Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: compound pharmacies, low starch diet, medications, no starch diet
I’ve found that over the counter and prescription medications as well as herbal supplements can irritate my stomach and trigger a sleepless night if the inactive ingredients have starch. Sometimes it takes a few days or weeks to figure out that was the culprit, especially if it creeps up on me and doesn’t irritate my system right away but does so after a build up over time. Getting that corrected was quite a hassle. No one told me what a hassle it would be!! Doctors and pharmacists at first didn’t take me seriously, and I had to educate them on how important the inactive ingredients can be.
The problem is usually with the inactive ingredients, but check the active ingredients too, especially herbs with starchy spices or tubers in the mix. Sometimes that won’t end up bothering my stomach, but it can, it depends on the formula. You can starch test your meds and supplements too, if it’s a hard capsule just grind part of one capsule a bit into powder and put a little water on the sample before plunking down the iodine. Inactive ingredients in both medications and herbal supplements are usually some type of vegetable cellullose (especially if it’s a time release capsule of any kind), and any number of additives such as gelatin, magnesium, sugar, lactose, sodium etc. The big problem can be with any starch in the inactive ingredients. Maltodextrin bothers me for sure. I have to avoid it. And now maltodextrin is being increasingly put into over the counter meds and herbal supplements and prescription. Once you look at the ingredients on the box, what you have to do is look up the ingredients on the net and find out if they are a starch molecule based ingredient. Wikipedia is very useful for that, just enter the name of the ingredient and look it up, if it’s not on wiki, google it.
Carole Sinclair mentions the need to get starch free medications and gives a good heads up discussion in her book about the importance it may play in getting you to feel better and not have another source of pain. She doesn’t mention though some of the pitfalls on the way to getting your meds straightened out.
Be prepared not to be taken seriously.
First, no one took me seriously. Not my doctors, not my pharmacist. They all acted like I was some crazy person with some annoying persnickitty little fussy nutty preoccupation, some kind of hypochondria. What happens is you go to the doctor, and even if they agree with the efficacy of your diet, they go ahead and punt the responsibility of starch free inactive ingredients to the pharmacist. They’ll claim the pharmacist can figure it out for you. Basically they don’ t want to spend their 15 minutes of alloted time in the dr. visit they’re charging you and/or your insurance company lots of money for, to look up inactive ingredients.
Ok, so I went to a pharmacy and they did nothing. They pretended to try to find benign inactive ingredients but gave me a prescription with starchy inactive ingredients. I had to go back and discuss it several times to get them to take me seriously. Next, I had to do research, find out which labs that make the same medications have non starchy inactive ingredients and tell the pharmacy to order my medication just from that lab. I did this with Allegra for nasal allergy, and for Trazedone a sleep medication. Initially I was told there is no lab making Allegra or Trazedone with no starch meds, and that the medication is unavailable for compounding. Once I did my own research on the web, and identified a lab company making Allegra (generic phexofenadine) without starchy inactive ingredients, and informed my pharmacy of it, the pharmacy got it for me and it turned out to be 1/2 price the old prescription. With Trazedone my pharmacist finally, after so many problems, actually went the extra mile for me and got it wholesale and compounded it for me without starch at a fairly low price after another compound pharmacist had given me a very high price estimate. Nice, huh? Also, the pharmacies even advertise on the net that they’ll help you so much find your non allergenic meds. Totally false in my experience. I had to make them do it, and do their work for me. But it was worth it, since I am now sleeping better and feeling well.
So heads up folks, on getting no starch meds. You have to fight for it, and do your own homework they should have done for you.
I haven’t outlined in detail the topsy turvy details of how I had to go to several pharmacies, ended up back at my original compounding pharmacy plus one other compounding pharmacy, made a lot of calls to pharmacies advertised online, etc.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: chocolate recipes, low starch diet, no starch diet, pudding recipes, stevia recipes, tofu recipes
Here’s a tasty recipe I came up with for delicious chocolate pudding that’s safe, won’t feed klebsiella, yet is sweet and very yummy. When I looked for chocolate pudding recipes on the net, they all used corn starch or other starch for thickening. No good until I came upon one using tofu instead, and then modified it to my own taste. In fact what I came up with is the best chocolate pudding I’ve ever tasted:
Ingredients:
Tofu, 8 ounces
Unsweetened Chocolate powder (hot chocolate powder, I used Ghiradelli’s), about 2 ounces– make sure it tastes chocolatey enough to you
Half and half, about 4-6 ounces. Lactose intolerant folks could just not include the half & half, in which case it would be best to use soft instead of firm tofu.
1 raw Fig (use raw only, dried figs have starch, raw don’t).
A dash of Rum, likely around an ounce (I used Meyer’s Rum. Be careful to use a brand that doesn’t add soy based ‘flavorings’, check the label’s. Meyer’s is a quality product and nothing but rum.)
Stevia, about 8 pinches or more. By a pinch I mean the tiny amount of the full little serving spoon in the Whole Foods container for powdered stevia. Be careful when buying stevia– often it will have other starchy or stomach upsetting ingredients. I only buy 100% powdered stevia, and usually organic.
agave nectar, about 4 tablespoons
honey, about 2-3 tablespoons
Easy Cooking instructions:
1. Put all ingredients in a blender. Blend on high settings to fully liquify the figs and tofu.
I found the firm tofu jammed a bit, but eventually with enough half and half, became ground and smooth. I’m sure soft tofu would be much easier to make this with, but firm works also, just takes longer to blend into smooth pudding texture. I probably had to spend about 5 or more minutes blending on the highest setting (liquify, on my blending machine) in order to get the tofu to be smooth and silky. So blend the ingredients until the mix and especially the tofu is puddinglike soft and smooth.
Next, taste to make sure it’s chocolatey and sweet enough for you. If it isn’t, add more and briefly blend until it tastes right.
2. Once the mix is smooth and pudding like, and the taste is delicious, simply pour the mixture into a bowl and put into the refrigerator, and chill it. It took about 2 or 3 hours for it to be cool and tasty, but after a half hour it might already be serveable. It tastes even better though when it’s cold enough.
There’s no cooking involved, so this is a super simple recipe, and quite delicious and healthy.
I apologize for the fact that I cook to taste. In other words, I taste while cooking and modify my recipes according to taste, so my amounts above are approximated, especially for the rum, half and half and sweeteners, but I think they’re pretty close to what I actually did. Most important in this recipe is for you to adjust the amount of chocolate, sweeteners and rum to your liking while you taste it before chilling. When cooking sweets, I use stevia for the largest amount of sweetening, then add honey and/or agave nectar to taste to make the final product as yummy as a more sugary recipe, while being very low in any sugars.
Fruits to be wary of depend on local conditions at your grocery stores. Shelf life can cause some fruit sugars to turn to starch, that can happen with apples, pears, mangos, and orange pulp for example. Berries are never a problem though, so you can eat cherries, strawberries, grapes, blackberries, etc. year round. Starch test with iodine a sample of your apples, pears, mangoes, oranges and juices from such fruits before eating. Personally, I get tired of doing that so in general I don’t buy them since I found apples here in northern CA stores are often starchy, so I stick to berries, plums, pineapples etc., and berry juices such as natural or organic grape or cranberry juice without any other additives. In some regions pineapple fruit are starchy on the shelf, here in northern CA, I’ve never had a starchy pineapple, so it’s best at first to test your non berry fruits before consuming, once you find the regional pattern you can modify your diet accordingly if some fruits in your region’s stores never test starchy. Dried figs have starch but raw figs are fine. Dates are starch free, but neglet doors have high sucrose content while medjools don’t have too much sucrose.
I eat fruit daily with all 3 meals, I’ve found for myself personally that if I don’t do so, I get badly constipated, so eating fruit with all 3 daily meals is a pleasurable necessity that balances out my regularity.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: agave nectar, dextrose, fructose, klebsiella, low starch diet, no starch diet, stevia, sucrose, sugar
About sugar, Klebsiella can feed on sucrose, but won’t feed on glucose or fructose, so most fruits (fructose) can be eaten plenty in this diet, including grapes (glucose). Store bought sweet treats are mostly out, except for plain fruit.
You can make your own sweet treats using the safe sweeteners. And you can sweeten your tea or coffee and cook with the safe sweeteners.
Safe sweeteners include corn syrup (glucose and fructose), high fructose corn syrup (fructose), fructose sugar packets, agave nectar (composed of fructose and glucose, is my favorite sweetener for tea), stevia (my favorite sweetener for coffee), and honey (in moderation as honey has some sucrose). These are all good sweeteners one can have on this diet. One word of caution, and that applies to every food, you must check the ingredients. If you are as sensitive as I am, I cannot tolerate any starch derived food additives of any kind so for example, some sweeteners above also are packaged with dextrins, like maltodextrin, a starch sugar that gives me flare ups. Dextrins are to be avoided, as starchy sugars (think of donuts) are supposed to be one of the worst things for inflaming klebsiella. Therefore don’t eat donuts or pastries.
Some of you might tolerate sugar alcohols as sweeteners, such as xylitol or erythritol but I can’t. I find those give me cramps and diarrhea, so you’ll have to see for yourself– proceed with caution or avoid it. Some may tolerate synthetic sweeteners such as aspartame and saccharin, but remember most of those products are known to be potentially cancer causing with long term use, and I’ve found almost every one of those products has some kind of starch (like a dextrin) added to the ingredients that will cause me trouble. The only exception is Sweet and Low, which is saccharin with dextrose. I will use it in a pinch if it is there at a cafe without any problems, but don’t want to make a habit of ingesting the potentially cancer causing saccharin as a long term daily habit. I just carry around stevia and fructose packets with me wherever I go if I want a cup of tea or coffee when I’m away from home. I find taste-wise I prefer the two combined as my favorite sweetener, second best to agave nectar which I don’t like hauling around away from home since the container gets sticky like honey containers can.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: klebsiella, low starch diet, no starch diet
The NSD basically consists of eliminating starch– grains, beans, many nuts, potatoes and tubers, some vegetables and a few fruits (usually apples and pears and orange pulp.) You can test a food sample with iodine, if it turns blue or black the food has starch and you want to avoid eating that. Be sure to put the food sample for testing on a separate plate and don’t eat it, as iodine is poisonous. Wash your hands after testing it, as iodine can spill. Iodine bottles are very cheap, you can get them in the over the counter medicine department of drug stores or supermarkets for around 1 to 2 dollars a bottle. For those who find they are very sensitive to starch, which I am, avoiding apples and oranges is a wise precaution. You can eat green veggies, meat, fish, a small amount of dairy, coffee, tea, and very little sugar (sucrose that is, common table sugar). Other sugars such as fructose (in fruit and available at health food stores in bulk or little sugar style packets), glucose, dextrose (a form of glucose) are easily tolerated and can be eaten plenty as substitutes for sucrose, for example in baking or in your coffee and tea.
Klebsiella feeds on starch primarily and secondarily on lactose and sucrose. So the aim of the diet is to lower or eliminate starch in one’s diet and reduce or eliminate lactose and sucrose to a level that one finds creates no flareups.
The NSD was developed in England by Dr. Dr. Alan Ebringer, who found it to be helpful in reducing the klebsiella count in Ankylosing Spondialitis patients. Carole Sinclar, one of his patients, has written the definitive book on the subject. She has several editions under different titles, the most current one being The IBS Low-Starch Diet: Why Starchy Food May Be Hazardous to Your Health. The book is rather essential in understanding how to do this diet and offers many pointers. One reason I’m posting this blog is to address some things she doesn’t in her book.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: IBS, klebsiella, low starch diet, no starch diet
Hi, glad you made it here. I am posting this blog due to the scarcity of information available on the no starch diet, and to share things I learned along the way of doing it that I wish I had known about. If you have IBS and/or gastrointestinal problems, you should have a comprehensive stool analysis done with one of the best labs, such as UniLab or Great Smokies, in the U.S. . If you find in the test results that you have a high count of klebsiella bacteria, you can benefit from a low starch or a no starch diet, that may reduce your klebsiella count and likely improve your intestinal symptoms. Disclaimer: I am not a doctor nor a medical professional, I don’t currently work in medicine, nor for any company associated with medicine or health supplements. I am merely a long term sufferer of a klebsiella overgrowth and its subsequent IBS symptoms. I have found the no starch diet to be by far the most healing and effective treatment I have yet tried. Disclaimer: please consult with your doctor and health practictioners before trying anything you read here. I am not a doctor, and I am only sharing what has worked for me, everyone is different.
