Hello,
I'm new to the site and am asking a question for my daughter who has IBS, and also chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Her IBS symptoms include bloating, fullness, occasional waves of nausea, with her stools results migrating between more diarrhea like and more constipation like, although not quite at each extreme. She also had a stool test, which showed that she had very low secretory IgA, which implied permeable intestine, a.k.a. leaky gut. Recently, she went on a food elimination diet with the intent of testing various food groups via food challenges.
She removed soy, sesame, peanuts, tree nuts, gluten, and dairy. (She has already been off of eggs for about a year). She was on a baseline diet for about 6 weeks. The reason the baseline took so long is that 1) she never felt that much better being off of these foods, 2) she actually got bad stomach pains about 2 weeks into the baseline, 2) reintroducing gluten causes her to feel so so, thereby causing her to take it out and try again, and 3) per her nutritionist's advice, she reduced further down to 20 whole foods, to make things easier to diagnose, if she was still having GI issues. Her doc thought those bad GI pains might be kidney stones, and an ultrasound revealed that instead she had scattered gas in the colon.
Recently, she has had 3 separate food challenges in which she reintroduced soy, then gluten and then diary back into her diet. Without going into all the reintroduction details, she has had a reaction of diarrhea about 3 days into each trial. Then, her symptoms subside. In the last food challenge (dairy), we thought perhaps that she was reintroducing the foods too quickly, so she went really slow. This means that she had 1/2 serving on the 1st day, 1/2 on the 2nd day, 1 on the 3rd, 4th and 5th days. On the 6th day, which was the rest day, is when she got diarrhea.
We think that she really might be sensitive to soy, since she felt exhausted after being on it for a couple of days, but we really aren't sure about the dairy and the gluten. She's already tested negative for lactose intolerance (via a breath test), but I think it's possible she could be sensitivie to the milk protein.
One theory that her naturopath might at play is that if she has leaky gut, then any food she takes away for a while and then reintroduces, might be seen as offensive to her body, and therefore giving her the results she is having.
At this point, my daughter is not sure if she should abandon the rest of the food trials, and just go back to eating normally (for her). She might have GI issues for a couple of days, but we hope she would not be any worse than she was before the elimination diet. Due to her fatigued reaction with soy, we think it would be prudent to keep avoiding that.
She's on a variety of supplements, including digestive enzymes, betaine HCl, ox bile, EFAs, and probiotics.
Has anyone had a similar reaction in having diarrhea when consistently reintroducing different food groups? Also, if it is leaky gut, then we might need to help her "fix" that, before doing anything else with diet.
I would appreciate any advice anyone would have.
Thanks,
Scotty
I'm new to the site and am asking a question for my daughter who has IBS, and also chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Her IBS symptoms include bloating, fullness, occasional waves of nausea, with her stools results migrating between more diarrhea like and more constipation like, although not quite at each extreme. She also had a stool test, which showed that she had very low secretory IgA, which implied permeable intestine, a.k.a. leaky gut. Recently, she went on a food elimination diet with the intent of testing various food groups via food challenges.
She removed soy, sesame, peanuts, tree nuts, gluten, and dairy. (She has already been off of eggs for about a year). She was on a baseline diet for about 6 weeks. The reason the baseline took so long is that 1) she never felt that much better being off of these foods, 2) she actually got bad stomach pains about 2 weeks into the baseline, 2) reintroducing gluten causes her to feel so so, thereby causing her to take it out and try again, and 3) per her nutritionist's advice, she reduced further down to 20 whole foods, to make things easier to diagnose, if she was still having GI issues. Her doc thought those bad GI pains might be kidney stones, and an ultrasound revealed that instead she had scattered gas in the colon.
Recently, she has had 3 separate food challenges in which she reintroduced soy, then gluten and then diary back into her diet. Without going into all the reintroduction details, she has had a reaction of diarrhea about 3 days into each trial. Then, her symptoms subside. In the last food challenge (dairy), we thought perhaps that she was reintroducing the foods too quickly, so she went really slow. This means that she had 1/2 serving on the 1st day, 1/2 on the 2nd day, 1 on the 3rd, 4th and 5th days. On the 6th day, which was the rest day, is when she got diarrhea.
We think that she really might be sensitive to soy, since she felt exhausted after being on it for a couple of days, but we really aren't sure about the dairy and the gluten. She's already tested negative for lactose intolerance (via a breath test), but I think it's possible she could be sensitivie to the milk protein.
One theory that her naturopath might at play is that if she has leaky gut, then any food she takes away for a while and then reintroduces, might be seen as offensive to her body, and therefore giving her the results she is having.
At this point, my daughter is not sure if she should abandon the rest of the food trials, and just go back to eating normally (for her). She might have GI issues for a couple of days, but we hope she would not be any worse than she was before the elimination diet. Due to her fatigued reaction with soy, we think it would be prudent to keep avoiding that.
She's on a variety of supplements, including digestive enzymes, betaine HCl, ox bile, EFAs, and probiotics.
Has anyone had a similar reaction in having diarrhea when consistently reintroducing different food groups? Also, if it is leaky gut, then we might need to help her "fix" that, before doing anything else with diet.
I would appreciate any advice anyone would have.
Thanks,
Scotty
