Eat healthy but have diarrhea

Either what you thought was a "healthy diet" actually fell into the trap of "pseudo-health", or your intestines have not adapted to the suddenly adjusted diet structure, or the problem is not in the food you eat at all, but because you did not notice other hidden triggers.

I just met my friend Xiao Zhou who stepped into this pit a while ago. In order to treat fatty liver, he ate boiled vegetables, brown rice, and homemade sugar-free yogurt for a week. When his legs became weak, he went to the emergency room. His bowel movements were normal. After a few questions, the doctor asked him to go home and stop the yogurt and reduce whole grains by half. He was still confused and said that the whole process of making yogurt was aseptic, and the brown rice was also the most expensive organic type. Why couldn't it work?

Speaking of which, many people take the definition of health too seriously. Take homemade fermented food as an example. You think it is healthier to have no additives, but the tools at home are not sterilized and the fermentation temperature is not controlled. What enters is not beneficial bacteria at all, but all miscellaneous bacteria. Eating it is no different from eating spoiled food. There are also people who order light salads from takeaways, thinking that vegetable leaves are healthier than hot pot. Little do you know whether the dishes in the kitchen have been washed, whether the storage time has exceeded the limit, and how many invisible sugar substitutes and additives are added to the salad dressing. News broke out before that the lettuce in many chain light food restaurants exceeded the standard of E. coli, and it would be strange if you didn't get diarrhea after eating it.

Oh, by the way, there is another pitfall that many people have stepped on: intolerance to sugar substitutes.

Many people choose zero-calorie drinks and sugar-free yogurt when quitting sugar. The erythritol and sorbitol added in them have a very low absorption rate in the intestine. If you accidentally eat too much, the intestinal osmotic pressure will be directly imbalanced, and all the water will run into the intestinal cavity. It would be strange if you don't have diarrhea. A friend of mine drank half a bottle of Coke Zero all afternoon and thought there was something wrong with the salad at noon. It took him a long time to find the culprit.

Of course, if you are sure that there is nothing wrong with what you eat, it is probably due to a small temper in the intestines. In order to lose weight, my cousin ate broccoli, quinoa, and dragon fruit for half a month. Later, she took a food intolerance test and found out that she was mildly intolerant to quinoa - what others consider a superfood is equivalent to a laxative for her. There are also people who had previously eaten polished rice and white noodles, but suddenly changed all three staple foods to sweet potatoes, corn, and oats. The dietary fiber supplement was too strong, and the intestines had never seen such a battle. The peristalsis speed doubled, and the undigested crude fiber wrapped in water and ran down, naturally causing diarrhea.

There was a quarrel in the nutrition circle over the intake of dietary fiber before. Old-school nutritionists shouted every day that ordinary people should eat 30g of dietary fiber every day. New-school research said that for patients with irritable bowel and chronic enteritis, they should first stabilize their intestines with a low-FODMAP (a type of short-chain carbohydrates that are easily fermented in the intestines) diet, and then slowly adjust the intake. There is no unified standard answer, and the amount that suits others may not be suitable for you.

Many people have never imagined that diet is not to blame for diarrhea. I stayed up until 3 o'clock for three consecutive days working on a project. I ate light home-cooked meals, but still had diarrhea for two days. I went to see a Chinese medicine doctor and said that I had liver qi attacking the spleen. To put it bluntly, I was under too much pressure and the sympathetic nerves were too excited. The intestines, as the "second brain", were directly affected, and the peristalsis speed was disrupted. There are also people who go out and drink cold air when the weather is cold, drink ice-cold sugar-free sparkling water right after exercise, or even not sleep well the night before, which may cause stomach upset. If you turn the pot to a healthy meal, you are really doing it wrong.

As for how to solve this situation, doctors in different fields actually have different opinions. Most Western medicine will tell you to check for allergens and intolerances first. If the diarrhea is severe, take some montmorillonite powder to stabilize it first, and then add some probiotics to adjust the flora. Most Chinese medicine will tell you not to be greedy for cold food. Put the yogurt and salad just out of the refrigerator before eating. People with weak spleen and stomach should not always eat raw vegetables. It is better to blanch them before eating them. No one is right or wrong, it just depends on which one your body prefers.

To be honest, healthy eating is a process of adapting to your own body. There is no need to follow the recipes of Internet celebrities. If you eat whole grain salad today, just reduce the amount first and mix it with polished rice and white flour. If you drink zero-calorie drink salad, replace it with boiled water. There is no need to insist on saying, "This is healthy and I must eat it." Don't panic if you poop once or twice occasionally. You can always find a rhythm that suits you by slowly trying. You can't just go back to eat heavy takeout just because you pooped once. That would be picking up sesame seeds and throwing away watermelons, right?