abdominal distension

[thinker]

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with severe abdominal swelling and constipation while on paleo diet. Both me and my wife have been following that diet, recently progressively increasing fat intake. I adjusted fine (some constipation at the beginning, but that's gone), but my wife is having increasing problems with her stomach recently. It swells so much that it's visible (especially because she's quite skinny) and she's constantly constipated.

I was researching the topic of irritable bowel syndrome and I'm wondering if we should change her diet to follow recommendations here:
http://www.healingwell.com/library/ibs/article.asp?author=vanvorous&id=1
(which would be completely opposite of what we have been doing...)

or should we try ketogenic diet and hope it doesn't make it worse?

Any recommendations, or similar experiences?

 

[mcb]

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with severe abdominal swelling and constipation while on paleo diet. Both me and my wife have been following that diet, recently progressively increasing fat intake. I adjusted fine (some constipation at the beginning, but that's gone), but my wife is having increasing problems with her stomach recently. It swells so much that it's visible (especially because she's quite skinny) and she's constantly constipated.

I was researching the topic of irritable bowel syndrome and I'm wondering if we should change her diet to follow recommendations here:
http://www.healingwell.com/library/ibs/article.asp?author=vanvorous&id=1
(which would be completely opposite of what we have been doing...)

or should we try ketogenic diet and hope it doesn't make it worse?

Any recommendations, or similar experiences?

I would say that if something she is doing is making your wife ill, she should stop doing it. What would be the point of continuing under those circumstances? If the symptoms are severe, and it sounds as if they might be, she could also be in need of immediate medical attention. This may or may not have anything at all to do with "paleo diet" (whatever your version of that is -- it means different things to different people).

Personally, I would not use as a guide an article taken from the web written by someone who's qualification is 20 years of suffering from IBS, and that starts out with the dubious general claim that "The most difficult foods for the body to digest are fats and animal products." I think you can find much better sources of information than that.

 

[Laura]

Have a look here: http://gutsense.org/gutsense/about_gs.html

AND do the reading! Do NOT do anything that you do not understand. So read the "Life Without Bread" thread in the Diet and Health section of the forum IN ITS ENTIRETY first! You will read there about all the many experiences of forum members, their conditions, their successes, etc.

Indeed, many have experienced constipation in a diet change-over and that is usually due to the extraordinary amount of dead bacteria that accumulate in the gut when they no longer get their "sugar food" from carbs. So read about the experiences of others and how they dealt with these things. Read the references, and then proceed cautiously if you decide it is right for you.

 

[loreta]

I have IBS and following this diet of low carbohydrates helped me enormously. Sometimes I still have small crisis and my belly is, when I have a crisis, a little big. At the beginning of the diet I was constipated and then everything is normal, now. What helped me a lot is to stop eating grains and wheat.

This diet, here, is fantastic for me. Everyone is a world, I know, but this diet saved my condition that was really terrible!

I am still reading the thread of Life Without Bread and learning a lot.

I hope your wife will be better.

 

[thinker]

Life without bread is a BIG thread, but I started reading it from the end. Read Chris Kresser articles "Got digestive problems?" and fodmaps, but we don't really eat that much veggies. Just something to accompany the meats and what ever we're adding to the soups. Certainly we could eliminate those, keep them in a pouch when cooking for taste and the remove it. That way we would just have meat and broth.

Also read gut sense website where he recommends his COLORECTAL RECOVERY PROGRAM, but it's pretty expensive. We were just talking about taking about taking a trip to wholefoods instead to look for sauerkraut which is supposed to be a good source of probiotics and we still have some vitamin C that she can start taking again. She did say that when we were taking it together some months ago it helped her at the beginning, but after a while it stopped er producing results.

I'm wondering if the reason for he swollen belly isn't some kind of stomach inflammation and constipation is just a side effect of that. She just noticed that her problems started about when we started experimenting with coconut milk (home made ice cream), so we'll try to eliminate that for a while and see if she's maybe having reaction to that.

 

[Nienna]

Life without bread is a BIG thread, but I started reading it from the end. Read Chris Kresser articles "Got digestive problems?" and fodmaps, but we don't really eat that much veggies. Just something to accompany the meats and what ever we're adding to the soups. Certainly we could eliminate those, keep them in a pouch when cooking for taste and the remove it. That way we would just have meat and broth.

Also read gut sense website where he recommends his COLORECTAL RECOVERY PROGRAM, but it's pretty expensive. We were just talking about taking about taking a trip to wholefoods instead to look for sauerkraut which is supposed to be a good source of probiotics and we still have some vitamin C that she can start taking again. She did say that when we were taking it together some months ago it helped her at the beginning, but after a while it stopped er producing results.

I'm wondering if the reason for he swollen belly isn't some kind of stomach inflammation and constipation is just a side effect of that. She just noticed that her problems started about when we started experimenting with coconut milk (home made ice cream), so we'll try to eliminate that for a while and see if she's maybe having reaction to that.

Some people cannot tolerate coconut in any form (raises hand). So that could be a problem.

Also, reading through the LWB thread from the start is really recommended and should have been done before going paleo. Stomach bloating has been discussed in there and what worked in eliminating it. Even though it is long, it is well worth the read because of the research and the experimentation by forum members that went into it.