Fructose Malabsorption

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Anyone else suffer from this?

It's a new diagnosis for me, although I have always known my body didn't tolerate sugar. A trip to the GI doc for a celiac test uncovered this.

I am doing a Whole30 without FODMAPs (with intention of reintroducing one at a time to see what I tolerate) and yesterday I ate a banana - which is in the warning zone - and let's just say people on the train would have been giving up their seat for me I was so blown up!

Anyway, I was hoping someone might have tips for me. Or how to relieve the bloat/discomfort if you eat fructose.

There's a lot more to bananas than fructose and out of everyone we can eat simple sugars are the easiest to digest (with the exception of lactose which requires the enzyme lactase to break down). On top of the other 1,000's of compounds bananas do have they also have resistant starches so maybe it's those; however, if you just ate one banana and had this issue it's highly likely this is purely a correlative condition.

Granted I'm all for food elimination diets but if you're suggesting a single banana had enough fructose to cause such a severe reaction then you would have been utterly miserable prior as the a large portion of all processed foods contain fructose. Usually with food elimination diets you reintroduce a food in sufficient quantity and wait at least a week to see how your body tolerates it.

do you have or are you an expert in fructose malabsorption? it only takes 2 bites of a banana for me and i get severe diarrhea and vomiting for an hour. i can not eat apples either. one bite makes me bloat up like i am 6 mo pregnant. i can eat sucrose. the glucose helps the fructose get digested. so technically we should be able to eat anything where there is more glucose than fructose. however, we are also sensitive to sorbitol, inositol, lactose, and any other simple sugar there is. lots of us also have problems with the dairy protein, gluten, or just plain wheat, nuts, fructans, fructooligosaccharides, artificial colors, diet sweeteners, and various forms of fiber both natural and man made.

other people's diets won't work for us. what you can eat and what i can eat will be very different. that is why an elimination diet is critical. i can't eat any bananas but my children (who were also diagnosed by breath test) can eat a whole banana no problem. each kid has their own limit.

i get bloated a lot. charcoal pills will help but they might make you constipated. i like baking soda and water. i use a 1/2 tsp dissolved in 8 oz water. i drink it all at once and 5 min later burp up all the gas. it doesnt always work. sometimes those gas ease pills help. the best thing is to make sure that you eat some glucose with the food. my dietician recomended smarties. the tiny little dextrose candy. they are way cheaper than the glucose pills for diabetics. i also use powdered dextrose. if i think the kids are having a treat with too much fructose i sprinkle the dextrose over it. also protein. always eat plenty of protein with the other food.

I've had this for years! It is very hard, as they hide HFCS in everything, especially in the US! Try to stick to more homemade dishes/snacks. Bread should only last days, not weeks.

I have been on a very low sugar diet since January and feel so much better- more glucose than fructose, no juice, look at labels that are 8grams of sugar per 100 or less (this really works for me) and dairy no more than 4.5 grams per 100 (lactose has natural sugar).

Read all labels, I can't have anything adding in -ol, like sorbitol, or my stomach looks 6 months pregnant in minutes This does include toothpaste too! Ah love the mornings where I have an upset stomach from brushing my teeth.

I have a chart of fruits/veggies with the amount of glucose vs fructose that helps as well, avocado are great. At the end of the day you have to decide what is better for you and if you are tired of feeling ill after eating certain foods.

Sorry, I don't know much to do about the bloating, honestly. Although it IS gas, so I wonder if some of the OTC gas meds might work on it, like gas-x or something? No idea - don't know how they are supposed to work.

But for reintroducing foods eventually, you might find a phone app on FODMAP diet by Monash university really useful. They list the foods that are bad/good on the diet, but one thing they do that I haven't really seen as much other places is to put the foods into categories of what kinds of molecules they have. So when you are noting what you react to, and what you don't, you can also get a sense if they are falling into some of the sub categories of the low FODMAP diet, which could help you know which foods would be more likely to be good/bad later on, you know?

As for advice.

1. If you can, pick a few snacks that you tolerate, and love, and have those around a lot at first. It helps when you feel a desperate urge to 'cheat' a little, because you can just eat this good snack instead.

2. Similarly, having foods prepped that you can snack on immediately when you're hungry is helpful in that arena as well. chopped up veggies and such, and have something with more fat available for when you feel really hungry and craving fats.