Low-FODMAP Gut Health Challenge – 28 Days

The benefits of eating a low Fodmap diet

The best way to address any autoimmune symptom (outside of your docs treatments) is to make appropriate changes to your diet and lifestyle.
The benefit of making changes is clear. When we take inflammatory stimuli out of the body we see new healthy possibilities that allow us to focus our healing efforts.

Knowing which substances and circumstances are affecting our condition negatively can help us pin down the causes of inflammation and refine our treatment options.
This newly acquired knowledge helps us to make better choices and that means making fewer unnatural interventions.

We don’t need to treat the inflammation that we don’t cause! Understanding how our actions affect our condition is vital, and diet is the major component in this conundrum.
Avoiding trigger foods can make you feel better and produces fewer flares, it might even put some conditions into remission

I can make these statements confidently because I’ve spent the last 15 years diligently researching food and its effect on disease.
The thousands of articles and studies I’ve consumed from various nutritionists, scientists, doctors, and naturopaths leaves me in absolutely no doubt that biochemistry is directly affected (negatively and positively) by the foods that we eat.

My experiences of helping people change their diet show me that biochemical reactions don’t always work the same across different people.
Therefore, we have to treat “every body” differently where food and supplementation are concerned.
Using a personalised trial and error approach in combination with diagnostic tools like allergy tests can reveal our sensitivities, and give us a window on symptom resolution that using drugs could never do.

Diagnostic tests help us determine the severity of our condition, the pathways involved, the phenotype, and which allergies and sensitivities negatively affect our our bodies when they are presented with a particular compound.

One of the diets which is often found to be helpful for a large percentage of the population who have intestinal-based autoimmune diseases is the low Fodmap diet

This “low reactive” nutritional approach has a fabulous track record of relieving irritable bowel syndrome and other autoimmune disease symptoms

Foods containing short-chain carbohydrates like sugars (natural and processed) are often poorly absorbed by the intestines in IBS and other intestinal disorders.
This failure of digestion can occur for many reasons, but it almost always triggers abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhoea, constipation, and gas which can lead to higher levels of inflammation and disease symptoms.

What does “FODMAP” mean?

Fermentable
Oligosaccharide
Disaccharide
Monosaccharide
And
Polyols

The F in Fodmap describes”fermentable” foods.
These substances are carbohydrates which fail to get digested properly by the bacteria in the gut.
This fermentation process produces intestinal gases which cause discomfort.

The O in Oligosaccharides denotes things like GOS (galacto-oligosaccharides or galactans ) and fructans and.
Legumes, onions, garlic, wheat, and rye are the usual sources of these substances.

D is for Disaccharides!
Dairy products like milk cheese yoghurt‘s contain the disaccharide lactose.

M is for Monosaccharides
One of the challenges of this diet is the removal of the natural sugar fructose. Many fruits and our friend natural source of sugar (honey) contains fructose. Processed foods such as high fructose corn syrup’s also contain fructose and should be avoide.

P is for Polyols.
Polyols are things like mannitol and sorbitol which are found in vegetables and fruits. They are also used in processed foods as artificial sweeteners

An estimated 10 to 20% of the global population is affected by these disorders
So, the role of the Ford map diet is vital in trying to change the way we eat to this less reactive system of eating.
We know that these types of gut-based conditions can be triggered by food because we have the well studied and documented case of coeliac disease which is caused by gluten sensitivity

Taking care of the gut then should be viewed as an integral part of our life, and should be a major area of research for anyone with intestinal issues
And we should act urgently! This isn’t going to go away by itself.
Unresolved gut problems can cause damage to the intestinal lining and that contributes to inflammation in the intestines, infection, and nervous system abnormalities due to disruption of the signals being sent between the brain and the intestines.

I think it’s pretty common knowledge now that any damage to the intestinal walls or even the mucus linings can allow leaky gut syndrome is to develop. This is where foods to pass through the gut wall into the body (that should not happen!) and are then recognised as antigens by the immune system.
This then sets off an inflammatory cascade and causes our bodies to react to those food particles every time we eat them.
This is what acquiring an allergy looks like!

Add into the mix lifestyle factors such as stress, invasive medical procedures, certain medications, poor diet, and we have a recipe for disaster
Our aim should be to remove all of the stress from the gut so that it can work properly and in harmony with the gut bacteria that live inside there.
I would also recommend people take a broad spectrum probiotic under the direction of their doctor. Gut bacteria are essential to life and many vital bodily systems you would never associate with the gut. They assimilate our food, produce certain vitamins and substances needed for good health, and can even contribute to a decline in our mental health

The main aim of the Low five map diet is to take out all the stresses so our gut can heal and return to balance.
Once that process has started we can then re-introduce food back Usually, we would start seeing results pretty quickly and then start reintroducing higher fodmap foods after 28 days.
This allows us to see which foods will be tolerated and which foods we need to leave out for a longer period.

Sometimes we can retrain the immune systems so that it stops reacting to the foods which it has acquired an antigen response to.
Once you have started your re-introduction it will be easy to see which foods you are tolerant of and which you are not.
The first 2 to 6 weeks of the Fodmap diet will tell you a great deal about your diet and how to proceed, our app will help you visualise that work and prove to yourself that bad food choices are effecting your health negatively.
Once you have all the data from your personal experience and can see it displayed in chartds in the app you’ll be able to figure out your own version of the Fodmap diet that works best for you.

With diligent notetaking, Dedication, patience, and hard work it is highly likely that you will be able to move back into having a reasonably healthy normal life, but it does take work.

If you see no results after the first 2 to 6 weeks, it may be that you need to move onto a different type of diet that suits you better.
This would require you to undergo food sensitivity testing to determine exactly which foods you are allergic to.

This all sounds very troubling and tiresome, but as I say it is worth doing, because who wants to live the old way in pain and disease?

The great thing about being on our Ford map diet is that you get to choose which foods are best for you.
Some people can re-introduce some high photomap foods back into the diets quite quickly.
Usually, that process starts gradually, but I would say from my experience that once you pass the three month mark, and have things tightly controlled, you could then start adding in higher Fodmap.
Please remember to take great notes on the reintroduction too! Just because you had a few small wins doesn’t make you invincible You can soon slip back into old patterns of disease if you don’t take good care of your diet.

Our goal should be to find the very best way of eating for our particular biochemistry. That process is going to take time, patience, and hard work.

There is no one size fits all diet for any condition, person, or even disease, but that doesn’t mean we are powerless!
We simply have to take full responsibility for the foods we put in our mouth‘s and use the lessons learned from dietary elimination.
There is nothing better than returning to full health after taking charge of your health. It is revolutionary, it is self-propelling, and can save us from a miserable painful life with not much to smile about and the lingering spectre of a potential early death the only future.

I would encourage you to take massive action with your diet and mix it heartily with mindful eating. This way you will release the best future version of yourself.

I look forward to inspiring you to make these incredible advances in your diet and thinking.