Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gerri on November 30, 2010 at 12:48pm

I have gastroparesis & it's no fun. Try timing this unpredictable event with insulin. Gives new meaning to shooting in the dark. Meals, especially dinner, can take 8 hours for me to digest. My endo said fine to skip dinner, the most problematic meal, but I don't because most days I don't have time to eat lunch.

I follow the usual advice: not too high fiber, foods well cooked & well chewed, small meals, digestive enzyme supplements with meals, nothing that's hard to digest. Red meat is really difficult for me, so I eat in the form of ground beef, marinated meat & in stews & soups.

I tried liquid meals, but it didn't help.

Permalink Reply by Brian (bsc) on December 2, 2010 at 11:01am

Thanks for your thoughts. Not particularly promising. I do think one of my problems is probably fiber, particularly at lunch eating too many green veggies. I may try to cut back and see if that helps.

Permalink Reply by Gerri on December 2, 2010 at 11:17am

I'm not supposed to eat anything raw & can't stand vegetables cooked to mush. I do eat salads, but not for dinner.

Not promising. So little can be done.

Permalink Reply by marti w on December 5, 2010 at 3:10pm

gerri, i've had a lot of luck recently with super slow cooked meats. i had similar meat problems, red meat sits like a lead weight for up to a day. but i find making my own corned beef at home or super slow roasting at low temps makes beef that falls out of the connective tissues. seems the connective tissues are what was causing me the most problems.
i also recently obtained a used stand mixer that had a meat grinder attachment and started making my own ground meat - being able to remove ALL the fat before grinding is helping both my GP and my cholesterol. the fat in most ground beef i bought was causing huge delays

Permalink Reply by Gerri on December 5, 2010 at 3:57pm

I do a lot better with stews & slow cooked meat also. Marinating seems to help some.Steak--forget it! Connective tissue--good point. I do best with fish or eggs.

Permalink Reply by Kelly WPA on December 8, 2010 at 1:48pm

I am only able to eat really lean meat. I was buying the 92% lean hamburger because the 85% made me sick. This summer, I won a George Foreman grill and was actually going to give it away but it gets rid of a lot of the fat. I was able to switch to the 85% lean as long as I use that. If I want to make something other than a burger with it, I need to either cook it on the grill or buy the 92% lean.

Permalink Reply by marti w on December 5, 2010 at 3:07pm

yes and i manage it with a continuous glucose monitor and a pump much better than i did when i was diagnosed. i just had a three day break from my freestyle navigator because i ran out of places to put it until my skin healed and i came to realize how much i rely on it to give me that early warning that something isn't right

Permalink Reply by Kelly WPA on December 8, 2010 at 1:55pm

BSC, I find that certain foods seem to do that for me and I try not to eat the problem foods. I also recently started having that problem with peanut butter so had to stop eating that – which is really a pain in the butt (pardon the pun) for me because peanut butter was a main staple in my diet. I follow the gastroparesis diet, gluten free and try to eat low carb so there are not many foods I can actually eat. I was literally eating peanut butter for breakfast, lunch and dinner! I am going to try getting a different brand and am hoping that it was just something changed in the kind I used and not the peanut butter itself. I had been using Glucerna because of the gastroparesis and something in that started bothering me also. I switched to Boost, which I actually like better & it has less carbs. I think besides the gastroparesis, there is just something in my body rejecting certain foods. It doesn’t make sense that I can eat something like peanut butter most of my life and now I can’t.

Permalink Reply by Brian (bsc) on December 8, 2010 at 3:10pm

Thanks for the suggestion Kelly. I've never been able to isolate specific foods that "always" trigger problems, but I know that large amounts of greens and fat as you suggest "can" give me problems. I think one practice which has helped me understand things is keeping a log of foods eaten and recording my response, whether it be blood sugar or my digestion. Perhaps gastroparesis is one of those unpredictable things as well and only through carefully noting how we respond over a number of times do we actually figure out what is going on. I find it interesting that you suggest that something else may be going on with you, I think that my problems may well be "something else going on."

Permalink Reply by Kelly WPA on December 8, 2010 at 4:49pm

Fortunately me for, I don’t eat a wide variety of foods so it is easier to figure out. The bad part is, with gastroparesis, what I eat for lunch might not hit until evening!

Some things to look at are gluten. A lot of diabetics also have Celiacs. Even if you don’t have Celiacs, you could be gluten intolerant and have the same problems. Also lactose. That can cause problems. With those 2 things, you have whole classes of foods and not just a specific food.

Kind of makes you feel like you need to be a CSI tech to figure it out!