Thoughno one likes to talk about it, roughly60 to 70 million Americans suffer from digestive problems and while doctors havetrouble diagnosing exactly what's causing the issue, there is one way to ease symptoms and relieve pain, called a "low-FODMAP diet." Essentially this is a way of eliminating foods that may be the likely culprit, to see if symptoms clear up as the result of this diet change.

Digestive problems can be linked to food intolerances or allergiesthat may be near-impossible to detect by blood work or an allergy "scratch" test. That's why more medical professionals are suggesting anyone with issues try the low-FODMAP diet as a natural way to alleviate symptoms, before adding back in food groups one by one, to figure out which food groupis the worst offender.Following a low-FODMAP diet has been effective in "up to 86% of patients with IBS find improvement in overall gastrointestinal symptoms as well as individual symptoms such as abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, abdominal distention, and flatulence following the diet," according to astudy.

The low-FODMAP diet has been used by medical professionalsin recent years to help patients suffering from gastrointestinal disorders, such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), which is a catch-all phrase for anything that causes gastro distress, or Celiac Disease, which is an allergy to gluten, the protein that is found in wheat products.

FODMAP, which stands forFermentable Oligosaccharides,Disaccharides,Monosaccharides andPolyols, are naturally occurring sugar molecules in the fruits, vegetables,and legumes that the body has trouble digesting.

Foods that need to be eliminated on a low-FODMAP diet include:

In order to not eliminate everything all at once (and have little plant-based foods to choose from), doctors suggest eliminating one FODMAP food group at a time, such as not eating fruit one day and then cutting out dairy the next, until your body tells you what it is that has been causing the bloat and gastric distress. Here is the list of FODMAP foods to eliminate:

Eating a diet highin FODMAP foods, such as sugar, starch, and fiber, can lead to gas,bloat, and stomach pain or diarrhea. This is because the small intestine (which lies below the stomach and above the large intestine) has troublebreaking down these types of foods, leadingthe body to try even harder, and increasing the amount of fluid it secretes inan effort to break down the sugar and fiber. The combination of gas in your stomach and excess digestive fluid leads people to experience bloat and pain and resultsin "poor digestion."

The goal of a low-FODMAP diet is to eliminate foods one by one until youfind thetrigger food (or foods)causingyour pain.Those suffering from nonstop stomach pain relating to food sensitives or allergiesshould reach out to a doctor since there could be serious causes not related todiet, and doctors recommend not doing a low-FODMAP diet for longer than six weeks. Here is how to do it, according toMonash University, a top university in Australia.

Once you pinpoint the aggravating foods, youshould be able to get back to a less restrictive diet, which is important since many of these FODMAP foods are full of healthy nutrients and should not be avoided for long if they don't cause gastro distress.

A low-FODMAP diet means cutting back on fiber-rich foods butthat doesn't mean you can't eat any fruits or vegetables. Plant-based foods that classify as low-FODMAP include soy, dairy-free milk alternatives, grains, nuts, seeds, and certain legumes.The goal is to find foods that are easy to digest and don't harm your gut or identify methods that allow you to eat whole food without suffering. "Eating cooked food seems to be easier to digest," even those foods that cause issues for some people, according to Dr. Angie Sadeghi, a specialist in gastroenterologybased in Newport Beach, California,on a recent webinar hosted by Forks Over Knives on the topic of How to Eat to Beat IBS and Heal Your Gut.

As you eliminate healthy whole foods like legumes or cruciferous vegetables, if you find that they are not the cause of your problems, re-introduce them since the healthy fiber, protein, antioxidants, and nutrients are key to eating a healthy plant-based diet. So try incorporating small amounts of these healthy whole foods back into your diet in small amounts of about 1/4 of a cup daily, according to the Monash University plan.

Fiber foods are essential for a healthy gut and should be slowly increased back into your diet points out Dr. Sadeghi, who adds that eating a low-FODMAPdiet can cause more problems than it cures.

"I am not a fan of low-FODMAP for your health, because the foods you eliminate are good for us. You may be hurting your gut, not helping it," says Dr.Sadeghi.She recommendscutting dairy out of your diet before any other food, which has helped many of her patients manage their symptoms.

One caveat: People use a low-FODMAP diet asa restrictive way of eatingora type of disordered eating, which is why doctors don't recommend it for longer than six weeks. "As a restrictive diet, the low-FODMAP diet carries risks of nutritional inadequacy and of fostering disordered eating, which has received little attention," according to astudy on the controversial nature of the diet.As foods are eliminated,the dieter is deprived of vital nutrients found in whole foods.Low-FODMAP dieting is meant to be a short-term approach that doesn't restricteatingbut helps find the food(s) to avoid and ease IBS symptoms or pain.

To follow the low-FODMAP plan you should avoid mostlegumes but you can havesmall amounts of butter beans, chickpeas, lentils, and lima beans since these are not 1/4 of a cup daily.

Excerpt from:
How to Follow a Low FODMAP Diet to Cure Bloat, IBS and More - The Beet

Jocelyn Aguilar felt bad enough after the first of a scheduled four rounds of chemotherapy that she thought about quitting.

She had no detectable cancer after undergoing double mastectomy for breast cancer, so the chemotherapy was an optional treatment that Aguilar, age 37 when diagnosed in October 2019, had chosen to reduce the risk of recurrence.

She ultimately decided to continue because, starting with her next round of chemotherapy, she was going to help test a counterintuitive-but-promising strategy for reducing chemotherapys side effects and increasing its cancer-fighting power: a very low-calorie diet designed to mimic the effects of fasting.

On weeks (when) I was due to receive chemo that Friday, I got four boxes of food labeled Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The only food I ate those days came from that days box. On Saturday morning, I woke up and eased myself back into normal eating, says Aguilar, a nurse who works at the University of Southern California (USC), where the trial took place.

The pain I experienced with that first round of chemo, before the fasting, was so terrible that I didnt think I could go on, says Aguilar, who described the sensation as aches and pains all over her body. With the fast, there were still some effects, but they were not nearly as bad. It was a huge difference.

Aguilar says that her food boxes each contained about 300 calories worth of plant-based food. The diet is billed by its distributor as containing micro- and macronutrients that are nourishing but not recognized as food by the body, which mimics fasting.

Its hard to imagine a more counterintuitive cancer treatment than fasting why deprive the body of vital nutrients when it would seem to need them most? but a growing body of research suggests that fasting decreases the toxicity of cancer treatments and may increase their efficacy too.

Some evidence also shows that a ketogenic diet, which deprives the body of carbohydrates rather than all calories, may increase the efficacy of some cancer treatments. In fact, there is even some thought that the two diets may help prevent cancer, although evidence for this is currently limited.

When it comes to supplementing cancer therapies, the benefits of either dietary intervention also have yet to be definitively proven unless youre a mouse. The animal data for fasting, which started in our lab but is now coming from many labs, is extraordinary. Its hard to think of anything in the past, ever, that has done better, says Valter Longo, who holds a doctorate in biochemistry and is the Edna M. Jones Professor of Gerontology and Biological Sciences and the director of the Longevity Institute at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.

Healthy cells and tumor cells respond differently to fasting. Healthy cells shut down their growth-promoting pathways shortly after the food stops coming in and focus on cell repair. Cancer cells, on the other hand, rarely slow their unrestrained growth enough to engage in this self-protective behavior.

Fasting thus increases the ability of healthy cells to withstand stressors such as chemotherapyor radiotherapy, but it leaves cancer cells, which suddenly have less nutritional support to sustain their rapid growth, unusually weak and vulnerable.

Fasting also depletes stored carbohydrates. Normal cells can adapt to this by running mostly on two fat-derived energy sources fatty acids and ketones but cancer cells are far more reliant on sugars, starches and the insulin that drives them into cells.

Most of the mouse studies to date have assessed fastings effect on chemotherapy or radiotherapy, but at least one study has found that a low-calorie fasting- mimicking diet (FMD) plus simple vitamin C can slow the progression of KRAS-mutated colon cancer. Another study, this one published in the prestigious journal Nature, found that both fasting and a FMD increased and extended the efficacy of the hormonal treatments tamoxifen and Faslodex (fulvestrant) in mouse models of hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer.

The first clinical trial of short-term fasting in humans, which was published in 2009, reported results in 10 patients with various types of cancer. It found that fasting reduced chemotherapy-related toxicities fatigue, weakness and gastrointestinal side effects in the six patients who fasted 48 to 140 hours before and five to 56 hours after some (but not all) of their chemotherapy sessions.

Several other trials in humans, all of them following small patient populations for short periods of time, have also found that fasting reduced treatment-related toxicities such as fatigue or DNA damage in healthy cells. For example, one Dutch trial assigned six patients with breast cancer to follow normal dietary guidelines and seven others to fast 24 hours before and after chemotherapy. Nonhematological toxicity did not differ between the two groups, but the researchers found evidence that fasting reduced bone marrow toxicity and reduced chemotherapy-induced DNA damage in some healthy blood cells.

Data from several of these small trials also suggested that fasting increased treatment efficacy, but none of them were large enough (or lasted long enough) to prove that fasting extended patients survival. There is even less evidence to support the use of fasting or the ketogenic diet in combination with immunotherapy treatments, although that remains a tantalizing possibility.

The only large trial in humans to have reported results so far was inconclusive for a somewhat unexpected reason.

Investigators randomly assigned 131 Dutch women, all of whom were slated to receive chemotherapy for stage 2/3 HER2-negative breast cancer, either to eat according to standard guidelines or to follow the FMD. Sixty-six of the women were assigned to follow the FMD but, unfortunately, so few actually complied that it was impossible to evaluate the diets effects. Just 32% of women in the fasting group fasted before at least half of their chemotherapy cycles, and just 24% of them fasted before all of them.

Patient noncompliance was particularly disappointing because the FMD was designed by Longo who has a financial interest in a company that sells FMD meal kits as a less demanding way to get all the effects of a true, zero-calorie fast.

It wasnt easy, says Aguilar, but it was doable. Im not normally a healthy eater, and I was being given steroids at the time, so my appetite was out of control, but I still managed it because it reduced the pain so much.

Hopefully, patients in several other large studies, all of which are nearing their scheduled completion dates, will comply with fasting protocols well enough to help researchers determine whether short-term fasting can extend life, reduce treatment toxicity or both for patients with glioblastoma, non-small cell lung cancer, lung adenocarcinoma, ovarian cancer, breast cancer and colorectal cancer.

Positive results could change standards of care for all those tumor types within the next couple of years.

For patients who cant wait that long to select their treatment plan, the obvious question is whether they should ask their oncologists about starting now with short- term fasts or the FMD.

Some experts believe its too early to use fasting anywhere outside of clinical trials.Indeed, a group of Italian clinicians recently published a letter in Nature Reviews Cancer that cautioned against what they perceive as excessive enthusiasm about fastings potential benefits and insufficient caution about its potential to harm some patients.

It is worrying that the application of fasting in oncology has been prematurely reported by the media as a potential advance in medical oncology, to the point where FMD kits have recently been commercialized, the clinicians wrote. These may negatively interfere with cancer care, as patients at risk of malnutrition or sarcopenia (muscle loss) could autonomously decrease protein-calorie intake during treatment.

Longo agrees that neither malnourished patients nor those who are responding to their current treatment should try fasting or the FMD outside of clinical trials. However, he believes the data from both animal models and early human trials are strong enough to make fasting an option when approved treatments stop working.

I think (the evidence so far) is enough for an oncologist to say, Look, your therapy isnt working. Im out of options here. This fasting-mimicking diet is so effective in mice. Why dont we give it a shot? You have to understand there are risks, but you also have to understand that were out of options. That conversation would be appropriate now, Longo says.

Fasting isnt the only way to drive blood sugar and insulin down. Patients can achieve nearly equivalent reductions by following a ketogenic diet that provides about 80% of calories from fat, 12% from protein and 8% from carbohydrates.

Low sugar consumption means low blood sugar, which, in turn, means low levels of insulin a hormone secreted by the pancreas to drive sugar into muscles and fuel their growth and/or activity. Healthy tissue, as mentioned before, can adapt to deriving nearly all its energy fromfat, although many people feel pretty drained for a week or so at the beginning of that adjustment. (This lousy feeling is known as keto flu.) Many tumors, on the other hand, seem far less able to overcome their dependence on insulin and sugar (aka glucose).

Weve known for 100 years that cancer cells take up glucose at a much higher rate than do the normal tissues from which those cancer cells emerge, says Lewis Cantley, who holds a doctorate in biophysical chemistry and is the Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center and a professor of cancer biology in medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.

This does not mean that patients can starve their tumors to death simply by following ketogenic diets, but it has led many researchers to speculate that adding a ketogenic diet to standard treatment protocols might increase the efficacy of many of those regimens.

It has been difficult to test this theory, however. Because no pharmaceutical company canpatent a ketogenic diet, no one has a financial incentive to spend the millions of dollars that largestudies cost. Instead, studies get funded through the National Institutes of Health and foundation grants. Tests of FMDs face the same issue.

The ketogenic diet also runs into the same problem that makes it hard to test fasting: patient compliance. Indeed, researchers who work for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Pittsburgh enrolled 11 patients with cancer in a 16-week trial of the ketogenic diet. Only four of them actually followed the diet all 16 weeks.

In spite of the challenges, several recent discoveries suggest that ketogenic diets may be particularly helpful for certain cancer treatments helpful enough to drive funding and convince patients to follow the diet.

Cantley discovered a previously unknown link between sugar, insulin and cancer growth more than three decades ago: an enzyme called phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) that helps drive sugar into cells. Mutations in the genes that regulate PI3K causing an increase in PI3K activity are among the most common of all cancer mutations.

His discovery eventually led to the creation of PI3K- inhibiting medications, three of which have been approved for the treatment of several cancers. But all three have a big drawback.

When you give patients a PI3 kinase inhibitor, which hits the same enzyme that propagates the insulin response, you get the unsurprising result that the patient instantly becomes insulin resistant. Many of the patients in the trials of these drugs had to drop out because of high blood sugar, Cantley says.

Extra insulin, whether created by the body in response to rising blood sugar or deliberately injected, will solve the problem by driving the sugar into muscles, but it also drives sugar into tumors and destroys treatment efficacy.

Cantleys team hypothesized that PI3K inhibitors would be far safer and more effective if used in combination with some tool that would control blood sugar without driving it into tissues. They saw dramatically improved results in mice when they paired PI3K inhibitors with a class of diabetes medications called SGLT2 inhibitors, which reduce the bodys absorption of glucose via the kidneys so that excess glucose is excreted through the urine. Results were better still when they fed mice a ketogenic diet.

Blood sugar levels hardly went up. Insulin levels hardly went up. Tumors melted away, says Cantley, who also has a financial interest in a company that makes prepackaged meals for patients with cancer. Every tumor we tried essentially disappeared whenever we gave a PI3 kinase inhibitor with a ketogenic diet.

A large human trial will compare the current standard for using PI3K inhibitors against treatment plans that combine PI3K inhibitors with either SGLT2 inhibitors or a ketogenic diet. The ongoing global pandemic delayed the trial for several months, but enrollment has now begun.

And its not the only trial thats testing the ketogenic diets effect on cancer treatments. At least 18 other such studies are either recruiting patients or preparing to do so.

The whole thing comes down to energy. Without energy, nothing can grow, says Thomas N. Seyfried, who holds a doctorate in genetics and biochemistry and is a biology professor at Boston College who studies how metabolic therapies such as a ketogenic diet can affect cancer and other diseases. Tumor cells make energy by fermenting glucose and the amino acid glutamine. If we restrict the availability of glucose and glutamine, this will create tremendous metabolic stress on the tumor cells.

Continued here:
Early Evidence Shows Fasting, Keto Diet May Make Chemo and Some Other Cancer Treatments More Effective and Easier to Tolerate - Curetoday.com

After fasting for five days, Gayle King pulled an all-nighter all while wearing her favorite yellow dress.

The journalist, who covered the 2020 election on live TV, shared that after finishing Tuesday nights election coverage, that went well into Wednesday, she didnt have time to go home before her call-time for her CBS This Morning hosting duties. Marathon hours means no time to go home to change, she wrote on Instagram, noting that she slept for 45 minutes on a couch in the office. TV news so glamorous!

King didnt change into pajamas for her power nap. Rather, she stayed in the dress to rest and then woke up and went back to work.

King staying in her dress may have been a necessity but its clear shes not exactly mad about getting to show off her look two days in a row. Why? Because she put in the work to look and feel her best in, as she called it, THEEE yellow dress aka Elex nite dress!

The 65-year-old shared ahead of Tuesdays broadcast that she had been on a five-day soup fast in order to fit in the dress and lost more than 7 pounds. While theres no questioning that King looks fantastic in the yellow mustard dress, a color that she frequently wears, it might be fair to question if her methodology for fitting into the dress was actually healthy for her.

So what is a soup diet? Well, as you may have guessed, its a diet where you only eat soup, usually in hopes of losing weight quickly. It can certainly be an effective strategy but its not exactly a sustainable way to keep off weight and get healthy.

"The concept of eating soup to lose weight has spanned decades, but experts say an all-soup diet lacks nutrients and is not sustainable, Chrissy Carroll, RD, MPH told Very Well Fit. They do agree it can be smart to eat vegetable-packed soups for some meals though, as these are filling, nutrient-dense, and low in calories."

Why is it not sustainable? A few reasons. First, if taken to extremes, a soup diet could lead to a dangerously low daily caloric intake, which comes with all sorts of risks, including increasing stress levels, not meeting your nutrient needs and slowing your metabolism. A soup diet can also reduce your intake of grains and fruits, which are both recommended as part of a balanced diet.

Fortunately, it seems unlikely that King is going to adopt the soup diet as a permanent part of her life, as she has spoken openly in the past about how she is not willing to go to extremes when it comes to her diet.

Some people dont eat pasta or bread or sweets ever, she said in O, The Magazine. I love those foods too much. So for the most part, I eat healthy, but if I go to a party or on vacation, Im going to enjoy it; then I work extra hard to get back to where I was.

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Gayle King went on a 5-day fast diet to fit into her yellow election night dress: 'The results are in!' - Yahoo Sports

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Boost Your Immunity With This Here Comes The Sun Diet Supplement - Men's Journal

There are two types of inflammation, one acts as a defence mechanism of the body, while the other is the slow one that continues working in the background. The latter type of inflammation is bad for the body and is called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation over time can take a toll on your health.Chronic inflammation can up your risk of developing serious diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease, depression, arthritis, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. Chronic inflammation has no visible symptoms and thus is hard to be detected. But there is no harm in being proactive and simply eating a diet that reduces inflammation. Here is the best food that can reduce chronic inflammation in the body.

Best food to reduce inflammationAs per experts, omega 3 does wonders in reducing inflammation. Eating foods rich in omega 3 like salmon and other oily fatty fish is your best bet to combat chronic inflammation.

The EPS and DHA in omega 3 play a role in preventing pro-inflammatory compounds and inflammatory processes and encourages the production of anti-inflammatory compounds.

Studies have shown that taking omega 3 supplements help combat inflammation related to conditions to rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's lupus, type 1 diabetes, asthma, psoriasis, heart disease and more.

Various other researchers have shown that taking omega 3 supplements for four months lowered the inflammation in middle-aged and older adults.

Not just foods rich in omega 3, there are 3 other foods that can help combat inflammation. These include leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables and berries. Including leafy greens in your daily diet and having berries several times a week can also help.

Having leafy green vegetables regularly can lower the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancers and brain deterioration. Add 6 cups of different green vegetables like lettuce, spinach, kale etc in your weekly diet.

According to a study, people who ate 2 cups of cruciferous vegetables a day for two weeks, saw an improvement in inflammatory markers.

Aim for at least 5 servings of vegetables like broccoli, sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, bok choy, arugula and radish

Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, cranberries and blackberries are packed with antioxidants and anthocyanins, which fight the free radical that promote inflammation. Aim for having at least two cups of berries per week.

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This is the best food to fight inflammation - Times of India