Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; Some Newbye Questions.

Hi.

New around here. Unfortunately But nontheless happy because there's a lot of stuff here that helped me.

First of all, i'm on SCD Diet (Breaking the Vicios Cycle by Gottschal was the only book i've been able to get in Romania till now on PDF format)since 6-7 weeks. Things are going better since i've started.

Better for my rectocolitis and better for my AS.


I want to know how many of you wich are European are using MCCANCE AND WIDDOWSON'S COMPOSITION OF FOODS.
And if it helped them in their efforts to make up a confortable and balanced diet.

Some of you ppl here are talking bout foods, fruits or vegetables that we do not have in Romania.
Also there's a lot of stuff here we eat that is not available in US, so i cannot benefit from all the knowledge you share here.

So before ordering this book over the internet i wanna know if it helped some ppl....

And btw, is there a PDF version of Carol Sinclair'S IBS?

WELCOME, Alinus:

Sorry, there is yet no .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) or otherwise any electronic version of Carol's book.

It is best if You are able to find some iodine tincture and test the foods which are in question. Usually, green is good and yellow dodgy but everything else is on a case-by-case test.

I don't know whether McCance and Widdowson's guide is the final word, but our experience within this forum is a bit more accurate and worth exploring with the search capability.

May You achieve much renewed HEALTH,
John

thanks for your quiq reply i've been hoping you would answer hehe.

i know u guys have a lot of experience. i've started reading the topics in this section since the begining (already passed 2004 topics) because i wanna take notes on everything that was already discussed.

i asked about McCance&Widdowson because i already encountered some aliments that test ok with iodine but generate problems in my guts...

Also because from what i've read until now there's a little difference in aproach of the SCD vs NSD diet on the matter of polysaccharides. From what i've read NSD excludes starch, SCD excludes also most of the polysaccharides (disaccharides also - lactose, glucose, fructose).
My instincts and my small experience till now tells me that the're some truth bout this...
This is why i asked if you ppl used that ugly book, at least on the begining of the diet.


Being new into this there's a lot of testing (on my own skin) that must be done....


Also for the moment for me is unclear the relation between mixing vegetables and fruits on the same meal...
It's hard to me to clarify if some gut problems i get after some meals (a lot of gass, some gut pain and a big change of mental condition - i became verry nervous, irritated) are from this mix or from some specific products i use.

I've not been able to isolate the cause yet...


PS
I must appologise for my english... i'm no native speaker.

Hello Alinus
Welcome to KickAS!
Your English is fantastic!
And is certainly better than my Romanian!! LOL
I have not heard of your book I'm afraid.
You are doing well reading plenty of information on this site.
I hope you manage to find some answers and have success in the diet you choose to follow.
You don't know if you don't try.
Take care.

Hi & Welcome Alinus,

Firstly, your English is great! There are quite a few folks here who do not have English as their Mother Tongue, so please never apologise for yourself - there is no need.

You are not alone - there is at least one other Romanian person who is a member here and is on the NSD with quite a degree of success - "Manny the Mammoth" - maybe you could PM him in Romanian if you want to ask questions about specific regional foods that you think we may not be familiar with...

I follow the NSD, but I do have a copy of Sandra Ramacher's SCD book, because I like cookbooks, and it has still given me quite a few ideas for preparing meals for my family. However, I avoid beans, lentils and chickpeas etc, which one can eat on the SCD.

I think you would be better off investing in a copy of Carol Sinclair's book - can you buy over the internet and have it sent from Amazon or Amazon UK?

Keep trying to figure this whole AS / bowel thing out - it will be worth the ups and downs in the end,

My best to you,

Louise

Hello Louise

I agree with you about Carol Sinclairs book.

I don't know the other book that Alinus is using but I know that I certainly cannot eat kidney beans, lentils or chickpeas.

In fact chickpeas have one of the hightest starch contents of all on the "starch content in foods" list.

You certainly don't need to apologize for your English! It is very good. I took five years of Spanish in high school and college and I remember about five words!!!

Craig

Actually, yes it looks like a PDF version is now available online! Yay!

www.lowstarchdiet.net

You bring up an interesting topic with that comparison between the diets!

The Carol Sinclair book that people keep recommending has a good discussion of carbohydrate types. Lactose is a complex sugar which in many causes problems by incomplete digestion, but glucose and fructose are simple sugars which get metabolized fine and should not end up in the gut to cause problems. Sucrose is inbetween, so the author recommends not over-doing it and not letting it caramelize (which turns it into more complicated carbohydrates).

For the average person, the scale of how efficiently common carbs are digested looks like this:

BEST
simple sugars:
glucose, fructose

sucrose

lactose

starch
WORST


The better your digestion, the more carbs you can eat without feeding the harmful bacteria. And the good news is, that you can improve your digestion so that gradually you can eat more variety without harming yourself. I have to keep reassuring myself of that, because right now there doesn't seem to be much I can eat safely... at this time, I am suspicious of both sucrose and lactose as well as starch

It is a big encouragement to see so many people here who have gotten past this initial stage and now have an easier time with their diet. A few people mention that it took a couple years to be less sensitive, so perseverance is called for.

You are right, i've made a mistake during translation:

1. glucose, fructose and galactose are simple sugars - they are metabolised inside the small intestine - so using them willl not allow bacterial flora from inside the colon to benefit/use from them.

2. disaccharides are: lactose (diary mostly), sucrose (table sugar, some fruits), maltose and isomaltose (candies, or found mostly togheter within starch food ).

Those disaccharides also require spliting by the intestinal cell enzimes.
I believe the intolerance over lactose some people have has already been discussed.
Gottschall says the problem is that the other disaccharies get unpunnished for the same crime...

So we definately ignore some foods that harm us... (Like ppl who have celiac disease and tell that is gluten based, and never thing about the fact that gluten is only one polisaccharide among many...)


3. Polisaccharides or generaly speaking... Starches - we find them in most vegetables - long chains of glucuse molecules. (non-linear - very hard to break) - so most of it will pas undigested into the colon and became food for bacterial flora available there.

Starches are divided into Amylose - linear molecules, and Amylopectin (this one is the real trouble).

We (those with problems...) are able to digest (due to our salive and pancreas enzymes) most of the amylose - so this is why we are tolerant to most vegetables.


But we fail in spliting the chains of Amylopectins (wich it seems is verry verry "branced"). Some small proportion will be digested inside the colon by those bacterias and we will benefict from it (arount 3-5 % if i remember wel). The other will pas through us either undigested or will be used as food base by those bacterias we've already discussed.



So, if all this is true (and i am not discussing that some people are able to digest starches better than the others, some are not able to do it at all, some not even with disaccharies):the bottom line is finding out wich producs have more amylose and wich more amylopectin.

Which ones can we use (because it's improbable that someone can live a lifetime today with the cave-men high protein diet i've heard about - not only that it's hard to do it all the time inside a city, but also because there are some health risks this diet involves)?

Does that book (McCance&Widdowson) contains such data? Anyone who has it can check on it...


PS. Writing it down i found out that i define as starch all polysaccharides, but most of you use a smaller definition.