A newbie..embarrassing symptoms!!

[Bananafudge]

Hi Everyone

This site is fantastic, reading through some of the threads has already helped me with my struggle to become dairy free.

I've suffered with "IBS" for around 10 years and have always just put up with my symptoms, believing it to be related to hormones or eating too much cake/junk food causing flare ups. My symptoms are constant constipation cycles where I'm fine for a while (once/twice a day with no straining) suddenly switching to agonising straining for half an hour to pass a tiny stool only to spend the rest of the day with an enormously bloated stomach and feeling the urge to go but there's nothing there.

After feeling pretty glum with the constant "football stomach" as I so affectionately call it, and painful constipation, I started a food diary in March. Then I started food combining - strictly separating proteins from carbs and never eating milk (and only ever eating fruit on its own).

After a while I found that meals consisting of vegetables, cream/cream cheese and fish would give me this dreadful wind immediately after - like a constant stream of rumbling flatulence (I am so embarrassed writing this!). I would also end up with a distended stomach and possibly dioreah the next morning. I have narrowed the culprits down to milk, all soft cheese, creme fraiche, cream and goat's cheese. So I cut them out, replacing with soya, rice milk etc and had 2 weeks of bliss. BUT the symptoms have come back!!! Crampy pains, painful constipation, constant urge to poo but nothing there, and the dreaded hateful football stomach (I'm very slim but it makes me look pregnant and my trousers are so tight).

So... I guess I'll have to cut out all forms of milk derivatives from everything including my contraceptive pill (containing lactose)???

Is it really possible that since March, my body has become so sensitive to milk that now even meager traces make my colon go into strike mode? Does this sound like a milk intolerance to you guys?

What makes it worse is that I am vegetarian (I cannot bear to eat meat, I keep trying but to no avail) and all quorn products contain milk protein. I like to eat very healthily and as such a good 80% of my diet is beans, cereals, vegetables and fruit. Oh yes and I only drink water, pepermint tea and camomile tea. (no alcohol or caffiene)

Please help! This is making me feel so depressed! Thank you (sorry for long personal post!)

Bananafudge

[rebecca c]

Hi

I certainly know how embarassing it all is, I too suffer from IBS and when I do get wind I find it incredibly difficult to deal with. However I have found with hard work an patience (trusting my own intuition) I can get back on top of it all. I was a veggie too but have found I have such extensive intolerances and a tendency to anemia so started eating meat again.

If you are intolerant to milk you will have to experiment to find how much you can tolerate, if you search the site you will find links to lists of all the ingredients you need to look out for. My daily asthma medicine contains lactose and so I take a fibre supplement called husk to counteract the effects, this is quite good but I have found it is better if I take it late afternoon as when I am on a busy schedule a morning dose can actually make things worse.

keep up the food diary and bear in mind many with an intolerance to lactose also develop a soya intolerance, it may be worth checking your reactions to gluten too but be careful about cutting too much out at once if you are not seeing a dietician for help. Some advice suggests it is worth rotating in small amounts of what you are intoleranct every fortnight to avoid developing more intolerances and making sure your diet is as varied as possible. I find this very hard as cant bear to have the problems on top of my original difficulties with things like asthma and a runny nose.

You will also need to make sure you are eating plenty of green leafy veg and broccoli to supplement your calcium (tahini is good too).

any questions please ask and know that other people are coping with similar difficulties to your own and know how hard it all is :)

[Copper]

Oh yes I have suffered for years with stomach cramps and d & s. I eventually realised that I was born with lactose intolerance. Over the years I had managed to keep my dairy intake within the limit I could cope with but then it got worse. I am not totally intolerant and even the small amount in a tablet is enough to make me feel very sick.

Despite keeping my soya intake as low as possible I have developed an intolerance to soya now. I use oat milk and I am fine now. I have to watch how much food I eat which contains soya lecithin, I overdid that the other day and felt off for a few hours :(

I use oat milk with added calcium and I take a calcium tablet every day. Between the two I should be close to the daily allowance.

The list of alternative names for dairy is here

http://www.dairyfreeuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=738

I think you need to try and remove all dairy from your diet and then keep a food diary. I can see that the pill might prove tricky to replace. You could try taking a lactase capsule with the pill. The lactase will break the lactose down. These capsules can be found in health food shops but are not cheap.

[Bananafudge]

Hi Rebecca and Copper

Thank you very much for your replies. Most kind of you. I'm sorry you both have much worse symptoms than me and here I am moaning. I'm so lucky not to get the nausea.

I have stuck to a zero dairy diet yesterday and today (not even a trace) to get over the flare up I induced on myself by eating fish pie and lasagne on saturday night (was at a party - doh!) I finally feel like me again (tummy not bloated, no cramps, normal bowel movement) and now I'm a bit scared to upset the apple cart by eating anything of real substance. Thank you for the nutritional advice, I am quite scared of getting a deficiency. Fortunately I love all vegetables so eating cabbage and broccoli is no problem.

The tahini tip is excellent too - I would not have known about that.

Having realised that all of my trusty quorn range contains milk protein I think I might try to eat chicken on occasion. Good thing for online food shopping, I can trawl through all the ingredients on my comfy sofa rather than hovering in the aisles!!!

I'm off to the fish & chip shop now for a family celebration treat supper and fear I may just have to have chips and nothing else... maybe make a chip butty with my own home made bread and ketchup. Won't be having the birthday cake either :(

Thanks again and bye for now
B

[cnc]

Hi and welcome.
Sorry to hear that you're struggling with things so much. Being dairy free does get easier. I'm a bit late to this, sorry, but sometimes the batter the fish and chip shops use is milk free, so it's certainly worth asking. As for birthday cake, it's really easy to make a dairy free version, perhaps you can have a mini cake of your own, and there is a milk free one sold in the specialist section of Tescos.
Don't feel embarrassed by your symptoms, we're all human and most of us have experienced the same thing at some point- I've just spent 6 weeks on a gastro ward, bowel movements, sickness, and what not are quite normal topics of conversations for us :) and it's nothing to be ashamed of.

I hope you find some help here, and stick around.

[Bananafudge]

Thank you for the warm welcome. 6 weeks on a gastro ward? That's awful. Are you ok now?

Thanks for the cake tips, I am lucky because I'm a foodie and love to cook so I've got a good understanding of foods and their properties so I'm already experimenting with replacing the dairy in recipes. I'll try to share my inventions on here when they're successful! My tofu chocolate mousse worked really well even though my kids wouldn't eat it... and I've discovered how to use soya yoghurt to make pancakes and the kids LOVE them!! result!

I'm trying to tell myself that just because something is dairy-free, it doesn't give me a license to eat it regardless (i.e massive chocolate tarts!)

I did just have chips last night but that was fine, I didn't feel I was missing out. Watching the cake eating was a bit grim but at least everyone else enjoyed it (I actually baked it - what an idiot!)

B

[rebecca c]

You can bake a dairy free cake that everyone will enjoy just replace the butter for pure margarine - which most supermarkets sell,
I make cakes and biscuits with pure and rice flour and eat plenty of them!

[Bananafudge]

Hi Rebecca

Thank you! I've been eating pure margarine and was going to use it for my cakes when I looked in morrisons and they sell their own version of stork soft marge which is dairy free although it does say it is made in a factory where milk is handled.

I also made a delicious marshmallow frosting which I've never tried before, I usually make buttercream or cream cheese frosting, this one uses egg whites, caster sugar, cream of tartar and rose water and you whisk it over a pan of boiling water until it's thick and fluffy. COOL!

Let the cake eating commence!!! Yay!

B