Respecting food intolerances

[Boo1979]

some 10-15 years prior to my diabetes diagnosis, I was diagnosed with various food intolerances for which I took anti allergy medication for 5+ years. The most pronounced foods were dairy and nightshade veg. One result of being teted and diagnosed was that I lost a lot of weight (6 1/2 stone) in 6 months and more since ( now around 10 stone below heaviest weight) while I have been limiting the amount of those foods rather than continue with the Nalcrom meds
Impressionistically since diabetes diagnosis, I have thought that whenever I have had a period of ignoring the intolrances, my sugars become more erratic and slightly harder to control, so I finally decided 2 weeks ago to test it out by avoiding averything with a trace of dairy or nightshades in them while wearing one of mt stash of libre sensrs and also cross checking those results with finger pricks
What Ive found unfortunately matches my impressions.
Prior to experimenting the results Id entered onto MySugr, predicted an hba1c of 41.7, now it predicts 38.8. My libre results are aalso showing less variation than when I previously used them and much more time in target
Am I pleased - yes and no - I really like both food groups and can easily become somewhat addicted to dairy ( the dreams I had for a week or so when it was first excluded years back, were all incredibly vivid milk based ones ( drinking, bathing, milking animals were all in there along with some rather more left field ones revolving around milk). Im aso pleased that respecting the intolerances does seem to add something to the control pot

 

[Brunneria]

I think there are quite a few of us out there.

My blood glucose gets erratic when I eat gluten - to the extent of getting reactive hypoglyceamic hypos.
Interestingly, this lasts for a couple of weeks after eating the gluten.
Made it frustratingly difficult to work out what was going on, because of the extended timescales!

So I would be interested to hear how long it takes for your improvements to develop, and how much of an improvement you eventually see..

 

[Boo1979]

The change to flatter Bgs took 4 days
The loss of the symptoms of dairy intolerance like chronic rhinitis took about a week
The clinic that originally diagnosed my intolerances started off with a pretty hardcore 10 day exclusion diet of lamb, brown rice and pears , followed by skin and individual food testing to find suspect foods, then advised that food groups from which any food had shown up as suspect should not be eaten more frequently than every 3-4 days in order to allow inflammation to die down
Interestingly I read a whole heap of stuff about food intolerances after I was diagnosed with them, and a link between food intolrance and diabetes came up quite frequently. When I mentioned it when I was diagnosed as diabetic thonthe consultant endo dismissed it as “American nonsense”

 

[Lamont D]

Hi @Boo1979,
I too have many intolerant food groups such as dairy, grains and the worst is potatoes because of the high amount of starch. The dairy is lactose intolerance., not the milk itself but the levels of lactose (quick glucose) in most dairy.
All these except my lactose intolerance which was diagnosed years ago, when I was a nipper, because of vomiting as soon as digestion, there are quite a few relatives who are lactose intolerant.
The rest were only discovered, then through tests, and my own blood glucose/ insulin response to digestion. And of course my food diary.
My intolerance is to these foods, because above a very low percentage of carbs, my gastric dumping causes a secondary insulin response called an overshoot. Carbs even the ones that are called low GI have too many carbs, starch, quick glucose for my endocrine system.
Shellfish is another intolerance!
I really have to avoid these foods. My health depends on that.
I am carb intolerant!
Being intolerant is not as bad as some dieticians would make you believe. Your body adapts, mine had to! The you have to eat this or make sure you eat your greens, don't eat too much saturated fat. You know this isn't true, because my food diary tells me so.
My latest found intolerance is vegetable oils.
Maybe there is more, but until my body tells me, I am carrying on with my balance of protein, fats and very low carb lifestyle.

 

[Boo1979]

I too eat a low carb diet - a bit more complicated with broader food intolerances but nowhere near impossible
Wrt potato - it is a member of the nightshade vegetable family so its carb count may not be the only issue. Nig - Tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, & tobacco are some other members of the nightshade family) are quite a common group for people to be intolerant to.
When I was tested, 2 cherry tomatoes blew my stomache up by 3 and a half inches and caused a whole upper body rash - on the basis of that the medics told me not to eat any nightshade veg

 

[Lamont D]

It's weird because I love tomatoes (arent they a fruit?) especially fried with mushrooms and have no issues with them that I know of!
I know I have terrible palette problems with many cooked vegetables, especially greens, I just can't put most of them in my mouth. It's an aversion rather than an intolerance. Fresh vegetables are not a problem.
Potatoes even a small new potato, rockets my blood levels rocket, for a small new potato, I went from low 4s to 13.6 (ish), it's in my food diary in big numbers underlined red, I retested and a similar number from a fresh batch of strips.
This would cause serious problems with symptoms of fluctuating bloods.
As I would spike then crash.
My tastes caused my mother many problems with another three brothers and a very tight budget, I would rather go without than just sit there looking at food that definitely would not go past my lips, despite being hungry.
I sometimes looked forward to school dinners (weird eh!) And often one of the dinner ladies would supplement the turned down cooked vegetables for more protein.
I have always been a carnivore, love most cuts of meat, even some offal, like liver, belly pork and so on.

 

[Mep]

I also can't eat quite a few things.... I figure sugar would probably go up because your body is stressing. The last time I ate a steak I was in pain for 3 days and that sure put my sugar up. I have trouble with acids and textures mainly so have to be careful. I'm still finding myself in pain and choking on foods. Of course my sugar level always seems to rise the more pain I'm in.

 

[Indy51]

Nightshades are a good elimination to try for anyone suffering with arthritis. Also autoimmune conditions.

Fun fact many may not be aware of: goji berries belong to the nightshade family.