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.