Fodmap diet

[lifegems]

Hi.. I’ve heard the fodmap diet can help but reading up on it it says for IBS only.. I don’t want to cause more damage than good but would love to know if it helps with atrophic gastritis ? Seems like a very difficult diet

[fbirder]

No, it’s not just for IBS. But it’s not going to help with atrophic gastritis.

I had IBS-like symptoms, but not proper IBS (I live with somebody who does have it and she said my symptoms weren’t as bad as hers). I didn’t go down the full Monash protocol, but went my own way.

I started keeping a log of what I was eating and how my guts were working. It didn’t take long for me to realise that fructose had an explosive effect just 6 to 8 hours after consuming it (normally in fruit juice or ‘naturally light’ tonic).

After a few weeks I had a list of meals that didn’t seem to have an effect. I could try eating just those dishes and add new ones (or subtly alter the recipe). That’s how I found that bread in large amounts caused a problem (unless it was sourdough). And that onions were OK in very small amounts. A couple of mushrooms on a pizza were good, mushroom soup wasn’t. Sourdough pizza was better than thick crust. Button mushrooms are bad, king oyster mushrooms are fine. Most commercial curries are deadly; home made (with little to no onions) are fine. Three or four blueberries are OK, ten are not.

Apart from fructose, and some artificial sweeteners (the Polyols in FODMAPs), it seems to be fructans that cause me problems. If I’m offered something new then I’ll use the web to see if any ingredient is likely to contain a lot of fructans.

Now, I very rarely have an episode.

What symptoms are you suffering from? Have you tried drinking something acidic with large meals to compensate for your lack of stomach acid?

[Narwhal10 in reply to fbirder]

Sorry fbirder,

This is all new to me, so forgive me asking. Do you have atrophic gastritis? I noted this year, the thought of eating fruit made me nauseous for 4 months. Then when I did - I had diahorrea. Similarly, I had to refer to mushrooms as the edible fungus (Which nobody understood) as the concept of consuming it was very undesirable.

All info welcomed. 😄

[fbirder in reply to Narwhal10]

Yes, I have autoimmune metaplastic gastric atrophy (aka autoimmune atrophic gastritis). That's the same effect that most fruits have on me nowadays. Which is a shame as I really like eating them. Hence my experiments to find just how many blueberries I can safely eat. And I love mushrooms. I used to make a lovely mushroom dish that would be really bad for me to eat nowadays.

[Narwhal10 in reply to fbirder]

Thanks fbirder.

Here’s your starter for 10 (Just some humour) 😀

May I ask how was autoimmune atrophic gastritis diagnosed please ?

Yes I did a grape test - 4 is the most. You can keep your blueberries as I’m not a fan. (My cheekiness is coming out now)

It’s a real shame about the mushrooms. I too used to love them but I’m going to try one later this week. It’s been 9 months.

[fbirder in reply to Narwhal10]

My AMGA was diagnosed by the presence of antibodies to Gastric Parietal Cells (no longer recommended as a test for Pernicious Anaemia) and a gastroscopy showing gastritis in the corpus and fundus, but not the antrum (a dead giveaway for an autoimmune cause). Plus biopsy samples showing metaplasia (the wrong sort of cells - intestinal cells growing where the gastric parietal cells (that had been killed by my immune system) in the areas with gastritis.

They also found a Neuroendocrine Tumour (NET) that is caused by autoimmune gastritis.

And I had high levels of the hormone gastrin in my blood.

All of those point to just one diagnosis.