Gastritis Support Group

Gastritis is a medical term for inflammation of the lining of the stomach. It means that white blood cells move into the wall of the stomach as a response to some type of injury. Gastritis has many underlying causes, from infection with the bacterium H. pylori, bile reflux, or excessive consumption of alcohol or certain foods or drugs like aspirin.

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Do you cheat or test foods?

lu2013
lu2013
We all talk here of foods to avoid and staying on a BRAT type diet or very simple. But do you ever cheat...or even just try something? It's easy to stay on a simple diet day to day when you're eating at home (but can get boring), but what about when you go out? Do we have to stay on toast, bananas, etc for ever (since this is chronic for most of us)? On the weekend I went out with some friends and although I was careful in my choices, I did have a Portobello mushroom with roasted peppers and some cheese sauce and it went down "ok"...and that was along with a small appetizer and dessert. Then tomorrow night I'm out for dinner...and we usually go for Italian or Thai. So if Italian for example, I'd like to try a pasta (not tomato sauce) or a simple pizza....but of course, am scared of the next day.

What do you do? Do you ever try something and see (assuming you're having an "ok" day to begin with)? Or do you always stick to a plain BRAT like diet?
lu2013
lu2013
I should add that in the avoid list...I still have coffee (but one cup per day only, whereas I used to have more) and don't avoid chocolate. Maybe it's limiting me from "healing" more but I would hate to live a totally restrictive life and avoid those things that I love.
deleted_user
deleted_user
BRAT is not a gastritis cure. It makes sense to stay away from all known trigger foods like coffee, chocolate, alcohol, etc. I'm sticking with easy digestible food that doesn't irritate stomach. Trying to eat mostly organic.
deleted_user
deleted_user
Also remove food that could be causing any allergic reactions. I eliminated anything that contains cow milk, including lactose free products. Peanuts, shellfish, and red meat also need to wait for better days.
Nina1959
Nina1959
Oh, you betcha. I have a smaller than normal stomach because I had a gastric sleeve 2 yrs ago and I'm supposed to eat mostly protein, which is really hard with having gastritis now for 11 months. So I try all sorts of stuff that shouldn't be ok and stuff that should and sometimes they are backward. Chili goes down fine. Yogurt hurts like heck. I can eat potato chips (darn it) and not plain chicken breast. From my sleeve experience I know this is because protein is harder to digest, it required more acid and for the stomach to work harder to break it down. So, it has to be really wet, like soup, stew, or chili...or canned chicken with a little mayo or ranch dressing in it. So I know how I SHOULD eat...but after an entire year of the weight loss effort and now an entire year of struggling to get enough quality food down, sometimes I just do not care a whit what I should eat and I eat what goes down and doesn't hurt or at least soothes a bit. We're only human.
Silkakc
Silkakc
The only thing I cheat with is coffee. Everything else was easy for me to give up.

I've gone from 8 cups a day to 4 but I make it weak with low acid coffee and use 4-5 Tbs of powder creamer per cup - hence why I need to lose 5 lbs:)
lu2013
lu2013
steve, do you find that organic makes a difference? For me, I think I'm ok with milk and gluten. Hope avoiding those foods is helping you.

Nina, funny how some of those foods you'd think would be hard (like chili), but yet thankfully some that you like are ok. True...we're human and it's no fun if we have to stick to bland restricted diet..

SIlkack, good that you can handle 4 cups of coffee. That's one that I won't give up either (except on a bad nauseated day). I'll have one cup..mind you, my cup at work is a good sized travel mug. Didn't know that you can get low acid coffee.

We had pizza for dinner. I scraped off any extra tomato sauce that I could. Am still scared to try pad thai...which was a regular Saturday night take out dinner. One of these times, I'll probably give it a try (and just eat less than normal).