Worsening Chronic Digestive Issues

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This is a bit of an embarrassing topic, but it's getting really bad and I need to start trying to figure out what to do about it.

I seem to be having difficulties digesting my food normally. About a year or so ago I would poop about once per day, not too loose or firm, no problems. I had gas like everyone does, and sometimes it was pretty bad-smelling, but that seems to run in my family and I never thought much of it.

Some months ago (maybe 6 or so?) I started to realize I was farting way more often than I used to, and it was really foul-smelling. I mean... Room-clearing level of stench. It's embarrassing even to write that anonymously on the internet; you can't imagine how embarrassing it was when it happened in public or at work. At the same time, my stools got looser. At first I thought I had diarrhea, but when it didn't get better and was still only happening about once per day, I realized it must be something else.

After talking to a friend about it I realized I was probably lactose intolerant. I cut dairy out of my diet for a few days and it got quite a bit better, so it seemed lactose intolerance was the culprit. I was devastated; I don't eat much meat and I love the local fried cheese sandwiches. But finally I decided I had better stop eating cheese and try to cut out dairy as much as possible. No way I could survive that terrible embarrassing smell any longer.

I still had a bit of milk in coffee sometimes, or a bit of butter on bread, but it didn't seem to make things any worse. In the past 2 months or so, however, things have taken another downturn. The smell is back with a vengeance and I'm having to poop several times a day - pretty much every time I eat. I stopped all the dairy entirely but it hasn't helped. I'm finding that I have problems pretty much no matter what I eat. I haven't changed my diet at all, so I can't figure out what the problem is. Years ago I was tested as being slightly allergic to eggs, and I do notice slight problems after I eat them that I didn't have before, but I don't have them very often. I was never tested for any other food allergies. Lately I'm finding I have problems after eating tuna fish, ramen noodles (not the instant kind - I make soup from scratch with fresh veggies and spices then add a block of noodles to make it filling), hamburgers, lentils, any kind of beans, almost any kind of soup, pretty much any meat, spaghetti with sauce... I almost always eat fresh home-cooked food, never "instant" or frozen or preserved meals and almost never fast food (or even restaurant food). Basically, it doesn't seem to matter what I eat anymore, it all gives me the upset stomach and awful smell. I can't remember the last time I had a properly solid bowel movement.

I don't know exactly what is causing this and I shudder to think of the tests I'd have to undergo to get some kind of diagnosis. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is there maybe something I could eat or drink that might improve my overall digestion? I'm getting desperate. : (

See a doctor

It seems to me that vaguely defined (but tiresome!) bowel problems are part of the joys of Aspie life. However you are describing symptoms (especially changes in frequency or consistency) that really ought to be checked out by a doctor. The tests he might prescribe if he is worried aren't a whole heap of fun...... (graphic descriptions available on request!).... but are a whole lot better than the kind of emergency replumbing I ended up with. Sorry if this isn't what you want to hear, but I speak from intense personal experience, when I say - time to talk seriously to your doctor!

Damn it... Really? Seeing a doctor is not an easy thing for me to do. I have the most basic health insurance available (minimum required by law here) and almost nothing is covered. More importantly, the doctors almost never speak English (and the ones who do are more expensive) and I don't speak the local language well enough to go without a translator.

I'm not feeling sick overall or anything. There's nothing painful or uncomfortable, just... have to go all the time and it smells horrid. Almost always right after I eat. You really think it's likely to be that serious? Maybe it's just simple lactose intolerance, more severe than it seemed at first, and I'm just missing milk or butter in cooking recipes or something?

Well I heard about this person with sort of an opposite set of issues in which their flatluence was lacking in smell. So they went to the doctor thinking it might be hemorrhoids but the doc say it was adenoids. Try chewing a couple of Papaya Enzymes after protein meals..grease etc. Should help a bunch but maybe not with the stink. Lay off the boiled cabbage..pork n beans etc. Boiled eggs..dead fish blah blah blah. I have special digestive enzymes from the health food place. They work wonders but are mostly Papaya..sulphuric acid etc. Also watch your cooking oils. Canola is deadly poison in spite of what the exspurts claim. Stick with olive oil. Light bodied for frying..XXX Virgin Greek cold pressed for eating. Also..grab a jug of Braggs's Raw Organic Unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar. Take a slug or two after meals. Its loaded up with free digestive enzymes. Also wonderful in vinegarsetts..salad dressings etc.. Will make a person chunk rocks at high dollar balsamics flavorwise. Most well stocked yup food stores have it nowadays. Health food shoppes have it for sure. Best of fortunes. Stay away from Doctors. They kill folks for a living. Also figger out if your lactose intolerant and if you aint start having some live culture yogurt for breakast. That helps tame the unruly guts plumb on down by keeping the good bacteria happy. If we miss it one day..there can be trouble..lol. Surely there is somewhere to get it for them who cant do dairy.

Last edited by bigwheel on 29 Nov 2012, 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You'll excuse me if I disagree. I used to follow this logic, and found myself in emergency surgery when a tumour the size of a grapefruit ripped through the wall of my intestine. If it hadn't been for doctors, I'd be compost by now!

No, it's not likely to be that serious, especially at your age. But I was horrified to talk to somebody aged 22 who had been told by his doctor he was too young to have anything serious: there was somebody aged about 16 having chemotherapy at the same time I was having my treatment. I'm not trying to frighten you, but nor am I trying to tell you not to bother. The symptoms you describe would suggest medical investigation according to current UK best practice.

Very glad for your happy outcome. Chance are greater they will kill a person than will make them well. Doctors have killed nearly all my dead kinfolks. Turmeric is very good for preventing cancer/turmors. My elderly over weight Auntie had a non malignant belly tumor which weighed 25 pounds. The doctors thought she was pregnant for a while. Yeppers she did not take or eat Turmeric or Curcumin. Which is a more pure version of it seems like.

I had horrific digestive problems ongoing over several years, as well. I also reluctantly cut out dairy and found that to be somewhat helpful, however as time progressed I still had really bad pain and things that you describe at times. I eventually went gluten free as well as dairy free (and yes, dairy does sneak into things that you dont think of, but it will affect you, such as if my mom makes pancakes with cow milk instead of almond milk forgetting that it will make me sick and I forget to ask her which she used...)

It wasn't like I was eating oreo cookies either, I would eat a bowl of Kix cereal and have horrible digestive pain. It is worth giving a try. I ran both of these past my dr bc I didnt know if she would want to do tests, etc, and she basically said "try it and if it works keep doing that" on the eliminated items (dairy, gluten/wheat). So far that has worked for me, I can definitely tell when I get some of those items in a large enough quantity that my digestion suffers.

I have differing digestive problems. More during youth, have had terrible gas and suffer some kind of backing um... strange toilet habit where I wouldn't go for days, then one day stuck on the toilet which seem to go on forever... these days the old bowel goes far less and accompanied by irritation, despite a fiber increase and laxative for the bad days. This was a change as I had to loose 8st in weight.

Thanks for all the responses, guys. For the moment I'm going to try just being more careful about absolutely eliminating dairy, including small amounts of butter, milk, and cream in food. It's especially tough at work because I get the same food as the kids do - today, for example, I'm currently eating plain rice with some soup poured over it, as that was the only thing without dairy in it. However, if I seem to be getting better, I'll just have to start cooking my own meals in advance and bringing them to work with me. So far today I haven't had any big problems, so that's encouraging. If I don't see any improvement after a week I'll start looking for a doctor.

In response to other things that were said:

I am not able to get all these specialty food items here. I live in Central Europe and the selection of foods is quite a bit smaller than the in US or UK. There are a few "bio" food stores that I could try for some of these things, but they are not well stocked or even all legitimate, and now and then you here some news agency has tested the food in the "organic" sections and found that they were not organic at all, just normal fruits and veggies falsely labeled and with the price jacked up. So I can't rely on specialty foods or supplements here. What I am able to get very easily is all different types of tea. I'm hoping I can find one that will help a bit - I have a friend studying herbal medicine who said she'll see what she can find for me.

I don't even think canola oil is legal here. I use extra virgin olive oil for everything, or if I need large amounts for frying I use sunflower oil (but that's no more than a couple times per year).

I've heard that proper yogurt with live cultures is safe for lactose intolerance because the enzymes in it break down the lactose for you, but I'll wait a while without any dairy before trying that, to see if it makes a difference.

While I have the digestive problems, I do not experience any pain from it. So far I don't think the problem is gluten (I'll be in trouble it if is - gluten-free foods are expensive here and I don't make a lot of money, plus I LOVE the local bread and I'd be devastated if I had to cut dairy AND bread!). Yesterday I bought a carton of soy milk for the first time. I don't use milk very often, just for coffee or cereal now and then, so I'll have to see how it tastes and whether I can bear it.

I have had a lot of bad experiences with doctors but as long as you're careful about getting second opinions and making sure the doctor is reputable, I don't see any reason to dismiss everything they say. They're not gods and they don't always have all the answers, but they're not out to kill people either. I'm sorry to hear some people had such bad luck, but I think it's more the exception than the rule - and if you don't trust what your doctor says, there's always the option of going to another one.

Now, if removing dairy doesn't help things, I suppose I will need to go to a doctor after all, but that will be quite an ordeal. I don't even have a doctor. I'd have to find one, and anyone who speaks English would be really expensive. All the people I ask here have private doctors outside of Prague that they've been seeing their whole lives, so I can't even find a good recommendation. I really hope I don't have to go to all that trouble. Crossing fingers, squeezing thumbs, all good vibes accepted!

From what I understand, the two foods that tend to cause the most gas are dairy and wheat/grains. Since you experimented with avoiding dairy and that didn't work out as hoped, you might try eating a wheat free diet to see if helps. Also thought to mention, since the dairy free diet worked at first, sometimes people with dairy allergies are also allergic to beef - basically anything from a cow might be a problem. Avoiding beef and dairy at the same time might be worth a try also.

I know for me personally, eating wheat free cut way down on the flatulence. An article I recall on how eating wheat can change bowel flora leading to gas.

"You are BETTER than your bowel flora"

http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/09/y ... wel-flora/

Well I'm going to give it some more time after completely eliminating dairy (carefully watching out for and avoiding even small amounts in things like coffee and butter on bread or in potatoes or fried veggies, etc.) before I start to worry about wheat. I'm afraid that article you linked is very difficult to follow, and the comments section afterwards seems to be full of people saying they've been wheat-free for a long time and are having terrible digestive problems... : /

Also, it seems that cutting wheat can cause you to lose weight? I'm pretty underweight already. 170 cm and only 53 kilos (or 5'7" and about 117 lb). I'm also having troubles getting enough iron. If I eat a lot of meat (mostly chicken and tuna since I don't like pork and don't trust beef) I stop getting so bruised up all the time, but my stomach tends to be upset (also meat is expensive, I'm not good at cooking it, and the quality in this area is terrible, full of chemicals and antibiotics). If I try to replace meat with things like lentils and soybeans and green leafy vegetables (except for spinach which apparently reduces your body's ability to absorb iron), I don't have the upset stomach so much but I get terribly stinky gas instead. If I try to take iron supplements I get the worst of both worlds: stomach pains, diarrhea, and foul gas. I know there's a high iron content in the local bread so I do eat at least a little bit of that whenever I can (also it's delicious). What will I do if I can't eat wheat?

I'll keep crossing my fingers that the total removal of dairy does the trick.

EDIT: Actually, now that I really think about it, my doctor had me tested for celiac disease at the same time she was testing me for hyperthyroidism for the third or fourth time. The test came back negative. It was so long ago I had forgotten about it... I suppose it's still possible I'm sensitive to wheat, but it's an encouraging thought, right?

Skip the soy milk. I don't know what the price of nuts are in CR, but if you have a blender, making nut milk is super easy, and you can use nearly any variety. I use hazelnut, my mum uses almond, and one of my friends uses pecan. Soak 1/2c nuts overnight, blend until very smooth, strain through a nut-milk bag (somewhere between cheesecloth and a tea bag) into a quart-size jar, and fill with water. If you can get hemp seeds (will not produce a narcotic effect), you don't have to soak or strain either!

If you cut out gluten, I strongly recommend quinoa*, rice, and millet (but not couscous, unfortunately) for whole grains. Each can also be ground and used as flour, as well as sorghum, teff, amaranth, and buckwheat (not related to wheat). You can also save the grounds from the nut milk and use that for flour. The problem with gluten-free flours is that each differs in density and moisture-content, making it difficult to perfectly replicate recipes with wheat flour. But it can be done.

I sincerely hope that helps. Becoming a gluten-free vegan has definitely helped alleviate some of my stomach cramps and mood swings, but unfortunately the gas remains. I don't even eat very many beans (nuts on the other hand....). I can't get a lot of specialty items where I am either, but I tend to favour whole foods anyway.

As far as doctors are concerned, mine frowned at my symptoms then told me straight out that, unless I was dying, tests probably wouldn't reveal anything. Sure enough, my blood test came back "normal," despite the fact that I had lost 10 pounds in the last 8 or 10 months, and have lost another ten in the two months since then.

If you find a diagnosis or a cure, or if you want help finding recipes, send me a PM.

*Quinoa is technically a seed, and is therefore called a pseudo-grain.