I discovered yesterday that my diet changes have led to a general intolerance for rich and greasy foods. The hard way.
So far, my diet has consisted of primarily what I described in my detox entry, which is to say a lot of spinach salads, rice, fresh fruit and vegetables, and home cooked meat. I've focused over the past month on cutting out fructose and fructans (with only the occasional blunder), but I didn't think about how that focus also means that I cut out greasy, fatty, and rich foods.
Last night, I decided to make a homemade carbonera, which consisted of alfredo sauce that Kevin had taught me how to make last weekend. I then added some green onions and about 2/3's of a package of bacon, and put it over a quinoa pasta we had eaten before and not caused problems.
Ohh, my aching digestive tract. :(
It was definitely an object lesson in how everything is fine in moderation, since I had eaten a couple pieces of bacon here and there before and not had a reaction like this. It also showed me how my body tells me exactly what to do if I'm in tune with it.
As I was cooking the bacon, I ate a couple little scraps (ok, maybe the equivelent of one full piece). And at that point, even though I hadn't had much more than a salad and some yogurt six hour prior at lunch, I started to feel full.
But gosh darnit, I wanted to eat my delicious carbonera!
So I ate it, and 24 hours later, I still feel off. It's a very different type of discomfort from the fructose malabsorption pain (and now has me wondering if maybe it's partly an overdose of lactose and I really hope I'm not lactose intolerant). It was mostly a feeling of nauseous in my stomach area for most of the day.
I'm hoping very much that it was simply an overdose of grease, and not a new and different food intolerance. I'm going to watch my intake of cheese ... and bacon ... and keep an eye on it.
On the other hand, I feel a strange sense of accomplishment that my body is now doing so well on fresh, whole foods that it has the ability to "tell" me when I'm eating stuff I shouldn't. I was tuned out for so many years that I didn't know.
Monday, 10 December 2012
Sunday, 9 December 2012
Sugar - My Blindspot
I'm not exactly sure why, but in the flurry around changing my diet and cutting out specific foods that contain fructose and fructans, I never considered the amount of actual white sugar I should consume. In the first few weeks, it didn't matter: I have always been a salty snack lover, instead of a sweet snack lover, so my new diet was devoid of sweet snacks.
Although I don't know what caused my fructose malabsorption or pin down the actual time it started, I believe it was towards the end of junior high or beginning of high school. That's the time I remember becoming chronically constipated and that's when the bad abdominal cramping one to two hours after eating started.
Whether I have always been a fructose malabsorber or it was triggered by something around that time frame, I believe my body always knew that it didn't need (or want) the fructose. As a child, I would collect candy at Halloween, arrange it in the bucket by package color or type, put it in a cabinet in my room, and discover it again at Easter when I did the same thing with my Easter candy. Other children liked juice or pop, and I preferred water (and still do).
When I went to Whole Foods to check out their gluten-free selection of baked goods, I wasn't thinking about sugar. I went through the gluten-free aisle, then under the erroneous belief that FM's couldn't eat brown rice. (Don't believe everything you read on the internet!) I also decided not to eat any of the "gums" - guar gum, xanthan gum, carrageenan - so my selection of baked good mixes was limited.
(As a side note, I recently researched the gums, and whether or not I can tolerate them, I've decided to steer clear. Some of my research indicates that xanthan gum might be tolerated by FM's, while the others aren't. I lived too far on the "unhealthy" side of the spectrum, and while I'm probably being paranoid, for now, I am trying to live off whole foods and natural, unprocessed ingredients as best as I can.)
I picked out two mixes made by King Arthur Flour, a brownie mix and a chocolate chip cookie mix. Last weekend, I decided to make the brownie mix. I looked over the ingredients, and decided to eat one bar, which was the equivalent of 1/8 of a box of the mix.
I have to say, those brownies were delicious. They were moist with a great texture - King Arthur Flour really seems to know what they're doing with the gluten-free products. I honestly couldn't tell that they weren't made with flour, and I had to stop myself from eating more, since I could have eaten the whole pan.
Of course, being that I had just consumed 34 grams of sugar or 17 grams of fructose, I spent the rest of the day in bed, feeling miserable.
I'm not sure why it hadn't occurred to me that if the first ingredient in something is "sugar," that I shouldn't consume it. But that experience really hit home for me how little sugar I can really consume (and how awful I will feel when I consume a lot of it).
Fructose-based pain is different for me than fructan-based pain. Fructans give me a sharper and more localized pain, whereas fructose gives me a dull pain in my abdomen that comes with a headache. Both give me a general feeling of lethargy and depression. It's amazing to me that I was able to live like that for so many years, but on the other hand, I didn't know any better. I just dealt with it. And now that I've been feeling great for almost a month, every slip-up makes me angry at myself - the pain is such a contrast from what I've been feeling that it's extremely frustrating.
Experimenting with eating things with sugar in it (such as dark chocolate bars, Big Turks, but unfortunately, no more of the brownies) has led me to believe that I can probably consume up to 5 grams of fructose in one sitting, but I will definitely from now on attempt to stay under the recommended amount of 3 grams. That means only 6 grams of sugar at once!
That also underlines for me the fact that I have to steer clear from restaurants - especially chains - because sugar is added to everything to make it more appealing. I've always been appalled and disappointed that so much added crap is put into prepared food, but now that it's a necessity for me not to consume it, I'm even more appalled and disappointed.
Although I don't know what caused my fructose malabsorption or pin down the actual time it started, I believe it was towards the end of junior high or beginning of high school. That's the time I remember becoming chronically constipated and that's when the bad abdominal cramping one to two hours after eating started.
Whether I have always been a fructose malabsorber or it was triggered by something around that time frame, I believe my body always knew that it didn't need (or want) the fructose. As a child, I would collect candy at Halloween, arrange it in the bucket by package color or type, put it in a cabinet in my room, and discover it again at Easter when I did the same thing with my Easter candy. Other children liked juice or pop, and I preferred water (and still do).
When I went to Whole Foods to check out their gluten-free selection of baked goods, I wasn't thinking about sugar. I went through the gluten-free aisle, then under the erroneous belief that FM's couldn't eat brown rice. (Don't believe everything you read on the internet!) I also decided not to eat any of the "gums" - guar gum, xanthan gum, carrageenan - so my selection of baked good mixes was limited.
(As a side note, I recently researched the gums, and whether or not I can tolerate them, I've decided to steer clear. Some of my research indicates that xanthan gum might be tolerated by FM's, while the others aren't. I lived too far on the "unhealthy" side of the spectrum, and while I'm probably being paranoid, for now, I am trying to live off whole foods and natural, unprocessed ingredients as best as I can.)
I picked out two mixes made by King Arthur Flour, a brownie mix and a chocolate chip cookie mix. Last weekend, I decided to make the brownie mix. I looked over the ingredients, and decided to eat one bar, which was the equivalent of 1/8 of a box of the mix.
I have to say, those brownies were delicious. They were moist with a great texture - King Arthur Flour really seems to know what they're doing with the gluten-free products. I honestly couldn't tell that they weren't made with flour, and I had to stop myself from eating more, since I could have eaten the whole pan.
Of course, being that I had just consumed 34 grams of sugar or 17 grams of fructose, I spent the rest of the day in bed, feeling miserable.
I'm not sure why it hadn't occurred to me that if the first ingredient in something is "sugar," that I shouldn't consume it. But that experience really hit home for me how little sugar I can really consume (and how awful I will feel when I consume a lot of it).
Fructose-based pain is different for me than fructan-based pain. Fructans give me a sharper and more localized pain, whereas fructose gives me a dull pain in my abdomen that comes with a headache. Both give me a general feeling of lethargy and depression. It's amazing to me that I was able to live like that for so many years, but on the other hand, I didn't know any better. I just dealt with it. And now that I've been feeling great for almost a month, every slip-up makes me angry at myself - the pain is such a contrast from what I've been feeling that it's extremely frustrating.
Experimenting with eating things with sugar in it (such as dark chocolate bars, Big Turks, but unfortunately, no more of the brownies) has led me to believe that I can probably consume up to 5 grams of fructose in one sitting, but I will definitely from now on attempt to stay under the recommended amount of 3 grams. That means only 6 grams of sugar at once!
That also underlines for me the fact that I have to steer clear from restaurants - especially chains - because sugar is added to everything to make it more appealing. I've always been appalled and disappointed that so much added crap is put into prepared food, but now that it's a necessity for me not to consume it, I'm even more appalled and disappointed.
Monday, 3 December 2012
Fructose Detox
Despite my previously mentioned cynicism towards doctors (specifically, their knowledge about fructose malabsorption), I would not recommend following my example and trying to detox yourself without a doctor's supervision. When I made the decision to do it - which was as soon as I realized that this was the condition I've been suffering for at least ten years - I didn't realize the extreme reaction my body would go through. Three days in, I was miserable, frightened, and in physical pain. It took almost two weeks to start feeling normal again, but that's the happy end of the story: I feel much better now - better than I have in years.
I kept a food journal to keep track of my reactions to foods. So far I've been able to pinpoint what has made me feel bad because I only eat one vegetable, fruit, or item that could cause issues. There exists a lot of conflicting information on the internet, so if something was on even one "bad" list, then I stayed away from it. I'm still slowly introducing foods back into my diet and probably will be for quite awhile.
My breakfast consisted of coffee for a couple days until I discovered that it's a gut irritant, and then I switched to teas. I haven't had any coffee since the first week, and since I was never a big coffee drinker, I'm not sure if I will introduce it back in.
Lunch consisted of rice with butter, unflavored yogurt either alone or with a small amount of "safe" fruit, and a salad made with spinach, carrots, cucumber, cheese, and a balsamic vinaigrette that my husband Kevin made. All of the spices he chose were on recommended lists.
For dinner, I ate pork, chicken, or beef seasoned with salt; potatoes or rice; butter; and vegetables on the "safe" life. One night, we tried sausage that had garlic on the bottom of the list of ingredients, and I felt a little off. We didn't try it again, but I will likely give it a go soon since it's rather delicious.
Because I was hyper-sensitive to what was happening with my body, I tracked everything that remotely had to do with my digestive system. I found that about a half an hour after a meal, I had a bit of gas - just two to three farts over the course of a minute or two. At first, I thought it was a harbinger of the horrific gas and bloating that I usually suffered from, but after it happened every meal, I realized it was normal (at least for me).
Which leads me to another point: The gas that I pass has become much - for lack of a better terms - smaller and gentler. I mention it because it's a side effect that continues to amaze me. I have "womanly" farts now, rather than the strong (both in smell and in duration) ones I was accustomed to. There are so many little things I'm learning about how my body should be operating that fascinate me.
I went on my crash diet-change on Tues., 11/6. By the second day, I was noticing a profound difference in the ways my gastrointestinal system felt. I realized midway through the day that I was accustomed to pain and bloating about an hour to an hour and a half after I ate, and it was strange not to feel that. As the days progressed, I started to feel a void in my midsection - like a strange sort of hunger that wasn't in my stomach. It wasn't painful but felt like an emptiness.
On the third day, which was Thurs., 11/8, the pain started around noon. I'm not a doctor, but I believe it was located in my small intestine - located across the length of my midsection in the middle of my torso. It physically hurt like a bruise, and was worse if I put any pressure on it from the outside. That night, I had horrible nightmares, of lifting up my shirt to look at my stomach and seeing purple-black bruises all of my body and bloated, distended shapes under the surface of my skin. That was the worst day.
The next morning morning, I ran into the bathroom to look in the mirror. Nothing - my body looked normal. The dreams were so vivid and the pain was still there, but I was fine from the outside.
That same day, which was the fourth day, around mid-afternoon I noticed a strange taste in my mouth. Kevin and I had talked about how saliva is an indicator of things going on in the recesses of one's digestive tract, so I wasn't surprised by it. It tasted a lot like, well, bile - Like the taste you get in your mouth right before you throw up. My stomach itself was fine - there was no nauseous or cramping, only the bruised feeling. This strange taste continued into the fifth day and then was gone.
On Sat., 11/10, the fifth day, the bruised feeling located in my mid-torso dissipated and turned into what I called "the creeping pain." The feeling ranged from feeling gassy or bloated to feeling mildly bruised to feeling constipated. (I will note that throughout this, I was constipated and continue to be - it's part of the manifestation of my fructose malabsorption - but I was having bowel movements every few days and they didn't change related to the pain.) Over the next week, from the fifth day to the twelfth day, the discomfort moved through my lower intestines. I learned a lot more about the location of my intestines than I ever wanted to know because I was acutely aware of the pain.
I was exhausted during this whole process. It may have been the change in the type of my diet, it may have been a sharp reduction in caloric intake (since I didn't feel much like eating), or it may have been the toll that this process was taking on my body as it healed itself. It was probably all of the above. I called in sick to work on Fri., 11/9, Mon., 11/12, and Tues., 11/13. I laid in bed watching television, unable to sleep but rather miserable. If I'd had the option, I would likely have stayed home sick the rest of that week. However, getting out of bed and going into work on Wed., 11/14, did me a lot of good. I was exhausted, but it got me moving and starting to feel like myself again.
I kept wondering throughout the process what was going to happen when the "creeping pain" reached the end of my digestive tract (and I can come up with some quite imaginative scenarios, all of them unpleasant) - but it never did. On Sat., 11/17, the twelfth day, the pain receded by seeming to "creep" into some part of my body that I couldn't pinpoint, and I got a sharp a headache. The headache faded as the thirteenth day progressed, and that's when I started to feel a whole lot better.
But then a new problem was on me - travel for Thanksgiving week and a whole lot of restaurants.
I kept a food journal to keep track of my reactions to foods. So far I've been able to pinpoint what has made me feel bad because I only eat one vegetable, fruit, or item that could cause issues. There exists a lot of conflicting information on the internet, so if something was on even one "bad" list, then I stayed away from it. I'm still slowly introducing foods back into my diet and probably will be for quite awhile.
My breakfast consisted of coffee for a couple days until I discovered that it's a gut irritant, and then I switched to teas. I haven't had any coffee since the first week, and since I was never a big coffee drinker, I'm not sure if I will introduce it back in.
Lunch consisted of rice with butter, unflavored yogurt either alone or with a small amount of "safe" fruit, and a salad made with spinach, carrots, cucumber, cheese, and a balsamic vinaigrette that my husband Kevin made. All of the spices he chose were on recommended lists.
For dinner, I ate pork, chicken, or beef seasoned with salt; potatoes or rice; butter; and vegetables on the "safe" life. One night, we tried sausage that had garlic on the bottom of the list of ingredients, and I felt a little off. We didn't try it again, but I will likely give it a go soon since it's rather delicious.
Because I was hyper-sensitive to what was happening with my body, I tracked everything that remotely had to do with my digestive system. I found that about a half an hour after a meal, I had a bit of gas - just two to three farts over the course of a minute or two. At first, I thought it was a harbinger of the horrific gas and bloating that I usually suffered from, but after it happened every meal, I realized it was normal (at least for me).
Which leads me to another point: The gas that I pass has become much - for lack of a better terms - smaller and gentler. I mention it because it's a side effect that continues to amaze me. I have "womanly" farts now, rather than the strong (both in smell and in duration) ones I was accustomed to. There are so many little things I'm learning about how my body should be operating that fascinate me.
I went on my crash diet-change on Tues., 11/6. By the second day, I was noticing a profound difference in the ways my gastrointestinal system felt. I realized midway through the day that I was accustomed to pain and bloating about an hour to an hour and a half after I ate, and it was strange not to feel that. As the days progressed, I started to feel a void in my midsection - like a strange sort of hunger that wasn't in my stomach. It wasn't painful but felt like an emptiness.
On the third day, which was Thurs., 11/8, the pain started around noon. I'm not a doctor, but I believe it was located in my small intestine - located across the length of my midsection in the middle of my torso. It physically hurt like a bruise, and was worse if I put any pressure on it from the outside. That night, I had horrible nightmares, of lifting up my shirt to look at my stomach and seeing purple-black bruises all of my body and bloated, distended shapes under the surface of my skin. That was the worst day.
The next morning morning, I ran into the bathroom to look in the mirror. Nothing - my body looked normal. The dreams were so vivid and the pain was still there, but I was fine from the outside.
That same day, which was the fourth day, around mid-afternoon I noticed a strange taste in my mouth. Kevin and I had talked about how saliva is an indicator of things going on in the recesses of one's digestive tract, so I wasn't surprised by it. It tasted a lot like, well, bile - Like the taste you get in your mouth right before you throw up. My stomach itself was fine - there was no nauseous or cramping, only the bruised feeling. This strange taste continued into the fifth day and then was gone.
On Sat., 11/10, the fifth day, the bruised feeling located in my mid-torso dissipated and turned into what I called "the creeping pain." The feeling ranged from feeling gassy or bloated to feeling mildly bruised to feeling constipated. (I will note that throughout this, I was constipated and continue to be - it's part of the manifestation of my fructose malabsorption - but I was having bowel movements every few days and they didn't change related to the pain.) Over the next week, from the fifth day to the twelfth day, the discomfort moved through my lower intestines. I learned a lot more about the location of my intestines than I ever wanted to know because I was acutely aware of the pain.
I was exhausted during this whole process. It may have been the change in the type of my diet, it may have been a sharp reduction in caloric intake (since I didn't feel much like eating), or it may have been the toll that this process was taking on my body as it healed itself. It was probably all of the above. I called in sick to work on Fri., 11/9, Mon., 11/12, and Tues., 11/13. I laid in bed watching television, unable to sleep but rather miserable. If I'd had the option, I would likely have stayed home sick the rest of that week. However, getting out of bed and going into work on Wed., 11/14, did me a lot of good. I was exhausted, but it got me moving and starting to feel like myself again.
I kept wondering throughout the process what was going to happen when the "creeping pain" reached the end of my digestive tract (and I can come up with some quite imaginative scenarios, all of them unpleasant) - but it never did. On Sat., 11/17, the twelfth day, the pain receded by seeming to "creep" into some part of my body that I couldn't pinpoint, and I got a sharp a headache. The headache faded as the thirteenth day progressed, and that's when I started to feel a whole lot better.
But then a new problem was on me - travel for Thanksgiving week and a whole lot of restaurants.
Saturday, 1 December 2012
The First Day
For years, I've gone through life feeling like something wasn't quite right. In the months leading up to my discovery, I was wearing down - a general feeling of malaise had settled in, causing me for two weekends in a row to do nothing but lay in bed and watch television. Very specific symptoms, all seemingly unconnected, plagued me: Severe foot cramps, persistent gynocological problems, bad tastes in my mouth that I covered up by using a lot of mouthwash and chewing a lot of gum.
Yet none were so severe (other than the gynocological problems about five years ago) to cause me to really question what was wrong. It was a feeling that was lodged in my subconscious: Something was off about me.
I tried to eat better. I'd been subsisting on Lean Cuisines for lunch for a very long time, and I decided about a year and a half ago that I should stop being so lazy and instead prepare something fresh for my lunches. I switched to salads, yogurt, fresh fruit. Dinner was cooked by my very talented husband, usually also fresh. I drank one, maybe two cups of coffee a day, never had any interest in pop, and rarely ate any candy or excessive sugar. Although I wasn't militantly healthy, I was at least as healthy, probably more so, than your average North American. (Let's not talk about exercise, though.)
But it still wasn't enough.
On November 5, 2012, less than one month ago, I discovered my "dark passenger." Unfortunately, my life isn't an episode of Dexter, so it involved a sandwich and google instead of saran wrap and blood slides.
On that Monday, I went to a training session at work. Lunch was brought in, and I helped myself to a salmon sandwich. My rationale was that I needed more omega-3 fatty acids in my diet because I rarely eat fish, and this was an effort towards being healthy.
I bit into the sandwich and was immediately repulsed. Who puts Miracle Whip on salmon? I asked myself. If I'd had a choice - ok, we all have choices in life, but I mean, a choice that didn't involve throwing away a free lunch - I would have gotten something else to eat. Unfortunately, there were only so many sandwiches, and I was raised not to be wasteful. Or to spend money that I didn't have to spend.
I choked the thing down, but my disgust at the sandwich was my body's way of warning me. Unfortunately, because I didn't listen, I spent the rest of the day sitting in the training class feeling nauseous and generally awful.
On the train ride home, I found myself wondering why I would have reacted so severely. I couldn't ignore it - the human body has the uncanny ability to recognize what makes it sick, and I absolutely knew the Miracle Whip made me sick. I've always hated Miracle Whip, but I've always loved mayonnaise. Despite my natural curiosity, I had never wondered enough to find out what the difference between those two substances were. Right then, I did wonder, and that curiosity has changed my life.
Did you know that both mayonnaise and Miracle Whip are both made from oil, egg yolk, and mustard? But Miracle Whip has a couple secret ingredients: Sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
EW!
I already knew that high fructose corn syrup is bad news, but I never made a huge effort to stay away from it. But, I wondered, what about HFCS made me sick? Maybe I'm allergic to corn, so I googled that as well.
I discovered that, yes, people do have allergies to corn. But it didn't seem right - I can eat corn on the cob and popcorn, and I'm fine. I love both, in fact. So maybe it's the high fructose corn syrup itself.
A couple more taps on my phone, and that's when I found it: Fructose malabsorption, formerly known as dietary fructose intolerance.
At that moment, I didn't realize how it would change my life, but I did realize as I read through the list of symptoms and the lists of foods that cause the issues that this was it. I have this. I know I have this disorder. This is what's wrong with me.
I could probably have gone to a doctor, gotten on a wait-list to be tested, been officially diagnosed, and then been shuffled around from specialist to specialist who only knew enough about the disorder to be dangerous. (Maybe someday I'll tell you what I really think about health care, ha!) Instead, I decided to rush head-first into a FODMAP elimination diet.
I texted my husband to tell him what I had discovered. When I got home, we discussed the disorder, key trigger foods that were unfortunately staples in our diet, and possible reactions I could have to eliminating all fructose and fructans immediately.
We talked over a delicious dinner of tacos containing onions, garlic, tex-mex spiced ground beef, and flour tortillas, which subsequently gave me horrible abdominal pain that felt like a tiny person was climbing around in my gut stabbing needles into my insides. As I laid in bed, stoically curled in a ball, braced against the pain as per my usual coping mechanism when this happened (on a regular basis, I might add), I thought to myself, "Maybe this is the last time I'll ever have to go through this."
That was the first day.
Yet none were so severe (other than the gynocological problems about five years ago) to cause me to really question what was wrong. It was a feeling that was lodged in my subconscious: Something was off about me.
I tried to eat better. I'd been subsisting on Lean Cuisines for lunch for a very long time, and I decided about a year and a half ago that I should stop being so lazy and instead prepare something fresh for my lunches. I switched to salads, yogurt, fresh fruit. Dinner was cooked by my very talented husband, usually also fresh. I drank one, maybe two cups of coffee a day, never had any interest in pop, and rarely ate any candy or excessive sugar. Although I wasn't militantly healthy, I was at least as healthy, probably more so, than your average North American. (Let's not talk about exercise, though.)
But it still wasn't enough.
On November 5, 2012, less than one month ago, I discovered my "dark passenger." Unfortunately, my life isn't an episode of Dexter, so it involved a sandwich and google instead of saran wrap and blood slides.
On that Monday, I went to a training session at work. Lunch was brought in, and I helped myself to a salmon sandwich. My rationale was that I needed more omega-3 fatty acids in my diet because I rarely eat fish, and this was an effort towards being healthy.
I bit into the sandwich and was immediately repulsed. Who puts Miracle Whip on salmon? I asked myself. If I'd had a choice - ok, we all have choices in life, but I mean, a choice that didn't involve throwing away a free lunch - I would have gotten something else to eat. Unfortunately, there were only so many sandwiches, and I was raised not to be wasteful. Or to spend money that I didn't have to spend.
I choked the thing down, but my disgust at the sandwich was my body's way of warning me. Unfortunately, because I didn't listen, I spent the rest of the day sitting in the training class feeling nauseous and generally awful.
On the train ride home, I found myself wondering why I would have reacted so severely. I couldn't ignore it - the human body has the uncanny ability to recognize what makes it sick, and I absolutely knew the Miracle Whip made me sick. I've always hated Miracle Whip, but I've always loved mayonnaise. Despite my natural curiosity, I had never wondered enough to find out what the difference between those two substances were. Right then, I did wonder, and that curiosity has changed my life.
Did you know that both mayonnaise and Miracle Whip are both made from oil, egg yolk, and mustard? But Miracle Whip has a couple secret ingredients: Sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
EW!
I already knew that high fructose corn syrup is bad news, but I never made a huge effort to stay away from it. But, I wondered, what about HFCS made me sick? Maybe I'm allergic to corn, so I googled that as well.
I discovered that, yes, people do have allergies to corn. But it didn't seem right - I can eat corn on the cob and popcorn, and I'm fine. I love both, in fact. So maybe it's the high fructose corn syrup itself.
A couple more taps on my phone, and that's when I found it: Fructose malabsorption, formerly known as dietary fructose intolerance.
At that moment, I didn't realize how it would change my life, but I did realize as I read through the list of symptoms and the lists of foods that cause the issues that this was it. I have this. I know I have this disorder. This is what's wrong with me.
I could probably have gone to a doctor, gotten on a wait-list to be tested, been officially diagnosed, and then been shuffled around from specialist to specialist who only knew enough about the disorder to be dangerous. (Maybe someday I'll tell you what I really think about health care, ha!) Instead, I decided to rush head-first into a FODMAP elimination diet.
I texted my husband to tell him what I had discovered. When I got home, we discussed the disorder, key trigger foods that were unfortunately staples in our diet, and possible reactions I could have to eliminating all fructose and fructans immediately.
We talked over a delicious dinner of tacos containing onions, garlic, tex-mex spiced ground beef, and flour tortillas, which subsequently gave me horrible abdominal pain that felt like a tiny person was climbing around in my gut stabbing needles into my insides. As I laid in bed, stoically curled in a ball, braced against the pain as per my usual coping mechanism when this happened (on a regular basis, I might add), I thought to myself, "Maybe this is the last time I'll ever have to go through this."
That was the first day.
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