Another requested one
My diet is a topic I have tackled from both health and bloat/skinvanity perspectives.
Ever since I was a teenager, I have always had issues with
my skin after eating chocolate. It would be like clockwork, 24-48 hours after
said chocolate indulgence, *poof*, a mountain range of spots would appear
around my mouth.
After being told by many GP’s that chocolate does not cause
acne, I did my own research and found that in fact whilst dairy, and iodine
found in dairy, does not cause acne, it certainly can trigger it or worsen it.
At this point I cut out dairy almost entirely and ta da, I noticed a
significant improvement in my skin. If I must have chocolate I try and have
dark (as it’s the milk that is the problem not the cocoa) or, and this is the
more likely option, enjoy all the chocolate and just accept I will have spots
in a few days (I avoid this option if I have a big even in said upcoming days).
Funnily enough, years later, we are now being told by every
“health coach” and nutritional “expert” out there that dairy is the devil when
it comes to acne.
I have suffered from IBS since I was about 16 so bloating
was nothing new to me, but this was about all the diet modifications I made
until last year when a dose of norovirus left me....digestively challenged.
It was at this point I decided that action need to be taken,
and being one for not doing things by
halves, I booked to see a dietician and a colonic hydrotherapist.
The colonic was an enlightening experience. There was no
pain, neither physically or mentally. My therapist (Jackie Turner, who I now
see every 4-6 months, link below) was welcoming and knowledgeable. The process
took around an hour for the first session as it required a history and explanation
of the procedure. Said “procedure” involves body-temperature water entering the
colon, and leaving the colon again with the rubbish your body cannot
effectively get rid of itself. There is no “pump”, the water is in a tank near
the ceiling, and enters the body through a pipe via gravity alone.
Your body
then ejects the water through its normal peristaltic action, so there is
nothing being forced; it works naturally with the body.
To make some sense of the anatomy, your colon empties in
the bottom left corner of your abdomen. It travels upwards towards your ribs,
turns 90 degrees and twists to run horizontal to your diaphragm then
turns again (in a more gentle manner this time) and runs down to join onto the
small intestine.
You can in fact aid your own bloating by massaging in a circle
from your right hip bone, up to your ribs, from right to left of your ribs and
down to your left hip bone. This is the path of digestion in the large
intestine
At the first session the water was only able to get halfway
along the transverse colon, so a second session was needed, which took round
30-45 mins. In this session the water was much more quickly able to reach the
first portion of the ascending colon. After these 2 sessions I felt light as
air. There was some slight cramping and discomfort the afternoon after my
second session but immediately the bloating disappeared and the pain under my
left ribs vanished (this is where the descending colon twists and becomes the
transverse colon, so if this area is blocked rib pain occurs, I thought it was
just my bra digging in!)
At the same time, I had been researching solutions to me
continuous bloating. Various things appear on Google including food intolerance
testing.
This is where it got complicated. There seemed a million
different companies offering various ways to tell you what foods you were
“allergic” or intolerant to. The most common way was through a pin prick of blood
which you drew at home and sent to a lab/placed on a strip which then changed
colour. The blood is supposedly tested for levels of IgG (an antibody produced
by the body in response to pretty much ANYTHING which isn’t itself).
According to NICE guidelines (the body that basically makes
guidelines for anything medical – they are the rules we abide by as dentists
and doctors), the only true detector of food allergy is IgA. This is the
antibody produced in response to pollen in hayfever sufferers, bee stings,
insect bites and to peanuts in those with a true peanut allergy. It leads to
swelling, redness, watery eyes, runny nose etc. Yes you can test for this, but
you could still be intolerant to a food without being allergic to it.
Therefore I disregarded any of the IgG testing method.
There is also something called “kinesiology” where a
therapist places a food item on the body and pressing on a muscle. If the
person is stressed by the food, the muscle will unlock (go weak) whereas if
there is no stress involved, the muscle will remain locked (strong).
Personally, if a blood test for IgG antibodies is deemed not a reliable method
of intolerance testing, then I believe even less strongly in the ability of
this method to truly detect a problem.
So....off to the dietician I went to be led on the FODMAP
elimination diet. It is worth noting that while technically you could do this
yourself, even with my science background it was difficult to get my head
around. Similarly, nutritionists or nutritional therapists cannot introduce the FODMAP elimination diet as their professions
(unlike dieticians) are not subject to any registration and so their level of
education is not regulated.
The premise is, that certain carbohydrates stay in the
digestive system long enough to start fermenting. This is great for the body as
longer digestion = more calories burnt, more nutrients absorbed, feel full
longer. However, this fermentation produces gases which lead to bloating.
FODMAP stands for the food groups which you have to eliminate.
Before seeing the dietician, the only pre made food I ate
were cinnamon Quaker oats sachets and the “natural” pea snacks from Lidl so I
thought I was going to get off pretty easy with not having much to eliminate. I
was wrong. There were a plethora of fruits I had to eliminate, no gluten, no
lactose. This was relatively easy compared to having to delete onions, garlic,
nuts, soy and celery. Turns out they put this in EVERYTHING. Meatballs,
sausages, lea and perrins, stock, gravy. It also means you pretty much cannot
go out for food because even though they may cook something with no sauce
(although frankly what’s the point of food without sauce when you’re paying for
it!), they will probably have involved seasoning or stock at some point so it
just wasn’t worth the effort or in fact embarrassment of being “that” customer.
Cutting a long story short, you cut these out for 4-8 weeks
(depending how long it takes for the symptoms to go), then you introduce the
big 3 (onions, garlic, leek) individually then the food groups. Turns out I am
intolerant to:
sweet potato (a massive bummer as I was having this every
day)
broccoli - only if eaten every day or in combination with other trigger foods such as sweet potato
gluten (I can live without it and will take the hit if it’s
a home-made cake)
sweet corn and corn cakes (which I thought would be better
for me than rice cakes, turns out not!)
lactose (I sort of assumed this from the acne reactions),
especially in cheese and cream forms
apples and dried fruit or in fact anything high in fructose
beans and peas – although fortunately hummus in small
amounts is fine
sweetener other than sucralose, stevia and erythritol. I can
also have aspartame but won’t because of the negative effects it has
As a by product of this FODMAP elimination diet, which
technically is only designed for reducing symptoms of IBS, I lost 2 kilos, and
my skin completely settled down. I did not have a single new spot the whole
time I was on the diet and any bumps or scars I had completely calmed down.
Here is a before and after. I managed to dig out the same
clothing in an effort to try and keep the 2 images as similar as possible. Bear
in mind, there are no filters, no fake tan, no posing, no lighting modifications
because I am not an Instagram model, I am a real person and I want you to see
the difference in reality, not from one pose to another.
I have written a shorter post on the supplements I use/food
group substitutes I use so stay tuned for that
And dietician: http://www.ckennynutrition.co.uk/
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