Crohn's Disease & Ulcerative Colitis Support Group
Crohn's disease is a systemic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) of unknown cause, that results in chronic inflammation of the intestinal tract. It can affect the entire gastrointestinal tract from mouth to anus, and can also cause complications outside of the gastrointestinal tract. There is no known medical or surgical cure for Crohn's disease, but there are many medical...
I was going to lunch with my girlfriend to a local subshop and I got the steak and cheese sub. Very bland, nothing on it except for the steak and cheese. Being very dehydrated, I went and filled the 32oz cup with Powerade twice, downing it without really thinking about it.
About an hour and a half later I was having really bad bloody diahrrea and it dawned on me that maybe the fructose in the drink triggered a bad flare. I came across a book my dad bought me, called the "Self Help Way To Treat Colitis and Other IBS Conditions" and in it the doctor describes the mechanism in which we IBD suffers consume fermentable sugars that the bacteria eat and create irritating byproducts.
I have since gone cold turkey off of anything with high fructose corn syrup and am feeling tremendously better. I already know that i do not make the appropriate enzyme for digesting milk sugar (lactose) and probably do not make the enzyme insufficient quantity to absorb fructose either.
There are essentially three main sugars: sucrose, glucose and then fructose. Glucose is animal and plant sugar and is readily taken up directly into the bloodstream. Fructose is commonly found in honey and fresh fruits. (HFCS is synthetically made and is basically synthetic honey.) Sucrose is glucose + fructose, and can be relatively easily converted into its components and absorbed into the bloodstream. Fructose by itself seems to be a problem sugar, it has to be converted to glucose first before the body can use it. The remaining fructose is then dumped into the colon. Lactose is glucose + galactose.
Some fun facts about fructose:
- its 3x more sweet than sucrose (table sugar),
- HEALTHY people can digest up to 25 grams of fructose a day
- undigested fructose is digested by colon bacteria and it can create alcohols, lactic acid and acetic acid, which all irritate the colon!
- there is no enzyme supplement like Lactase available but consuming dextrose (glucose) with fructose can help the absorption process
-up to 30% of the population suffer from Dietary Fructose Intolerance (see http://www.uihealthcare.org/Clinic.aspx?id=3537)
Also, if you notice, when fructose is consumed with glucose, it is more favorably absorbed for some reason. If you do intend to consume a fruit, make sure that the glucose to fructose ratio is high. Fruits like oranges and apples have a low ratio, making them harder to digest, and yet we eat them anyway.
Anyone else identified fructose as a potential trigger?
About an hour and a half later I was having really bad bloody diahrrea and it dawned on me that maybe the fructose in the drink triggered a bad flare. I came across a book my dad bought me, called the "Self Help Way To Treat Colitis and Other IBS Conditions" and in it the doctor describes the mechanism in which we IBD suffers consume fermentable sugars that the bacteria eat and create irritating byproducts.
I have since gone cold turkey off of anything with high fructose corn syrup and am feeling tremendously better. I already know that i do not make the appropriate enzyme for digesting milk sugar (lactose) and probably do not make the enzyme insufficient quantity to absorb fructose either.
There are essentially three main sugars: sucrose, glucose and then fructose. Glucose is animal and plant sugar and is readily taken up directly into the bloodstream. Fructose is commonly found in honey and fresh fruits. (HFCS is synthetically made and is basically synthetic honey.) Sucrose is glucose + fructose, and can be relatively easily converted into its components and absorbed into the bloodstream. Fructose by itself seems to be a problem sugar, it has to be converted to glucose first before the body can use it. The remaining fructose is then dumped into the colon. Lactose is glucose + galactose.
Some fun facts about fructose:
- its 3x more sweet than sucrose (table sugar),
- HEALTHY people can digest up to 25 grams of fructose a day
- undigested fructose is digested by colon bacteria and it can create alcohols, lactic acid and acetic acid, which all irritate the colon!
- there is no enzyme supplement like Lactase available but consuming dextrose (glucose) with fructose can help the absorption process
-up to 30% of the population suffer from Dietary Fructose Intolerance (see http://www.uihealthcare.org/Clinic.aspx?id=3537)
Also, if you notice, when fructose is consumed with glucose, it is more favorably absorbed for some reason. If you do intend to consume a fruit, make sure that the glucose to fructose ratio is high. Fruits like oranges and apples have a low ratio, making them harder to digest, and yet we eat them anyway.
Anyone else identified fructose as a potential trigger?
How long did it take you to recover after he cauterized the bleeding spots in your colon? I had never heard of anything like this before, and my doctor has never mentioned this to me.
@kirsten23 - Powerade is very similar to Gatorade in the US marketed as a sports drink. The machine that dispensed it was a coke machine (its made by coke) and it spits out the same HFCS that the soda uses and mixes it with the Powerade flavor.
Thanks for the info on Quorn. I'm with KewlB though, eating the reproductive part of a fungus isnt that appetizing to me. I will try it if he tries it first though...
The doctor in the book suggested taking calcium with fatty foods to reduce the uptake of the fatty acids by the colon. It prevents the absorption by making a type of insoluable soap that can be readily excreted. According to him, those suffering from IBD absorb fat excessively. I have noticed, that even with the constant diarrhea and blood loss that I dont seem to lose a tremendous amount of weight.
Anyway The brand of Calcium supplement that I used to use was Nature Made. I took their Liquid softgels, it is a 600mg softgel capsule. I took one with breakfast and one with dinner. Since my multi-vit has Calcium in it, I take it at lunch. The NM calcium does have vit D in it and it is a good thing for a calcium supplement have D as it aids in the absorption of calcium. A calcium supplement w/o D is probably useless. Everything I've read and all my doctors tell me that while we need at least 1,000mg/day, our bodies can only process so much at a time so to give one big dose really isn't going to give you all the benefits.
Of course the best way to get nutrients is always from food first. If you can not handle dairy, some good plant sources of calcium are cooked collard greens 357mg/cup, Tofu 290mg/4 oz, White beans 191mg/cup, Calcium fortified almond or soy milk 300mg/cup.
I like collards but the chewing can be a pain. Last night I cooked collards in vegetable broth with a couple peeled, chopped sweet potatoes, green onion, carrots, and celery. Seasoned it with curry powder, salt and a little pure maple sugar to cut the bitterness of the greens. I let this simmer for about 45 minutes and then pureed the heck out of it. What i ended up with was a nice creamy green soup that was packed with nutrients and was also pretty darn tasty.
For whatever reason, I have gone down at least 1 pants size. I look and feel better. Everyone kept saying I looked "green" before.
I occasionally have a Pepsi Throwback in case I need a soda, but most of my cravings for sugar have waned.
@bart4u - Best of luck.
It would be easy enough to check. A blood test before and then a test a couple hours after would let you know if you are absorbing fats.
Congrats on kicking sugar! That's my main dietary issue.
I was curious so I looked up the fructose content. I found a wiki about fructose malabsorbtion (I guess some people can't absorb as much fructose as others). I guess it can be tested for.
Ironically, stone fruit are recommended for people with fructose issues, haha. So I guess that's not the cause for that particular sensitivity of mine! But it's still fascinating and frustrating to me how complicated the digestive system is and how hard it is to decipher our symptoms. The more I learn, the more ignorant I become.
Plums and apricots have the best glucose to fructose ratio of any of the fruits I looked at. If you inadvertantly eat something with fructose, the only thing that I could find to help is to eat dextrose (glucose) so the body tries to absorb both. Hopefully, they will find an enzyme soon that you could take like Lactaid.
It didn't take much time to recover from cauterization - when I got home I was disappointed cause I did bleed for a couple days "thought the whole thing was a waste of time but once I got past those couple days - It was all good!" My GI did cauterizing an area of inflamed hemorrhoids - Food sensitivities are a pain in the butt.
Too much of all the sugars sets the stage for misery for me... I drink more water than anything - but when it comes to juice those with the lowest sugar like 6 grams I can do. They add sugar to a lot of things. Good luck with eating healthier!
I believe yeast is my worst problem, and the cause of a lot of my inflammation so avoiding sugar which feeds yeast is crucial. I haven't paid much attention to which types of sugars, but i will make an effort to do that and see what i discover.