I got the L-G so that can't be the sole source.

any and all help is appreciated. thank you.

[missmellie]

Hi,

I don't know about the fructose situation. But, I do know that eating boiled eggs can cause lots of gas and bloating. And, Brussels sprouts can cause massive gas and bloating. Perhaps those things are contributing to the problems you are having.

[Strawberry-Jam]

I haven't had the brussels sprouts in about a week or more, so that isn't it. (I have some in my freezer, ergo they're on my intended diet, but I haven't been eating 'em recently.

and I was eating boiled eggs prior to my gas troubles, so, idk. but I just ran out of eggs so I'm going to eat different breakfasts for a while (chicken... bacon maybe. I dunno).

I still think there is something a lot bigger going on than a single food, considering my diet has been rotated practically 100% about three times now.

[Skylark]

So... what foods should I eat while I test this? I just recently bought some ginger candies for my reflux and now I'm thinking, crap, the cane sugar in them might just make this worse...

I'm thinking of doing a diet of just boiled meat and eggs, peeled white potatoes, avacados maybe, bananas, squash, and brussels sprouts. I am also trying to see if I might be super-sensitive to gluten CC so I am picking mostly things with peels and rinds that can be washed and removed. I know I will break down and have cashews sometimes and possibly seed/nut butters on rice cakes when I'm on the go and need food quick.

Mom has FM so I know a fair amount about safe foods. Try white rice (NOT brown), white potatoes, meats and fish, eggs cooked any way you like. Season with herbs and spices and avoid garlic and especially onions. Seeds and nuts are fine. For veggies, the best are chard, spinach, turnip or beet greens, mushrooms, and celery. Cucumber, peas, zucchini, summer squash, lettuce, radish, carrots, and green beans are low fructose but do have a little.

Beware of brussels sprouts and cruciferous veggies because of the raffinose. They are low in fructose but can be difficult to digest. Avoid them while you are testing and introduce later. Same with beans and legumes. NO bananas or fruit of any sort while you test for FM!!! No sugar, honey, or sweeteners. (You will likely tolerate a little sucrose or fruit with dextrose sprinkled on it, but eliminate it initially.)

Yes, you need to get off the FOS probiotic for the time being. Consider a little unpasteurized saeurkraut like Bubbie's, or see if you can find a probiotic without FOS. My Bio-Kult doesn't list FOS in the ingredients.

If you are dying for something sweet, find some Smarties candy. They are made of dextrose rather than sucrose or HFCS and will actually help your digestion if you have FM.

I don't know of rice cakes that are free of CC but made only from white rice. You may need to skip the rice cakes for a bit because brown rice has fructans that can be a problem. Have celery sticks with your seed/nut butters for snacking while you are testing fructose.

If this limited diet helps, you can research FM more to see what else to start adding. You should feel better fairly quickly if FM has been your problem.

[sreese68]

You may want to check out the Yahoo group for those with fructose malabsorption. It's a complicated one to figure out. If fructose is balanced in a food with sucrose, the sucrose buddies up with the fructose and helps it get absorbed, so these foods are safe. Ripe bananas are fine due to this. Also table sugar. Unfortunately, if you eat a lot of safe foods in one day, the total amount of fructose you're getting may go over your personal threshold (even if it is balanced out), and you'll react. People with FM have a wide range of how much fructose they can tolerate, so you have to find your limit.

Also the amount of fructose in fruits varies by where they're grown, time of year, variety, etc.

Fructans are a chain of fructose. It's found in onions, garlic, and other foods. Brown rice was tested recently by an expert on the matter, and it does NOT have fructans. It's a common misconception. I don't know why some people with FM can't tolerate it. I know it causes me severe stomach pain, but I react to it differently than I react to too much fructose.

[Skylark]

Fructans are a chain of fructose. It's found in onions, garlic, and other foods. Brown rice was tested recently by an expert on the matter, and it does NOT have fructans. It's a common misconception. I don't know why some people with FM can't tolerate it. I know it causes me severe stomach pain, but I react to it differently than I react to too much fructose.

Really? Do you remember where you saw that? I'd really like to send the info to Mom. She'll find it interesting, though it doesn't change her bad reaction to brown rice. If it was in the Yahoo! group she will have seen it becasue she is a member.

I think it's easiest to test for FM by going very low fructose, then worry about glucose:fructose ratios and all the details if low-fructose helps, don't you?

[Strawberry-Jam]

what about fennel? I am using fennel tea atm to combat gassiness.

and sorbitol? I have a reflux medicine that I take, frutin, that is supposed to be natural acid barrier rather than an antacid, but it has sorbitol in it.

I think I am going to literally do meat & potatoes for the next week and see if that gets it. With a squash or two because someone said that squash seeds kill stomach nasties and I might have a bad balance of good vs. bad bacteria in the gut causing the gassiness as well. seed/nut butters on rice cakes maybe, if I need a lunch on the go, or just 100g of cashews or smth for lunch.

all supplements are out until testing phase begins... except I will have to take iron when my period starts. I got a hypoallergenic, easy to digest one tho.

if this diet doesn't help then maybe the problem is nightshades (potatoes)... 'cause I've eliminated all meat for a week or so iirc (trying to avoid amines) and didn't notice anything there...

[Skylark]

Fennel seed is OK. I'd skip the sorbitol if you can get by without it. Sorbitol alone can cause gas and diarrhea! If FM is your problem, the reflux should improve considerably on a low-fructose diet.

Good luck!

By the way if the potatoes cause problems you may need to go sugar/free low starch. Have a look at GAPS diet. Open Original Shared Link It's designed to treat bacterial imbalance.

[Strawberry-Jam]

daaaaang. I had a really good day yesterday with, like, no reflux. I was eating... boiled egg, fennel/licorice tea, sunflower seeds, half a butternut squash, two salmon filets in olive oil, and a whole bunch of ginger candies (which have cane sugar and glucose syrup and ginger. and that's all the ingredients in.) I stopped all supplements and started taking a 2-week course of pantoprazole (ppi... I know those are no good but I do have a small hiatal hernia and I just want SOME reflux relief while I figure out diet). oh and I had some rice cakes too.

then today I had diced chicken and potato boiled in salt water for breakfast, along with a cup of fennel tea. I had severe and uncontrollable reflux all day (I tried a double dose of antacids, then some frutin--the thing w/ the sorbitol, but the main ingredients are like fruit fibers or something that is supposed to block acid). Nothing worked so I just suffered all day like someone shot me in the chest.

Someone said my reflux may operate on a 24-hour or more delay, which is totally possible, and if that's so then idk how to go about doing anything. But I am so tempted to blame it on the potato. I am going to eat only meat, eggs, seeds, and nuts for a while maybe. I know I will need carbs eventually, but it seems like everything has some kind of poison in it (fructose, raffinose, salicylates, whatever...)

p.s. you said no legumes, but I found a peanut butter that has ground peanuts, vegetable fat, and dextrose in it. I am going on a trip next weekend and need food to take with me. Can I eat that peanut butter on rice cakes if I promise myself not to go overboard? I can also bring boiled eggs, bags of nuts, and maybe one pack lunch for the first day, but I won't be able to cook anything for two days.

[Skylark]

Ugh. The reflux sounds terrible.

I'm a little confused as to why you are eating butternut squash if you are trying to test fructose malabsorption. Is there something terribly wrong with leafy greens???

[Strawberry-Jam]

oh, I was eating the squash because someone told me squash seeds are good for stomach nasties, so I bought a squash for the seeds in it. This was before I wanted to test fructose. And I mean, if I bought a squash for the seeds I'm not going to throw the rest away, you know?

*sigh* leafy greens. go bad so quickly. and they are harder to wash in case of accidental gluten CC (I do NOT trust my grocery store, not to mention the packers and so on...). I will try to get some spinach or something.

[Skylark]

Yeah, I know about throwing away food. I need to give away all my rice and quinoa since I'm grain free right now.

Greens cooked in big batches keep fine for a few days in the fridge. I'm not sensitive enough to CC to have to worry about minor CC in the grocery store. Cleaning them to get grit off seems to make them gluten-free enough for me. Green beans might be easier to scrub and fix and they're pretty low fructose. Mom eats frozen peas pretty often too. She eats a LOT of leaf lettuce, romaine, and greens though. If you're totally sure brussels sprouts are something you tolerate they are low fructose.

I just hate to see you trying to live on nothing but meat and nuts. We need some fresh foods.

[Strawberry-Jam]

headache right now = thru the roof

muscle aches -- a little bit

...nightshades?????????? can potato maltodextrin cause nightshade reactions? because I was getting only potato-maltodextrin products to replace corn-maltodextrin products 'cause people told me to avoid corn.

I hate this so much. Trying to figure stuff out. I'm seriously gonna just be a carnivore for at least two days. then we'll see from there.

[Skylark]

I wouldn't trust potato anything if you think you're sensitive to nightshades.

[Strawberry-Jam]

I didn't think I was, but I can't explain yesterday. felt really horrible by end of day, after a streak of good days.

that doesn't mean today'll be different. we'll see. meat and nuts fer me.

[Strawberry-Jam]

Skylark, I just wanna tell you that you're amazingly helpful and I really appreciate it.

I have another question about FM. How long does it take, usually, for a reaction to set in?

Yesterday I had a dilemma, because I didn't have enough time between church and work to get something to eat. So I grabbed an old larabar from my purse and ate it because my other choice was starving all during my shift and making a miserable day even worse. I know larabars are a no-no for FM because of the dates.

this morning I am quite bloated and am burping up acid, but I was okay all last night--very little reflux and burping.

so my meals yesterday were: boiled chicken, larabar, 100g of walnuts, and some peanut butter, sweetened with dextrose, on rice cakes. (it is hard to find nut and seed butters here. they are very expensive. I'm gonna get some sunflower seed butter soon though.)

does it make sense that I wouldn't have a reaction right after the larabar, but rather the morning after?

oh yeah and I don't take supplements anymore but I do take a few tablespoons of aloe vera juice after meals and fennel tea when I am bloated.

[wheeleezdryver]

just saw this thread.... I, too, have FM issues.

Yes, sometimes a FM reaction doesn't occur until the next day. That usually when it's the worst for me!! For me, gassy in the morning means I ate something the day before that gives me problems.

reactions can occur within a few hours, or take as long as 3 days to occur.

Larabars cause me problems, too-- but not bad enough that I won't eat them once in a great while!

Hope that helps a little bit!

[Skylark]

Strawberry_Jam, you're never going to figure this out if you don't go low-fructose for a few days in a row. Mom's reactions are like wheeleez. If she eats a LOT of fructose she's sick the same day, but if it's a little less (like squash or a Larabar) she might not feel really bad until the next day.

I hate those food dilemmas. I try to always have safe snacks with me, but you can often find packages of seeds or nuts in gas station convenience stores. Larger stores like 7-11 can have packaged lunch meat or hard-boiled eggs. If your real problem is FM, you'll be able to have chips as well.

What causes symptoms in FM is when intestinal bacteria break the fructose down into hydrogen or methane because you didn't absorb it. If you eat more fructose than the bacteria can handle you can also get osmotic diarrhea, where the fructose draws water into your bowel. The gas causes bloating, flatulence, burping, and reflux. The fructose-eating bacteria also mess up your intestinal bacterial balance so you can end up with irritation that causes more symptoms. It can take time for the fructose to get to the bacteria in your intestine and ferment, and the amount of time for the gas to build up to where it causes symptoms depends on how much fructose you ate.

It's really starting to sound like your reactions are delayed by one day. Squash one day, reflux the next. Dates one day, reflux the next...

[Strawberry-Jam]

I just bought a whole bunch of 100g packs of raw cashews to put into my purse. those will be my safe snacks for a little while.

today I had rice cakes, fennel tea, bacon, cashews, and some more peanut butter w/ dextrose. Tomorrow I'm going to get some sunflower seed butter and some more eggs. I have steak and bacon in my fridge right now (and not much else... >_<).

It is so weird. I've been having terrible, terrible reflux every morning after breakfast which is gone by the end of the day. I don't always eat the same thing for breakfast. I've stopped all supplements. time will tell I guess.

[Skylark]

Got my fingers crossed for ya'. FM isn't any fun but knowing you have it beats being sick all the time.

[sreese68]

My reactions take two days to show up. When I first started my elimination diet, it took 3 weeks before I felt better.

[sreese68]

Really? Do you remember where you saw that? I'd really like to send the info to Mom. She'll find it interesting, though it doesn't change her bad reaction to brown rice. If it was in the Yahoo! group she will have seen it becasue she is a member.

Not sure if this link will work, but here it is: Open Original Shared Link

It can be found in the yahoo group under Files, Articles, fructans.pdf. Technically, there's a trace amount of fructans in brown rice, but you'd have to be SUPER, SUPER sensitive to fructans for the amount to cause problems. (I know I'm not.) Quinoa has more fructans than brown rice, and quinoa doesn't give me the the intense stomach pain that brown rice does. I think it has something to do with rice bran, but I don't know what part of the bran is the problem.

[Skylark]

Thanks for digging that up. The link doesn't work but I can probably get it through the group and make sure Mom has seen it. I think she's read everything there. She reacts like you with a lot of discomfort from brown rice.

[Strawberry-Jam]

okay (posting this so that you can yell at me if I make mistake )

today I had boiled beef, rooibos tea, 175 g cashews (I am getting desperate for calories), some bacon, and one rice cake.

supplements were 1.5 T of aloe vera juice and a tea made from slippery elm.

my gas is not constant, but I will get burpy and bloated after meals. reflux is still constant.

[Strawberry-Jam]

so, after about six days of no fructose, I didn't notice any difference in symptoms. It wasn't until I started taking digestive enzymes with betaine HCl that my D stopped and became normal BMs again. I've been able to eat fats and seem to actually be digesting them now.

I had a salad with pears in it last night, and this morning a fruit salad with grapes, apples, citrus, melon, pineapple, watermelon--the lot. We'll see what happens. I do intend to avoid fructose for the time being, besides these two recent meals, just because, but I won't worry about small amounts etc.