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.
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