Pain, Pain, Go Away!

The readers of this blog have spoken: a lot of you are suffering from bloating and acid reflux and want to know what to do about it. At least, that's what my statistics tell me: the top two posts for the past month are Gas Bloating: The Incredible Shrinking Waistband and Exploding Intestines and My GERD is Cured: Low-Carb Hits the Mark . If you're like a lot of people, you might also have made a resolution to lose weight. I sympathize with all these problems: I used to suffer frequently with gas pain and acid reflux and a year ago I set out to lose 20 pounds. Why do so many people have bloating and acid reflux this time of year? Too many Christmas cookies, too much stuffing and mashed potatoes, too many holiday potlucks with dishes made of cheap, high-carb food, and too much dessert. In other words, too many carbs. That's the short answer. What do Carbs Have to Do with It? Dietary fat doesn't give you gas. Protein gives you very little gas, and it's farther along i...

My healthy diet doesn't include fruit. Shocked? You're not alone: this surprises people who continually hear "eat lots of fruits and vegetables!" I initially stopped eating fruit when I read Norm Robillard's theory of carbohydrates causing acid reflux in susceptible individuals. I found fruit to be the worst food for giving me acid reflux, and I've rarely touched it since. Anytime I have, I've almost always regretted it within 20 minutes. Non-starchy vegetables quickly became a much bigger part of my diet: they're low-carb and full of nutrients. Am I missing anything by avoiding fruit? Lots of vitamin C and fiber? I made a chart to find out. Using Nutritiondata.com, I chose five fruits and five vegetables that I eat (or used to eat) and looked up how much of certain vitamins they contained. I chose vitamins that most of them had at least of little of. I also noted their total carb and fiber content. (Click for larger image.) Note that the bottom lines...

If you've been through it, you know the feeling: you get dressed in the morning and all is well. You have breakfast, and maybe a mid-morning snack, and then your pants don't fit. Surely you didn't put on five pounds in two hours, you think. (I had one tweed skirt in particular that became uncomfortable around 10 a.m.) Some days, you even look like you're pregnant. (That was when my big lavender shirt-dress came in handy.) It's gas bloating--but what causes it? Can you stop it? The short answer is that I got the bloating to go away without medication or supplements--and I had tried several. My understanding of the causes of bloating is that certain foods naturally lead to gas, and it's hard for some people to digest various foods. (There may be other causes, but these are the two I'll talk about here.) Which foods lead to gas? According to Heartburn Cured (1) by Norm Robillard, a microbiologist, it's mostly carbohydrates. Fat and protein don...

Previously: Body for Life: What Went Wrong, Part 1 What is a High-Carb and Low-Fat Diet? So if eating a high-carb diet is bad, how does it follow that the solution to balance protein and carbohydrates? Phillips seems to understand that a high carb, low-fat diet hasn’t been good for Americans since they took heed of the Surgeon General's warning about fats (BFL p. 47): In place of fat, more and more carbs were added [to foods]. And the myth that “fat free” means “all you can eat” spread like wildfire. But yet, over the past 10 years [since 1988], we’ve continued to see a dramatic rise in the incidence of obesity....I’ve worked with a lot of people over the years who were consuming a low-fat, high-carb diet and exercising, but they were getting even fatter! Why not just adopt a low-carb or a paleo diet, then? Phillips writes of our ancient ancestors’ health and vigor before the advent of farming and attributes their good health to their diet. But according to what I...

It's a good day for paying your bills And it's a good day for curing your ills So take a deep breath and throw away the pills 'Cause it's a good day from mornin' til night A low-carb diet has cured me of GERD! Thanks to the work of Dr. Norm Robillard, author of Heartburn Cured, I no longer have acid reflux--and I don't have to avoid "trigger foods" like onions, caffeine, chocolate (in the form of baking cocoa), mint, tomatoes and fat. This is a big change from the Body-for-Life program I was on just a few months ago. Body-for-Life involves eating (among other things) six small servings of "authorized" carbs like whole-wheat bread, pasta, fruit, beans, brown rice and winter squash per day. Now I mostly eat meat, eggs, nuts and non-starchy vegetables like leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and green beans. Low-carb diets defy just about every official dietary guideline out there. How often do you hear "eat plenty of healthy whole...

If I had any doubt that sugary or starchy carbs give me acid reflux, my experience yesterday removed them. I felt fine except when I ate high-glycemic foods. I ate some lentil salad, berries and oat bran in the morning and got acid reflux. I ate about 10 blackberries last night and got acid reflux. The rest of the time, the only carbs I ate were cabbage and cauliflower--two supposedly gassy foods that didn't give me gas or reflux. Dr. Robillard is right about high glycemic foods causing reflux, and I can't wait for his book, Heartburn Cured, to arrive. Yesterday, Day 2 of my low-carb experiment, started with a workout I couldn't finish: I didn't have the energy. But after I showered and got dressed, all those Saturday chores--shopping, sorting papers, mopping the floor, clearing out clutter, putting away laundry--got done easily. I normally hate, dread, and often put off those chores. I noticed the same thing the day before: I was flying through my work. Last night, th...

Biologist Norm Robillard, Ph.D. blames acid reflux on carbohydrates: eating carbs causes microorganisms in the gut to produce gas, which causes reflux. Before you laugh, consider a few facts: Reflux, or GERD, has been on the rise right along with high-carb diets eaten by many Americans. I started getting bad reflux--enough to put an ulcer in my esophagus--a few years after I started Body for Life, which involves eating a lot of carbohydrates. I was able to stop taking acid blockers only after I cut out wheat and cut down on sugars in all forms--both of these are carbohydrates. Protein has been shown to help close the lower esophageal muscle, which helps prevent acid reflux. (Protein, carbs and fat are the three basic food groups.) Some people report that Manuka Honey helps their acid reflux . Manuka Honey is strong enough to kill MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and Helicobacter pylori, a couple of die-hard infections. Maybe it kills gas-causing microorganisms, too. I...