I’m hoping that you all can help me figure out an issue I’ve dealt with for years now; sorry for the insane amount of detail and likely some TMI to follow.
Starting when I was about 10, I’ve had a sensitive stomach. Initially it was fairly easy to pinpoint causes - pizza, apple juice, and sometimes milk. I had been very lactose intolerant as a baby so I went back to drinking lactose free milk and avoided pizza and apple juice and things seemed to settle down.
I had a flare up around 14 and the doctor only suggested a fecal test to check for parasites (I was volunteering at an animal shelter) – nothing was found and the flare seemed to go away on its own after eliminating a supplement containing iron.
Until I started college. Suddenly my sensitivity seemed to become more unpredictable – I still stayed away from pizza and apple juice but now I would react about 50% of the time when I ate out anywhere except for fast food places. I even reacted to hamburgers at a cookout! I stopped eating out much, took probiotics, and things settled again.
I seemed to be pretty successful with those imitations, and I started to expand my food choices gradually after about 3 years on the restricted diet. Things seemed to go a bit better until about a year ago – now I’m back to reacting to random commercial foods and I cannot figure out what is causing these reactions. That’s where I hope the collective knowledge here might be able to help!
I recently found an osteopath who is interested in figuring this issue out (yay!). She did blood testing for food allergies and everything came back aok! Good and bad; good that I don’t have allergies to common foods, bad in that I still have no idea what’s causing the issues.
Other things I’ve “tested” myself:
- was allergic to red dye 40 but have grown out of that thankfully (got hives, not digestive stuff)
- only sensitive to milk (mild digestive distress), not ice cream, yogurt, butter, sour cream, cream cheese, etc.
- not sensitive to MSG – I looove Chinese and thai food and rarely have issues with these types of foods
- upset stomach from supplements with more than about 9%DV of iron
The issue: Within 15 to 60 minutes of eating something problematic I will get cramping and gas, with diarrhea within 15 mins of the start of other symptoms. Stomach upset will last for between 20 and 90 minutes.
I’ve not noticed any correlation between my intake of gluten and now oddly enough I can eat commercial pizza, but still have issues with random foods. There might be some correlation between the about of fat in the food and my reactions, but only if I’m eating out, never at home.
I do have periodic bouts of mild stomach discomfort with no known cause and no side effects other than feeling mildly icky. It often goes away if I can focus on something else, so that may just be a mental side effect of always wondering what’s going to set me off next. :\
Sooooooo any ideas?! Please tell me I’m not the only one with a weird stomach like this!
Follow Mothering