Various Stomach Issues - Unable to Eat Healthy

Digestive health
1

1.     Eating bread or bagels, and especially if they are not “fresh”, will cause hiccupping and lead to vomiting. This reaction is practically immediate. Sometimes I will have to run to the bathroom or outside after taking a few bites to throw up. After this is over, I can finish eating the bread or bagels as if nothing happened.

2.     Eating “healthy” foods such as bananas will make my stomach raw almost immediately. My mouth also feels tingly when eating bananas. Romaine lettuce as well as vinegar/lemon based dressings also seems to destroy my stomach. I have a hard time eating healthy meals at all because of this and has led to weight gain as my stomach simply cannot take many raw vegetables and fruits.

3.     Eating apples, particularly later in the day, will result in horrible stomach pain. On at least 3 occasions I have woken up in the night to vomit, and the vomit clearly contains the peel of the apple, so it seems obvious there's something about the apple itself that is causing a problem.

4.     Taking probiotics has a direct correlation with the onset of symptoms of restless leg syndrome. After a couple of days taking the probiotics, I develop the symptoms. Shortly after discontinuing, the symptoms go away. It's a little concerning that healthy bacteria introduced into my system causes such a negative set of symptoms.

5. Terrible foods, such as fast food and anything else that is horrible for ones health, has absolutely no negative affect on my stomach. In fact, those foods soothe my stomach when it is raw from eating something heatlhy. It's as if my stomach rejects healthy foods and prefers less healthy options. Of course, my body and overall health takes a beating from this.

Has anyone had these isssues and found the cause? Better yet, has anyone found a reasonable solution? I'm mentally ready and even desparate to make healthy changes to my diet but suffer serious setbacks very quickly, knocking me out of the game before I can even get going.

 

2

Have you been to your doctor and asked about food intolerance?   Perhaps try peeling apples to see if you can tolerate them that way.

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I haven't at this point. I've had allergy testing for contact allegens such as grasses, trees, pets, molds, etc. I was allergic to most everything except mold. Most of the allergies were more on the mild side with grass and trees being among the worst.

My concern is that I've "heard" the food intolerance tests basically don't work. Some people swear by them and others say they produce wildly inconsistent results. The people who swear by them DO seem to look and feel better when eliminating the foods they tested positive for. However, those people eliminated foods such as dairy and gluten, foods that might be bad for most everyone and unrelated to an allergy, per say.

I have little doubt that I have some sensitivity issues to certain foods at the very least. That's practically known at this point. My primary concern, regardless of the underlying mechanism, is how these problems are affecting my overall health. I simply cannot eat healthily despite my best wishes. It's very difficult to eat well when you end up getting sick every time you try. I have to figure out how to eat better foods without getting sick somehow.

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Hi TheSrProgrammer

Try changing your diet to gluten free, wheat free, lactofree, dairy free, caffeine free and sugar free....i did this and i cant tell you what a huge difference it has made to my welll being...also only eat fresh veggies and fruit leave out apples of course and citrus....in your case any other fruit that has an adverse affect on your digestive system. Eat fish, chicken, lamb plenty of water no fizzy drinks.....

You can get a huge range of the these foods in Tesco if your in UK.....if not in UK there must be stores where you live that do these foods as this way of eating is very popular..... its a bit more expensive....but what price your health!!😊...best wishes....and bon appetite...

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Ask your doctor to refer you to a dietician.

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Well said.

We saw (expensive) dieticians and couldn't help since it was always a routine trial: routine FODMAP,  routine emesis diet which is so different again from the so called 'healthy' diet, nothing helped, no news really either ....

but worth a go.

I heard about a girl via my friend,

who had similar issues.

Her intestine is working slowly but not due to typical gastroparesis, it seems that she can eat the so called unhealthiest diet (hamburgers bought) with no issues, no vomiting,

but dear me if she eats an apple.

Her condition was called 'lazy guts' and she can eat in the morning almost everything, but the later the day, the more careful she has to be.

She must never eat 'healthy' food after lunchtime,

since it seems to sit in her stomach for ages,

she can eat 'breads' (as unhealthy that is usually considered re gluten)

after lunchtime with no impact, can pick up a burger at 3pm, no problem.

But she cannot eat anything (not even a burger) after 5pm otherwise her night is ruined.

So basically she can eat everything, but has to time it,

the unhealthier the later she can eat it.

Very strange, but it seems a motility issue, so has to consider digestion (if easy or hard to digest, the harder the earlier to be eaten, to be avoided later in the day).

Maybe you could try timing of food?

An apple for 10am break vs an apple late afternoon?

Cooked veggies vs raw veggies, again morning vs afternoon?

= same food but at different times.

please keep a protocol/diary.

If not eating at least hard to digest foods after 5pm, what will happen?

7

An apple early in the day has yet to give me an issue, although I typically avoid them because I generally don't want to push things. Much like the girl you described, there does seem to be a time component to my issue with apples in particular. I know from experience I could never have a real fruit smoothy or many other healthy foods at dinner. They just don't "sit" right at that time of day. My best and only hope to get away with something like that is early in the day, and even then I can get acid reflux issues - my stomach can easily feel raw and putrid with raw fruits and vegetables. 

Your notion that there could be a motility issues makes a lot of sense. Admittedly, it's not something I considered very much. There are some foods that go right through me, but I figured it was because of the unhealthy foods I eat most often. Omlettes with hashed potatoes from a diner goes through me like I drank dish soap - It slides right on through. Perhaps the healthy foods require far more digestion though, and maybe my body is far more accustomed at this point to eating primarily foods that exit rather quickly.

I'll have to investigate motility issues in connection with raw fruits and vegetables to see if that's a potential issue. Does anyone have any additional information to that end? Anything that's worked particularly well to aid with motility issues?

8

Changing my diet that much is a big change to take on when I don't know what's up with my digestion in the first place. It is true that I'm more interested in a solution than a diagnosis, however. I just really would like to have a more targeted solution than "stop eating everything you currently eat" - I already know I eat horribly and that it needs to change. It's the pain I suffer in the process that is really difficult for me.

I don't think I could eat super healthy without some other component to ease the pain associated with eating those healthier foods. Something is off in there preventing me from doing this much like somebody would recognize an issue embarking on a jogging routine when they have a bad knee. They would get hobbled quickly and find it nearly impossible to keep it up. That's the equivalent scenario to what I'm dealing with here with my stomach.

There is perhaps another component to this mess that I should mention. About 10 years ago after I got married and was very stressed. In some weird coping mechanism, I ate loads of hot sauce on all my foods. My stomach took it like a champ until one day it revolted. To this day I can't eat hot sauce hardly at all anymore. I get hiccups almost immediately if I eat something hot and quickly am forced to stop eating. It's quite possible I damaged something back then that has never properly healed. Does anyone have any ideas as to what mechanism I possibly mangled down there?

 

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unfortunately no.

We got 'Domperidone' to trial and didn't help (different issue though, everything is slowed down)

and I know that girl with the 'lazy guts' got this medication, too. (after a gastric emptying study)

If she is still taking it, I don't know since the woman telling me about her had no update either.

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btw: an apple is a fiber rich food.

If you can't digest fiber rich food like an apple, the doc should why and what to do.

Other suggestion:

what happens if you peel an apple, what happens if you juice an apple (get rid of most fiber).

Some say the digestion problem is due to the 'green' unripe stuff we get in shops: unripe, long stored apples, unripe bananas.

?

Oh the many questions, it's really a hard topic you opened, as to how to help.

If you type in 'apple trouble digesting' you will see many battle the apple.

 

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Hi TheSrProgrammer

Just to say I had all the symptoms you are experiencing.....not anymore due to eating as I do now.....hope you find a solution ..best wishes....

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Well it's hard to argue with success. I didn't realize you personally suffered from the same issues.

In that case, I'll consider taking the jump...

13

I'll give a peeled apple a try in the AM and see if I get away with it. Ironically, my aging mother can chow down on apples one after the other with no issues at all - she eats at least 3 or 4 a day!

As far as the bananas go, I've been reading that my issue could be related to my allergies with what is referred to as Oral Allergy Syndrome. It's where your body identifies the proteins in certain foods as being close enough to the proteins you're allergic to, resulting in a mini allergic reaction. That seems entirely plausible considering my wide range of known allergies. Fortunately, my allergies are at best an annoyance most of the time. The banana actually annoys me more than cutting the grass.

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That's interesting.

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Well, I didn't follow any of the advice yet and have paid a dear price so far. This is the second morning in a row where I have woken early to a very painfully full stomach of acid. The feeling is so bad that both times I have induced vomiting to reduce the pain, and I've thrown up significant amounts of heavily concentrated stomach acid. The first night hurt; This second night is devastating. My stomach is completely destroyed at this point.

Any suggestions on how to get my stomach back to even "normal" at this point?