BOWEL DISORDERS & FOOD

 

©Patricia Heredia

 

Common irritable bowel disorders are: irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, ileitis, Crohn's disease, spastic colon, regional enteritis, chronic gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, abdominal cramps, rectal itching, pencil or ribbon-shaped stools, blood or mucus in the stool.

 

You are unlikely to overcome these problems and be cured unless you address your body's intolerance to certain foods. Most people can be helped dramatically if they are willing to alter their eating habits. Most medical doctors believe that infection in the bowel is the entire cause of these syndromes. Chronic food intolerance can wear down and even destroy large portions of the bowel. The major cause and underlying factor in most bowel problems is the body's intolerance of or allergy to certain foods. Anything and everything else you do or have done to your bowel will only serve as a Band-Aid to your condition until you remove the offending foods from you diet. For most people, the need to eliminate foods is often not even permanent.

 

The Sugar Connection - Fructose and lactose are fruit and milk sugars respectively. These represent the two most common offenders to people suffering from bowel disorders. When someone cannot digest fruit or milk sugars, they are not absorbed into the system. Instead they pass into the lower digestive tract where the normal bacteria residents of the bowel ferment them. Fermentation produces huge quantities of gas, alcohol, lactic acid and acetic acid. These chemical compounds are highly irritating to the lining of the bowel. The process causes the bowel lining to become inflamed - producing the classic syndrome of irritable bowel, or any one of the dozen other names given to this condition. Ironically, this condition caused by the body's intolerance of certain sugars - is similar to a bacterial infection. In this case, however, the sugars are attacked by friendly bacteria in your bowel. If you take antibiotics for this condition, the result is destruction of more friendly bacteria in the colon. There is also a resultant overgrowth of unfriendly or "pathogenic" bacteria.

 

The Protocol:

1. 1. Practice the elimination diet to identify foods to which your body is intolerant or allergic to or follow Eat Right For Your Blood Type.
2. 2. The 2nd best thing is to use a simple irritable bowel diet. The goal is to limit the amounts of poorly assimilated sugars in your diet. These are the ones that will ferment and cause bowel inflammation. They are basically corn sweeteners and fructose, lactose (dairy) and the artificial sweeteners mannitol and sorbitol. Lactose is found in: milk, milk chocolate, ice cream and whey. You can have some butter, cheese, cottage cheese and yogurt. Eliminate all sweet fruits that contain fructose: oranges, apples, pears, rapes, bananas, pineapples and melons. Also avoid any foods which use fructose as a sweetener: honey, pancake syrup, soda, candy, pastries, sweet pickles and most cereals and salad dressings. Artificial sweeteners sorbitol and mannitol are found in: sugarless gum, candy, toothpaste, breath mints and many processed foods. Without getting into the complete elimination diet, know that some other foods are classic offenders to people with irritable bowel problems: wheat bran, beans, corn, chili powder and cayenne powder.
3. 3. You may eat: most vegetables, fish, poultry, rice, oats, and small amounts of cheese and yogurt.
4. 4. Adjunctive aids: raw flax seed oil (one tablespoon/day), a chlorophyll supplement, pancreatic enzymes, an okra-pepsin product, a bile product and a probiotic product.

Once your bowel heals well, you can usually reintroduce certain foods that were previously allergenic with no bad effects. Allow plenty of healing time. Get to where your bowel is as close to normal as possible. Then try reintroducing a piece of fruit a day and be alert for symptoms. In most cases, you will be able to start eating some fruit daily with no problems. One food which possibly may never be added back in is ice cream.

 

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