Food

I had a followup appointment with the naturopath last week after prescribing (in the sense they can) health supplements 3 months ago to help digest food. For the most part, they helped a little but not significantly, and not for periods when matters got worse.

At the end we discovered I have two problems. First she reasoned from the symptoms and results of the health supplements to date my digestive isn't working because it's not producing enough of the acids, enzymes and proteins to fully digest food.

We know from tests my pancreas doesn't produce enough enzymes to help break down foods. Now she suspects the stomach isn't producing enough acid to predigest food and the small and large intestine aren't producing enough of all three to fully digest and process food.

This is why I have a lot of undigested food among other symptoms. So she prescribed new health supplements which adds the recommended acid, enzymes and proteins to the whole system. In the short time since taking them the changes have been more than a significant improvement.

The system is working to digest food again, which leads to the second problem. She added a probiotic after the antibiotics which helped somewhat but often excerbated the problems, meaning too much bacteria in the system which was a reflection of the first problem, not working.

She talked about the idea it's less what you eat sometimes but what you don't eat. Since I've had the problems over the last 9 years and especially last 3 years I've reduced my diet to the minimal which doesn't cause problems, and only try new foods occasionally, which usually causes problems.

And this is the second problem. The digestive system adjusts the diversity of the bacteria to the foods you eat, the more diverse the foods, the more diverse the bacteria, and vice versa. This is key when I ate foods I haven't eaten in awhile, sometimes years, the bacteria isn't there to digest it.

That's what has been part of the problem. I need to expand my foods to give the digestive system a more diverse microbiome to tolerate and digest foods. But before I can do that I have to make the system work to digest food in the first place.

So that's where I'm at. First, get the digestive system working, which signs seem to show it is working now, but this will take time as it and the body adjusts to the health supplements. Then, slowly add news foods, mostly fruits and vegetables which diversfy the bacteria in the system.

The goal being not to worry about what I eat with a far more diverse diet. Eventually I might be able to drop the probiotics, but it's clear I won't be able to drop the other health supplements since they're the one adding the acids, enzymes and proteins my system doesn't produce anymore.

But I'll take it since I can begin to enjoy food and not worry how my system will react.