A carb called fructan may be the culprit behind gluten sensitivity | Hacker News Reader

A carb called fructan may be the culprit behind gluten sensitivity

vox.com

55 pointscurtis22 comments

Also, there is some theories fat protects people from allergies of some food, that's why people losing weight sometimes become allergic to many foods. They never had a gluten allergy or nut allergy but now they do after weight loss.

So when heard about the fat/allergy connection it clicked with me too.

I had the same thing happen to me, working with cement, lost major weight due to job, became allergic to all kinds of chemicals. Doc blamed the Lime, but after looking back, I'm suspecting the weight loss, as the tests reported I was allergic to everything, but it went away after 1-2 years, this was over 20+ years ago.

Very interesting, I've spent a lot of time in various doctor's offices, and I've always noticed while getting allergy shots there are so many very thin people. Even the small children look skinny. Maybe only 10% of people look overweight, whereas at other offices often 60-70% of the people look overweight. Also the biggest person I saw at allergist was mildly obese where I've seen tons of 300+ lb people at many other specialties.

Could be that but it could also be partly that people with allergies are more conscious/aware of the food they're eating

Yep, or the other way round, people with this or that problem in digesting food (or however food related symptoms even if not a proper allergy or medical condition) tend instinctively to eat less, hence they are thinner, while "healthy" people that have no adverse effect from eating anything tend to eat a bit more and are thus fatter.

> I was allergic to everything, but it went away after 1-2 years

Would you say they went away because you regained some of the lost weight/fat?

Most of the research on FODMAPs have come out of Monash University in Australia. Here’s a video from one of the lead researchers making a presentation on it. https://youtu.be/ByszVbFBPtY

I’ve been on this for two weeks. The diet is incredibly restrictive and unenjoyable. My symptoms have been a little better judging from my food/symptom log.

> I’ve been on this for two weeks. The diet is incredibly restrictive and unenjoyable. My symptoms have been a little better judging from my food/symptom log.

I don't know if this is the place for "It Gets Better", but my wife was also on the diet, and also found it restrictive and unenjoyable, but found a noticeable difference in her symptoms. One important point is that it is not meant to be a lifelong diet; it is meant to provide a 'reset' on which a future satisfactory baseline, with lower FODMAPs (especially in areas of discovered sensitivity) but not none, can be built. She has found much more success managing her symptoms since then. (One example discovery: a previous lactose-intolerance test had totally failed to catch her severe lactose intolerance.)

FODMAP

My father recently had a doctor point him towards this -- for a condition significantly more troublesome than many apparent symptoms with non- or non-diagnosed celiac gluten sensitivity.

He took a look at the diet's do's and don't's, and ruled it out. What would he eat? (And he and my mother have eaten pretty darned healthily, up to now -- pre FODMAP recommendations.

So, is FODMAP real? Or is this the next "gluten free"? Because it rules out a LOT of what we've considered to be a healthy and healthily diverse diet.

FODMAP is real, most of the people I know who are on the diet where it has helped have SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth). The problem is that SIBO can have a bunch of causes. Mostly what I hear is that they get the antibiotic and whatever underlying cause can't be found or fixed so they get put on a low-FODMAP diet to stop the bacteria from growing out of control. Doesn't work for everybody, guess it depends on your gut bacteria and what they can survive on, but it seems to work for enough people that doctors recommend it.

Thanks. I think I need to nudge him to do some more of his own research. He definitely needs anything that may help.

I actually had SIBO a while back. Several years ago I had a terrible GI doctor who kept saying all my symptoms were in my head. I eventually got to the point where I weighed less than 100lbs and was constantly sick despite being desperate to stomach anything without falling ill. She would just shrug all this off and tell me nothing was wrong. Eventually I switched to a better doctor who immediately diagnosed me with SIBO, and further testing showed that I was genetically incapable of producing fructose transportation enzymes in my small intestine. Of course most things that contain fructose are high in many other sugar alcohols that ferment in the large intestine and cause an over growth in bacteria that thrive in this environment. After my old doctor was discovered to have nearly killed an infant with her refusal to actually do her job, we filed a complaint. Of course MultiCare swept everything under the rug and did nothing...

https://www.monashfodmap.com/about-fodmap-and-ibs/high-and-l...

Looking at the foods here, not sure it's counter to what we've considered a healthy diet. Legumes would be about the biggest exclusion on the generally healthy list. The low FODMAP food list doesn't look too restrictive at all though ?

> The low FODMAP food list doesn't look too restrictive at all though ?

Lots of what you'd want from a healthy diet is on it, but, if you try to prepare a meal with varied ingredients, you'll rapidly find that it still has plenty of (sometimes surprising and unexpected) exclusions. Well, maybe that's just me; I find the idea of leaving fruit and onions out of my diet difficult even to conceive.

but if the fermenting sugars in fruit and onion give you incredibly painful ibs, would you try it for a couple weeks to see if symptoms go away. a low fodmap diet is a diagnostic tool.

It's definitely not just you. I had a hell of a time building a low FODMAP menu because of the restrictions. We ended up eating very basic meals consisting of some meat, plain salted rice, and some approved veggie.

It's definitely real. My wife's gastroenterologist put her a low-fodmap diet after she come in for digestion issues. It worked very well (she had to keep a food diary for a month).

The problem is as you suggest, the diet is far too limiting to really be sustainable in the long run. Most Americans grew up eating the restricted items every day. So it's pretty hard to replace things like onions, garlic, peanuts, and dairy in their diet.

For what it's worth, some people on a low-FODMAP find they can have garlic, but not onion—and that can make a huge difference in cooking. Might be worth an experiment.

A funny thing about the low-FODMAPs diet is that it's not just one thing, in practice. I know several people who follow it, and each has customized it differently as they learn more about what their body tolerates. There's also some degree of flexibility; maybe you find you can eat beans as long as you strictly avoid garlic, for instance, or vice versa. (To some degree it appears to be a numbers game.)

FODMAP is an elimination diet that's meant to be a base into which you can reintroduce food types in a controlled manner (thus figuring out your specific must-avoid foods).

It's totally doable for medium durations and meant to be amended / tweaked.

« There are definitely real gluten-related disorders that people have to cope with, but these are vanishingly rare. Celiac disease causes people's immune systems to violently attack their small intestine whenever they eat gluten. About 1 percent of Americans have celiac disease, according to the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness. »

1% is not vanishingly rare!

« Even more rare are genuine wheat allergies, which affect an estimated 0.1 percent of people in Westernized countries. »

0.1% -- also not vanishingly rare.

I REALLY dont like that this article is a year old (Vox published it like Nov 21, 2017) but it only shows the Updated date, soas to appear new.

There is book called The Wheat Belly that has a good explanation for the evolution and genetic mutation of gluten throughout history to make it easier to mass produce - resulting in a new genetic makeup that is entirely different and very hard for our digestive systems to process. Intolerance manifests itself differently in everyone so it goes widely unrecognized in many people. You have to go over a month without any gluten to really notice a difference and it seems most people quit after two weeks of "no results." Even if you love pizza/bread and can't imagine ever giving it up, its still an interesting read to understand the science behind the theory.

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