Is there any difference between Galactooligosaccharides and Fruchtooligosaccarides ? Calling fbirder !

[wedgewood]

Have started taking Bimuno prebiotic preparation to benefit my gut (it’s a Galacto-oligosaccharide). It’s quite expensive. £20.00 for 220grams , conveniently divided into 3.65 gram sachets .

I now see that one can buy Fruchto-oligosaccharide , called Inulin , which is much cheaper— £9.00 for 750 grams at best price .

Is there a big difference in gut benefit between these 2 products ? I would love to know.

[fbirder]

I don't think there is any proven benefit with either. However, I have seen one small study that suggested the Bimuno can reduce some of the symptoms of IBS.

That study was enough to make me try Bimuno. I can't really say I've noticed any benefit, but I've got used to having it on my Weetabix in the morning. The 'galacto' part of its name means it's derived from a milk sugar. I'd be wary of it if I were lactose intolerant.

Inulin is something I'm definitely not going to be trying. Over the last six months I've learned that I am sensitive to fructose. That means I'm likely to be sensitive to inulins (although not as bad as fructose. Inulins are fructans which are FODMAPs (Fermentable, Oligo, Di, and Monosaccharides and Polyols) which are thought to be responsible for a lot of gut problems, notably non-coeliac gluten sensitivity.

You can get your fructan hit by eating foods that are avoided by people trying to follow a gluten-free diet. dietvsdisease.org/sorry-you...

[wedgewood in reply to fbirder]

Thank you very much fbirder for your succinct explanation .Very helpful .

[Frodo in reply to fbirder]

Interesting. How did you find out you were fructose intolerant?

Apparently Inulin has a positive effect on visceral fat so it's a shame not to be able to take it as a supplement.

I thought I was lactose intolerant (eg milk makes me vomit) after stopping it and having symptoms on re-introduction, but spoke to a GP who said that didn't prove anything, anyone, sensitive or not, would have issues if they cut it out and re-introduced it. Maybe misdirecting me, I don't know. So I eat some dairy for balance, taste and convenience (cheese and butter). My skin doesn't like it and my gut is still problematic. I don't know how to find out if I am intolerant if a pragmatic approach doesn't prove anything.

I've had some improvement from cutting out gluten for several years (not usually vomiting in the mornings with migraine and less nausea). Feel like I'm in that category of being intolerant of many things.

[MiniMum97 in reply to Frodo]

I think your GP is wrong. The most reliable way of working out what foods you are intolerant too is an elimination diet! You are supposed to reintroduce gradually though.

However you can have a hydrogen breath test to confirm whether you are lactose intolerant if you want to check for this. Hard cheese and butter don’t contain much lactose at all though so are usually fine for people who are lactose intolerant. You could have a problem with the milk protein perhaps?

[fbirder in reply to Frodo]

It's been quite a long journey to figure out what I've become intolerant to.

Around October I started getting really bad diarrhoea. It would normally start arount 04:00 and last five or six hours - so it was quite exhausting. At first I thought it was my achlorhydria - so I increased the amount of lime juice I had with meals, started taking betaine.HCl, bought some symprove - nothing worked.

Then I noticed it seemed to coincide with the days I didn't drink alcohol. On those days I was drinking various alternatives - tonic water, ginger beer, mango juice (mango juice, ginger beer and lime - my favorite). So I switched to drinking just low calorie tonic - with aspartame. That really seemed to help.

I could see how mango juice might be a problem but not the tonic water or ginger beer - until I checked contents - loads of fructose.

I went on a restricted diet, slowly reintroducing items. Anything with fruit in (mince pies at Xmas, Cranachan for Burn's Night, Banoffee Pie for a friends birthday) seemed to cause a problem. As did bananas, but only very ripe ones.

I'm slowly reintroducing various foods. This week it was the turn of a proper curry delivery (I'd been having sheek kebab as a 'safe' option). Much joy when that was OK. I've found that stir-fry is OK and adding a bit of sweetcorn is great for marking how long it takes to go through.

Anything to drink with fructose in it is a real no-no. As is fruit. Luckily fructans in wheat, onions, garlic, etc. don't seem to cause a problem - although I have learned that I like sourdough bread (plenty of gluten, but low in FODMAPs - they get fermented away).

So It's been a long journey, but I now know what I can't eat. Annoyingly, fructose is not treated as an allergen for labelling purposes - so I need to carry reading glasses around all the time and I can't take any chances when eating out.

[Catman1 in reply to fbirder]

Stumbled across this by accident but how unfortunate. Fructose intolerance affects roughly one in 20000 people. Must be really tricky. Sorry to hear this.

[fbirder in reply to Catman1]

That's hereditary fructose intolerance - a very nasty thing. Mine (fructose malabsorption) is much more common. Indeed, almost everybody who thinks they are non-coeliac gluten intolerant are actually sensitive to FODMAPs - fructose and fructans being two of them.

I'm still learning. Some mushrooms are OK. Some are fine in small quantities but deadly en mass. Onions are a no-no if there's a lot of them (four onion bhajis are two too many).

[Catman1 in reply to fbirder]

Lol - need to be careful in Maharajah.