Digestion questionI KNOW THAT AS WE AGE

[hastings]

i know that as we age our digestion ability changes. As a permanent colostomy survivor, are there foods that we should not consume as we age?

[To Dream a Dream]

From my personal experience of having an ileostomy for many years, I find acidic foods (tomato products, vinegar dressings, spices, etc.) have become a problem. Perhaps, due to changes in my posture from aged bones & adhesions after multiple surgeries. Have you checked out the UOAA website? Here's a link that may help: https://www.ostomy.org/diet-nutrition/
It's good to see you posting.

[sandys]

I have to remember that high fiber foods (Raw veggies mostly) are a problem but recently Bagboy mentioned that Metamucil was helpful and I have been trying to remember to take some before dinner with good results.

I like coleslaw and if I put a portion in a bowl and microwave it for a few minutes it softens enough to digest easily for me. . I add salad dressing and chill.

[BillGK]

I have diverticulosis/itis that just about killed me - literally - about 10 years ago. And before my bowel perforated I had issues for years, thinking that the problem was IBS. I have had continuous problems, since my bowel perforated, and CT scans show diverticulosis at numerous sites in the bowel.

Now as I get older my digestive symptoms are getting progressively more noticeable, with plenty of discomfort on a near-daily basis. About two and a half months ago I had a major flare in my condition. When you get a diverticulitis flare you stop eating everything except clear liquids, to allow the system to rest. Then you go back to what you were doing - rinse, repeat. And you never really understand what it is that is making you worse.

Having gone though these sorts of flares numerous times, and getting little useful advice from the medical community, which doesn’t understand diverticular disease, really, I began looking for alternative ideas. The one that I came across is from rachelstea.com. These people - a guy by the name of Mike and his daughter Rachel - use a concept called food groupings. Now, let me say up front that they sell products, and whenever I run into a situation where somebody is peddling an idea and selling products it makes my antenna wiggle - I am a bit of a natural skeptic. But I was pretty much at a loss for ideas, so I gave their diet a try.

What they believe is that there are three basic food groupings: Neutral foods such as vegetables and pure fats/oils, carbohydrate foods, and protein foods. Their ideas is to not mix protein and carb foods in a single meal. Eat protein and neutral, eat carb and neutral, but do not eat cart and protein at the same time.

Their claim is that mixing carbs and proteins at the same time causes the stomach to produce hydrochloric acid. Avoiding carbs and protein at the same time allows enzyme digestion with minimal acid. Acid digestion damages the mucosa in the intestines and promotes serious intestinal problems.

So I’ve tried this diet for 2-1/2 months. And this skeptic is a lot less skeptical than he was at the beginning! I cannot tell you how much of difference this diet has made. I now have a plan for managing my problem.

So, yes, as I age my condition gets worse. But I think that I have found a plan that will get me through - food groupings. It’s not a plan that has been double blind tested and FDA approved, for sure. But for these digestive issues for which medical science is not able to provide good recommendations we just have to try to find things that work. And I have now seen enough of Mike and Rachel’s method, recipe suggestions, detailed recommendations on how to eat, that I am convinced that these people are sincere and are on to something, at least for me. For people having serious gut issues and aren’t getting a lot of help from conventional medicine, I recommend consideration of food groupings.

[To Dream a Dream]

Thanks for the information, Bill. It's an interesting concept for a debilitating problem. Yes, there are many conditions that our modern medicine cannot fully define let alone treat effectively. I've seen a number of like scenarios over the many years I've managed to survive. My late great surgeon was fond of stating that the body tends to try & heal itself. He seemed to feel that medicine should respect that & simply try to augment the process.
In an effort to avoid mixing carbs & proteins, would that mean no milk on cereals. Nor bread products to make sandwiches? Being on a celiac diet for a number of years after a gluten intolerance diagnosis was finally made, I find your post thought provoking.

[BillGK]

There is another aspect to this diet,in that there are about 7 foods that are not to be eaten. These avoidance foods are recommended through experience, meaning that the owner of the diet has worked with thousands of people with gut issues and surveyed them about things such as, “what did you eat before your flair?” #1 was yogurt, so this is an avoidance food. Also, nut butters, Ensure-type products, and a few others. This is based on his summary survey data, not any great theory. I really like this, as it is based n large sample of hard data, rather than the old “don’t eat seeds and nuts” type of thing, for which there is virtually no empirical support.

To your questions: Yes, no milk on cereals. This isn’t a problem for me, now that I’ve discovered almond milk, which is compatible with carb foods and which I actually prefer to cow’s milk. And a hamburger is a no, since it is mixing carbs and proteins, as you note. And I am gluten intolerant, so my bun would be gluten free, but it’s a no-no, taken along with meat, on this diet.

I did this diet, to the letter, from March 1 to May 1, two months, and the improvement is remarkable. So, I’m willing to live with these grouping restrictions. My main problem with the diet is weight management. I have lost weight and have a hard time getting it back. I’ve had to have my clothes altered. I feel very healthy and energetic, so it’s not a health issue. The reason that I’m losing weight is that I’m eating less junk and more whole foods. Tonight I had a protein dinner - smoked pork chop, green beans, salad with oil and vinegar. Two hours later I had a big dish of brownie and cheap, lactose free (I’m mildly intolerant) ice cream - brownie is carb, cheap ice cream has most protein removed, so is carb heavy. All legal. For breakfast this morning I had scrambled eggs from pasture-raised hens (stop abusing the poor chickens, America!), Nueske bacon (if you are a bacon fan and haven’t had it you haven’t lived: https://www.nueskes.com/), and a large slice of aged cheddar. Tomorrow I’ll likely have a gluten free waffle with fruit and orange juice. I might have some cheese, mid-moring. Lunch might be leftover cauliflower crust pizza topped with cheese, pepperoni and vegetables.

Some might shrink back in horror at the foods I eat. Well, I’m eating mostly what my grandparents and parents ate, whole foods mostly, and they lived into their late 80s and my my mother checked out at 100, and they didn’t even have Lipitor, lol. I basically don’t believe much of anything that nutritionists peddle. The digestion process is complex beyond present day science: We ingest food, the digestive system converts it into a mash ball if you will, and the body extracts what it needs and eliminates the rest. Nobody understands what the body is actually doing. If they did we would have a single preferred diet, rather than a new fad diet every two years. I am 77 years old. In my time I have seen eggs go from a recommendation of one a week to whatever you want. I have seen coffee morph from an outcast to a health food. Salt,for most people including me, has no effect on blood pressure. And on and on. I have abandoned conventional food advice and gone to eating what my grandparents would recognize as food, doing it in moderation.

Back to this diet, here is a link to the little pamphlet that these people sell. Actually they give it away on their website. Scroll down to the review by Doreen Conte, if you would. I read this review, and it stopped me dead in my tracks: “You can’t win without a plan, here it is”. I realize that I HAD NO PLAN! Doreen nailed it, in nine words, and this was the moment that I decided to try the diet. Mike Hohlweg, the author, also has some youtube videos that explain his ideas, and they are good, and although I have a generally skeptical personality (hey, I’m a retired engineer who has had far too many encounters with Murphy, lol) Mike and his daughter Rachel have credibility with me.

https://www.amazon.com/Diverticulitis-D ... op?ie=UTF8

Rachel sends her readers a recipe each week and some of them are quite good and all of them fit the diet, making it easier.

Like most folk remedies, this sort of thing is “try it, it might help”. No double-blinded, Phase 3 results.

[JerryNYC]

My first thought on reading this was that it sounds like "quackery". But if it works, don't knock it. I wonder if others may have tried this. I am also a skeptic and it might have worked for you for some unique reason. I would be more convinced if others have had similar results. But, in any event, their "scientific" explanation for why this works is utter nonsense.

[BillGK]

Jerry, as I said, this is a folk remedy. I see no science behind it, nor do I see any statement on the author’s part that claims that he has made a scientific discovery. I have a couple of degrees in engineering and a pretty fair understanding of the scientific method, and I feel qualified to judge his words.

There are a couple of types of science. Mostly we think of science as advancing a hypothesis that is either confirmed or falsified via experiment/observaation. This type of science attempts to establish causal connections - a scientific *explanation*. It is our strongest form of science.

A weaker form might be the classification of phenomena - paleontology as an example. It doesn’t make serious attempts to provide a causal explanation.

I don’t see the author making scientific claims of either type. What he has done is to work with people who have various and serious digestive issues, and observe correlations. This is especially true with his advice to avoid certain foods. For example, he thinks that yogurt is a food that should be avoided. Why does he think this? He claims to have surveyed thousands of people who he has worked with, asking them what they ate just before a flare. Based on the survey data he has accumulated, he feels that people should avoid yogurt. This is a correlation. Correlations in and of themselves aren’t science.

He has no formal hypothesis, tested by experimentation, replicated by others, peer reviewed, etc. He has nothing more than folk experience and a belief that he has something that works. He has his idea of why it works, which may be right and may be wrong. Where do you see anything that even approaches actual, empirical science?

I have consulted GI specialists at the Mayo Clinic and they have *no clue* of the causal chain that produces diverticular disease in my gut. Everything that we have been told about popcorn hulls, nuts, fiber, lifestyle has no scientific basis that I have ever found. In fact, most of the dietary advice of conventional medicne has been debunked in recent years. Also, in spite of the claims that the American diet is to blame, I have never found a shred of actual science to support the claim - have you? What I see is nothing but correlations, fueled by imagination. I consider nearly every bit of what I have been told by conventional medicine about causal links, to be, in your vocabulary, “ utter nonsense”. Any conventional medicine that has been recommended to me attempts to treat symptoms, with never a coherent explanation of causes.

Given that I see nothing that begins to approach what you call “scientific explanation” (which would require a hypothesis, verified by experiment, replicated, peer reviewed), I would ask you to substantiate your claim of “utter nonsense”. What science?

In the end, I sit here as a natural-born skeptic who has 30 years of applied science experience, who has the scars to prove that Murphy was an optimist, and I have had positive results with this diet. I have a gradually deteriorating gut, and I feel better than I have felt in years. At this point, I don’t give a rat’s ass about science, because there is no science that I know of. All I care about is anything that makes my gut livable. So far, so good. And if it’s all a placebo effect, I could not care less.

[To Dream a Dream]

Right on, Bill. And I think my late great surgeon would agree. Take it from this old timer who believes in any sort of positivity that works for the individual as long as it is not hurtful to others. May you continue to be blessed by improving physical health, mental acumen & unbounded generosity.