Food

I've written ad naseum about my digestive problems, and while I thought it was improving through August with the help of a naturopath, it goes worse in September (effecting walking days), both with the effects of the herbal drugs and with new problems.

We've seem to have hit the limit of what Berberine and Allicin does to combat the overgrowth of 3 opportunistic bacteria. The bacteria seems to wax and wane, sometimes with the drugs and sometimes without them.

This is in part because the side effects of the Allicin has had more of an impact on the system and my body than we anticipated and the likelihood the system can't keep up flushing the die-off of the bacteria from the drugs so it builds up and causes its own effects.

So we're still tinkering with dosage and frequency to find a balance, but the bacteria in the system may also be changing with good and/or new opportunistic bacteria. We have samples in the lab awaiting results to see if it's die, more of the same bacteria or new bacteria.

One goal is to reintroduce good bacteria, aka, probiotics, to the system but several tests of a variety of probotics (brands and types of bacteria, from single to multipel types) for the last two years have all produced disasterous results, like adding gasoline to a charcoal barbecue fire.

This applies to food with probiotics, commonly found in many dairy and other food products, such as yogurt and the like. I have to always read the ingredients when thinking of buying and/or trying new foods. Occasionally, though, I get a surprise.

I know I can't eat wheat. It's not the gluten so much as the wheat itself, described in the articles about FODMAPS (Google that to find a boatload of information) which I've followed with a lot of caveats as many foods there have been tested and are off-limits from the adverse effects.

But it's not know if those effects is from a normal situation or the current one, meaning the opportunistic bacteria is controlling more of my food senstivities than normal bacteria. One recent example is wheat.

A croissant recently made me sick for 3 days but some of a sourdough baguette didn't have any effect beyond normal. This was one test of each, but wheat has consistently produce adverse reactions which surprised me when the sourdough baguette didn't.

I keep trying food experiments which more often than not worsens things for a few days, but occasionally produce little or no effects more than normal, so it's still hit and miss, and sometimes the good (new) food is short-lived as the bad bacteria adapts and adjusts faster than the normal bacteria.

What I do know for sure is when I have to fast for medical tests, meaning no eating for 12 hours and sometimes 24-48 hours, the problems and the effects go to near zero, meaning the obvious, food feeds the bacteria and causes the adverse reactions.

Fasting also gives the system a respite from the internal war and helps the system flush any residual excessive bacteria and die-off out of the sytem. This means managing my food more which is hard because, as anyone knows, fasting always makes you hungry.

In addition I'm undergoing tests for possible side effects from the opportunistic bacteria, from what isn't recognized by medical professionals or science yet, but identified as "leaky gut syndrome", meaning the bacteria gets out of the intestinal tract into the body. The symptoms fit.

I've also learn the final answer might be what none of us wants, which is going the univeral antibiotic route, which destroys all the bacteria in the system, and then we have to rebuild it hoping the opportunistic bacteria doesn't survive long enough for the good bacteria to replace it and the body fight any future overgrowths.

Anyway, that's what I've learned to date. The fight goes on and the internal war goes on. The digestive system is so dynamic there's no permanent answers so far to improve things, yet anyway.