Diarrhea 1-3 times per week for the past 3+ years, with a few exceptions. It usually happens within 60 minutes after a meal.
Have tracked every almost meal and bowel movement during this time, but see no correlation with which foods are causing it. Often I’ll have a problem after Indian food (spicy/greasy), for example, but not always. Very confusing.
Have also tracked emotions, but it’s also inconsistent with my digestion. Whether or not I had a stressful or peaceful day seems to have an effect sometimes, but not others.
I haven’t tracked food quantities as steadily, so it’s possible there is only a problem when I eat too much food (there often is). But I know there are times when I eat too much and don’t have a problem, so I don’t know if this is a cause or not.
Got an ALCAT test, and it said I was critically sensitive to rice. Moderately sensitive to gluten. And mildly sensitive to dairy, and dozens of other things. But it doesn’t make sense to me, because…
There are a few times where I haven’t had any bowel issues for weeks, including:
3 of the five weeks I spent traveling through Vietnam where I ate rice every meal, but no wheat or dairy.
Four of the five weeks I was traveling through Italy and ate nothing but pizza, pasta, and gelato, so lots of gluten and diary (but no rice).
A few other periods where I went about 1-2 weeks without issue eating basically anything (note: I do try to eat fresh food as much as possible, and always avoid American fast food chains, high fructose corn syrup, etc.).
So I’m leaning toward a few explanations:
More than specific food items or quantities, perhaps it’s food combinations that make the difference. Maybe my body can only handle processing certain foods alone, or that certain combinations cause a problem. Not sure if there have been studies done on this outside of Ayurveda.
Maybe rather than one single thing causing it, everything is contributing to a degree – the type of food, the combination of foods, the quantity of food, my emotional stress level, etc. If so, that’s a lot to keep in mind, and is hard to identify or control except maybe the quantity of food…
I have some kind of parasite that hasn’t been detected yet that randomly decides when it wants to give me diarrhea. I’ve done a lot of world travel, and not any recent parasite testing, so this is a possibility. Maybe it feeds more on certain types of foods than others, so reacts more in those cases, or is dormant at other times? But maybe if I got rid of the parasite, I wouldn’t have any trouble with these foods.
I think what I’ll try next is to only eat in small quantities for the next couple weeks, chew my food thoroughly, and stop before I’m full. This may require taking longer at meals, or snacking throughout the day, but my thought is that eating too much food at once might be overwhelming my intestines, and causing it to push food through too quickly. We’ll see if it makes a difference or not.
Does any of this make sense to you? Any other thoughts or hypothesis?
One other thought – last night I had some tortellini with tomato sauce and broccoli for dinner and some garlic bread. Right after, I had some of worse diarrhea I’ve had in weeks – three times in an hour, and then again this morning. I skipped breakfast, but for lunch I ate the leftovers from the same meal, and guess what? No reaction at all. I feel fine. No diarrhea. This tells me the problem is not a reaction to anything in the food in particular, but something.
It also makes me wonder:
Is this diarrhea actually caused/triggered by this meal I just ate at all? Or has the diarrhea been sitting in my intestines for the past day or two and just happened to get pushed out by this last meal that I ate?
Or was everything fine in my intestines up until the point I ate this meal, which turned what was in there into diarrhea and made it all come out quickly?
The first option seems more likely to me, but I don’t know the science behind it.
Does anyone know how long does it take for normal stool to turn to diarrhea in your intestines? Is it something that can happen within an hour of eating something your react to? Or is stool more likely to stay in the same form in the digestive tract until coming out?
Whenever I eat Szechuan Chinese food, my intestines make odd gurgling noises until the next time I take a shit. And when I do (I usually put it off as long as possible because, in my mind, that gives it more time to “solidify”), it not only comes out as diarrhea, but steaming, radioactive-burny diarrhea. I’m not sure what to do, because I just love Dandan noodles, and I don’t know if I’m willing to give them up for the rest of my life just to avoid occasional steaming shits. What would YOU do?
Sextuple zombies have the best s- …suggestions on how to avoid awakening the beast that is IBS. Yeah, that’s it.
I can also attest to food making a reappearance in as little as 20 minutes after having eaten it. Today’s began around the half hour mark and concluded about an hour later. I’d rather it had come out all at once and more violently, because at least the pain resolves more quickly with the faster episodes :eek:
This is seriously the most “zombie” of a thread I’ve found in a long time; 12.5+ years!!! I have begun to notice diarrhea after greasy meals quite a bit… Question… Did many of you start to see these symptoms in your mid-30s? One other person I know had the same thing happen. And one meal I’ve noticed is after mushrooms, as another poster said, but the mushrooms were cooked in bacon with the bacon grease as well as heavy cream… And, while cooking diced bacon and then adding mushrooms, green onions, and heavy cream yields one of the best steak toppings one can imagine, it always gives me the runs afterwards. This is also true if I have the mushroom/bacon/cream sauce on chicken breasts… Could be mushrooms, but my guess is the bacon fat (worse than bacon because all the grease is consumed rather than left in the pan). The poster who said something about Buffalo Wild Wings also hits home… But, unlike many other fried foods from places, they use beef fat as thier frying medium (beef tallow).
I can’t green peppers but I can eat red peppers , the green ones are not fully ripen . The green peppers are cheaper so most restaurants serve them . Your mom may be able to eat cooked red pepper with the skin removed . They taste yummy roasted with a little oil on them.
I realize this is a multi-zombie thread, but beets do that to me. I like them, but I avoid them because it freaks me out.
I also like black jelly beans, but eat them in moderation because it’s actually green dye, and guess what? It’s a color that doesn’t exist in nature, either.
For those of you who, for instance, pooped spinach 20 minutes after eating it, I’m morbidly curious. What did it smell like? Stool? Vomit? Spinach?
It started around 30 for me. Eat a greasy pizza for dinner? Better make sure the bathroom’s free before bed.
I’ve also noticed that my bowels are much more sensitive to beer intake (though typically not until the following morning) and coffee than they were in my twenties and before. If I have a meeting in the morning I generally have to abstain from coffee until it’s over.
I was under the impression (something I read/heard years ago) that the speed of the reaction is due to the body recognizing that you put something in the stomach that it really doesn’t want there. The digestive tract is “flooded” and the peristalic contractions increased to try to remove the offending item. Cramping is the more solid fecal material that was proceeding normally suddenly getting shoved along. Under this concept, the pills to clean you out for a colonoscopy work this way which is why you need to consume a lot of liquid to avoid dehydration.
IBS isn’t a disease, it is a catch-all term that is the doctor saying “I’ve Been Stumped”.
For me it’s bell peppers. I came across this beautiful zombie thread after accidentally eating some. They put them in everything! I m now in the bathroom between bouts of diarrhea. Imodium has been my best friend for years. I notice that most cooking oils also set me off as well. Coconut oil seems to be alright.
