Today, I'm going to share what to do when you run into trouble
on the low FODMAP diet, so stay tuned. Hey there, if you're new here. Welcome
my name's Amanda Malachesky. I'm a certified functional nutrition health coach and a digestive
and allergy detective. To learn more about how to resolve your digestive symptoms for good, please
consider subscribing and be sure to hit the bell to be notified when I post a new video every week.
The low FODMAP diet is my go-to diet that I recommend for people who are having digestive
challenges, but it can be a little bit challenging to implement beyond the simple elimination phase.
So by the end of today's video, you'll have some common questions answered about how to
move through the other phases of the diet and how to answer questions like how do I know if
I'm having a reaction to a food I've reintroduced, and what do I do if I'm having a symptom flare?
I'd like to teach you how to think about these challenges for yourself, so that,
as you're navigating the diet, you can get through it like a pro. So let's get started.
This is the third video that I've made in a little series about the low FODMAP diet. So
if you're at all unclear about what the low FODMAP diet is or how to use it, I really
encourage you to go watch those other videos and I will leave links for that below this video.
So I've noticed that it's one thing to follow a diet template like the low FODMAP diet by
eliminating all the foods on a list. A lot of people are really, really skilled at doing this
and I bet you've already done this for one or another diet. But I have also noticed
that beyond this phase, people really get lost and they don't know what to do next.
And remember, I say this in a lot of my videos, but the point of the elimination diet is not
to just follow this elimination diet forever. The point of it is to help you identify
which foods are triggering your symptoms so that you can avoid them.
But I don't want you to avoid this giant long list of foods forever. That's not really healthy.
The first place that I see people having a lot of trouble with the low FODMAP diet is
with the reintroductions and they're not sure if they're seeing reactions to the foods that
they're trialing. So give me a like down below this video if you have ever been unsure about
whether or not you were having a food reaction. So if you're adding a food that you haven't had
for a little while during the elimination phase, the kinds of symptoms that you want
to be looking for are specifically an increase in digestive symptoms, so things like abdominal
pain or bloating, increased gas, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, heartburn. Like whatever
symptoms you were trying to get away from by eating the low FODMAP diet are the things that
you want to be looking out for in the first place. You might also have some symptoms like joint pain
or fatigue or brain fog or headaches, things like this. So do keep an eye out for those as well.
And I want you to keep in mind that these symptoms don't always happen immediately after you eat the
food. Some of these symptoms can take a day or even up to three or four days. And so this is a
really awesome opportunity to be using the key tool that I really strongly recommend that you
use while you're trying to figure out your food sensitivities, which is a food symptom
diary. And if you're not clear how to use that, I definitely encourage you to go watch my video How
to Use a Food Symptom Diary for IBS. The FODMAP app by Monash University also has a built-in food
diary. So that's another option if you have that diary already downloaded on your phone.
All right. So the next thing to talk about is what do you do if you're actually having a symptom
flare that's really uncomfortable and bothersome? The first thing of course is to stop eating the
food that's been causing you the new symptoms. And that's a pretty good indicator that you want to
take that food back out of your diet for the next while while you work on healing everything else.
Once you've done that, there's a couple of different options that you can do to get back to
normal. So one would be just to return to eating your normal soothing foods. So a lot of people
with IBS have that small list of foods that they eat when they're already having a symptom flare.
Another idea is you could do a three to four day gut reset with an elemental diet. Dr. Ruscio
sells are really delicious and tasty elemental diet product over on his website, drruscio.com.
So you can use that just as a temporary meal replacement for three or four days,
and that gives your digestive system a break while you recover from the flare that you're having.
Another possibility is to use something called binders, which are supplements that help kind
of bind up anything toxic or inflammatory in your gut. So one that I really like to use is
called GI Detox by Bio Botanical Research, or another kind of newer supplement on the market
is something called Serum Bovine Immunoglobulins, and these also bind up toxins and things that can
be causing irritation in your gut. So if that's something that's already been in your routine,
you could use that or you could give that a try. And then another option, if you're comfortable
doing it, is to use an enema just to help things move through the gut quickly and get rid of that
stuff that's causing the negative symptoms. I do have a video about how to do an enema
if you've never used one before, so I will be sure to leave a link for that below this video.
And then finally, once you're back to normal, you can resume your testing of
different categories of FODMAP foods to see which ones are causing your symptoms.
I do also have another video called IBS Flare Up Relief Plan,
so if you want some more ideas about what to do with that, you can go check that video out.
All right. The next question that I often see come up is people wondering, "Well,
why do I react to this FODMAP, but not this other FODMAP? What's going on there?" And
the reason for this is that FODMAPs are actually several categories of fermentable carbohydrates.
And the truth of it is is that you may not be sensitive to all the categories, and even within
a category that you have a lot of sensitivities, you might not be reactive to every food in that
list because some of them have different quantities of the fermentable carbohydrates.
It's pretty rare that you're going to react to everything. And usually what happens is
there's usually one or two categories that you're sensitive to. And this is why it's super important
to test the different categories of FODMAPs in your reintroduction phase so that you can narrow
down your search criteria. If you were to try to reintroduce every single high FODMAP food,
it would probably take you six months or a year to get through all of those and check for a reaction.
So you want to choose a representative food from each category, and then if you react to that food,
then you can take a closer look at the different foods in that list. But if you
don't react to some of the categories, then you might be able to just eat most of the
foods there and not worry about it anymore. So again, like I mentioned, in my last video,
the Monash University FODMAP app is a really phenomenal resource for all of this because
it has a catalog of different foods and you can click on each of them and it will tell you
which FODMAPs are high in that food. And you can also just see really quickly in the list,
they have a stoplight system, so red, yellow and green for those different
foods. So that's just a huge resource for you to help decide which foods to test.
Okay. Number four is a question from a YouTube viewer that I want to share with you. I'm going
to read it to you. It says, "Garlic is highly recommended for resolving SIBO, but it's a high
FODMAP. If the underlying reason for IBS is bacteria and candida, then garlic can help
address it. What's your take?" So this is a super great question and I think what they're asking is,
well, garlic's a high FODMAP food, so why would we use it to address SIBO, which is often a cause
of IBS and may be part of the FODMAP sensitivity? So garlic and onions are high in FODMAPs. They're
high in fructan, but the component that's used for treatment of SIBO
is a refined form of garlic. And so it's a component of garlic called allicin and allicin
in and of itself is not high FODMAP and so can be used by people who are on a low FODMAP diet. Now,
I should say though that all of us are unique, and just because there's no FODMAPs in that garlic
supplement, it doesn't mean that you won't react to it. So your personal reactions always trump
what the theory is or what a resource says about something or what every doctor is saying about
X, Y, and Z supplement. If you don't tolerate it, you don't tolerate it, and that's the bottom line.
Okay, number five is what if you react to a food that's not on the low FODMAP diet list,
should you still avoid it? And I'm of the belief that anytime you have a really noticeable reaction
to a food or a supplement or a medication or a behavior or anything, that that's something you
really shouldn't be doing more of because that reaction is a sign that you are experiencing
some kind of inflammation. And the whole point of this whole exercise is to reduce
inflammation in your digestive system so you can kind of get ahead of the curve and maybe resolve
some of the underlying factors of your symptoms. If you're eating the low FODMAP diet and you react
to a food that is a low FODMAP food that you should theoretically be able to eat on the low
FODMAP diet, I say take it out temporarily while you work on dealing with your underlying causes.
Okay, number six is should you avoid every different form of a FODMAP food? So for example,
if you are sensitive to apples, does that mean that you should avoid apples, dried apples,
apple sauce, and apple juice? And I would say yes, in general, that's the case. You might find during
your reintroduction process that you might be able to tolerate a small serving of something
or certain forms better than others, but during the elimination phase especially, yes,
you want to eliminate all forms of those foods. All right. The next thing that people run into
sometimes is something like this, my very favorite food is a high FODMAP food. Does that mean that
I can't ever eat that food again? And the answer is it depends. So again, the purpose of the diet
is to identify your food triggers. So if you do the elimination for a little while,
it's not forever, it's just for a couple of weeks, and then you reintroduce that food and you find
that you react really strongly to it with negative symptoms, then you're in the position where you
get to make a choice, either I'm willing to continue avoiding this to avoid my symptoms,
or I'm willing to experience these symptoms a little bit sometimes to have my favorite food.
But in general, I would recommend that you avoid it while you're continuing to have
strong reactions to it. And then, as you navigate through the elimination and reintroduction phase,
you might find, like I said in the last question, that sometimes you don't totally react to every
form of that food, or you might find that a small serving is okay, but a larger serving is not.
Just for an example, nuts in general are high FODMAP, more than 10 nuts is a high
FODMAP food. So this is a serving size dependent item. So 10 nuts seem to be low enough in FODMAPs
that they're not going to cause too much of a problem, but if you go up to having something
like a nut flour muffin, that could just take you way, way over the top. So do pay attention
to serving size and fiddle around with that. And then one other layer to this that I find isn't
really talked about, I really haven't seen it in any of these videos, but I know just from personal
experience that it's true, that ripeness can really influence the amount of certain kinds of
FODMAPs in foods. So for example, the ripeness of an apple or a pear. So the longer a fruit ripens,
the more of those fermentable sugars and starches may be built up in the food. It's
a little hard to tell the ripeness relatively of foods in the supermarket, but if you're somebody
who goes to farmer's markets and interacts directly with farmers, you might be able to
more easily buy things that are picked at the exact amount of ripeness and aren't overripe,
and this might help lower the amount of FODMAPs in those foods.
Okay, next item is a question that goes something like this, I've done a food allergy test and it
says I can eat high FODMAP foods. Can I eat the foods? And the answer to this really has to do
with the methods of these different food allergy tests. Usually they're testing for something
that's totally unrelated to FODMAPs. They're usually testing for either histamine or other
types of immune responses from the foods that you're eating. They're definitely not testing for
FODMAPs sensitivity. So even though that test says that you are not reacting to a FODMAP food,
it's not telling you whether or not you're having a problem with FODMAPs, it's just
telling you whether your immune system is directly reacting to that food with a histamine response or
some other type of immune mediated response. So there's not really much overlap there with
food sensitivity tests. So even though that test says you don't have reactions to FODMAP foods,
you still could have digestive symptoms from the difficulty digesting those starches. So in
this case, I really want you to, again, rely really heavily on the food symptom
diary to help get yourself clear about which of these foods are causing problems for you.
Do you have another question about FODMAPs that I didn't
answer? Please ask me in the comments below. So there are some ideas about how to navigate
through the FODMAP diet and how to troubleshoot some of the problems that may come up. Remember,
again, the purpose of this exercise is to figure out your food triggers
so that you can avoid them. And so that's the most important piece of the puzzle.
And if after all of this, you're still feeling confused, there's two main ways that I can
help you. The first is I encourage you to grab a copy of my Roadmap to Gut Recovery.
It's a short e-guide that shows you this process that I use one-to-one with my clients to help them
walk through this process on their own. And it gives you access to the food symptom diary and a
couple of their resources. So definitely go grab a copy of that if you'd like some more support,
but aren't ready to talk with me directly. You can head over to confluence nutrition.com/roadmap
to get your copy of that for free. And if you've already tried a lot of solutions
on your own and you're still feeling really confused and turned around about where to go next,
I really would love to talk with you in a free 30-minute assessment session. In that session,
we'll talk a little bit about what your next best steps might be, and we'll get a chance to
talk about what it would be like to work with me one-on-one. You can schedule that appointment by
going to confluencenutrition.com/contact, and I'll look forward to seeing you on my schedule.
So I hope this video helped you answer some of the trickier questions about the low FODMAP diet
and helped point you in the right direction about what to do. If you liked this video
and you found it useful, please consider liking it and share it with your friends
and family that might find it useful. And I'll look forward to seeing you next time. Take care.