Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

FYI, this is what it says on my ND's website:

Food Combining
It is commonly believed that our stomachs should be able to digest any number of different foods at the same time. However, digestion is governed by physiological chemistry. It is not only what we eat that is crucial to our health, but also what we digest and assimilate from it as well.

Digestive enzymes are secreted in very specific amounts and at very specific times for breaking down the foods we eat. Different food types require different digestive secretions. Carbohydrate foods require carbohydrate-splitting enzymes, whereas protein foods require protein splitting enzymes, etc. Carbohydrate foods (bread, rice or potatoes) and acid foods (lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruits, pineapples, tomatoes or other sour fruits) eaten at the same meal can cause severe digestive cramping.

This is because the enzyme, ptyalin, an amylase (carbohydrate digesting enzyme) present in saliva that catalyzes the hydrolysis of starch into maltose and dextrin acts only in an alkaline medium; it is destroyed even by a mild acid present in fruits. Fruit acids not only prevent carbohydrate digestion, but they also cause fermentation, which produces gas in the stomach. Oxalic acid, for example, diluted to one part in 10,000 completely arrests the action of ptyalin. Hence a breakfast of pancakes laden with maple syrup and fruits in bound to cause tummy upsets for most folks.

Pasta without tomato sauce?

Tomatoes should never be combined with starchy foods such as breads or pastas, as the various acids present in the tomato are very much opposed to the alkaline digestion of starches. This leads to inhibiting the enzyme activity in the body to digest (break down) the starches. The starches then tend to "sit" in the stomach for a long time, allowing fermentation to occur, which causes gas and heart burn.

Dr Percy Howe of Harvard Medical School states: "Many people who cannot eat oranges at a meal derive great benefit from eating them fifteen to thirty minutes before the meal".

Herbert Sheldon, author of 'The science and fine art of food and nutrition' reports: "I have put hundreds of patients, who have told me that they could not eat oranges or grapefruit, upon a diet of these fruits and they found that they could take them. Such people are in the habit of taking these foods with a breakfast of cereal, with cream and sugar, egg on toast, stewed prunes and coffee, or some similar meal."

An acid process (gastric digestion) and an alkaline process (salivary digestion) cannot be carried on at the same time in an ideal way in the stomach. Before long, they cannot proceed at all, as the rising acidity of the stomach soon completely stops carbohydrate digestion. The highest efficiency in digestion demands that we eat in such a way as to offer the least hindrance to the work of digestion.

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IBS-C, lots of spasm and trapped gas.

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