Daughter feels hungry constantly but eating food makes her feel sick

@susanf8 correction from my post. Possible absorption problems from small intestine, not small ‘’ingestion’’ !

@gingerdelmarco I hope it helps…it dries the mouth and is often taken at night since it can make a person sleepy.

just a thought, but maybe bad gas? it would make you feel like you are hungry, but if you eat it could be too much for your stomach to hold and make you feel ill.

@gingerdelmarco, I am glad to see you create this discussion on your path of helping your daughter figure out what is causing her so many physical problems after eating. Hard as it must be on “mom”, your help must also be a huge support for her.

I gradually lost weight without realizing it for quite a while. I tried an elimination diet and couldn’t pin anything down. A friend recommended I just try not eating fat and it worked immediately! Four days later I tried grilled salmon and it made me sick so I backed off the fat again. I contacted my doctor and told him I was going to try 10% or less of my calories from fat for 30 days. My friend encouraged me that there really was no down side to trying it. Eventually, I was able to add olive oil in as primary fat and it felt soothing, almost healing. This may not have any remote relationship to what your daughter is dealing with. I tell you a bit of my backstory to encourage you to stand back and just notice what may be happening.

I would think the problem is either what goes in the body, the environment, lifestyle or a problem within the body. My problem became systemic and I benefited from finding care at Mayo Clinic because of their integrative approach. Your daughter’s doctor can refer her to Mayo or she could could contact them herself using this link
- Mayo Clinic Appointment http://mayocl.in/1mtmR63

First, how are you doing, Mom? Has your daughter’s GI doctor discussed lifestyle? Is there anything that she’s tried that has particularly helped, or hurt?

Your daughter's situation sounds like mine. I'm always hungry, have gas and abdominal pain since I was in elementary school. I'm 64 now. My GI doctor told me (after a colonoscopy 4 years ago) that I have a redundant colon (it's too long so it forms kinks to fit into my abdomen). A lot of people have this without problems, so GI docs often don't tell their patients about it after a colonoscopy. I went to a different GI doctor and he did my fifth colonoscopy and told me about having a redundant colon. I take dicyclomine so that the colon doesn't spasm as it tries to get feces through the kinks. Has your daughter's GI doctor who did her colonoscopy mentioned a redundant (also called a tortuous colon)? It may be worth asking. It doesn't matter what I eat, even if I guzzle water I have lots of pain from spasms. Good luck!

Hello,

I am sorry that you and your daughter are going through this. I wanted to comment because the way you phrased her symptom, "constant hunger", is how I described my symptoms a few years ago (mine were particularly bad at night and would wake me up constantly). It turned out that I had small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) as a result of a colon resection surgery. For people without colon surgery, this condition is thought to arise from an episode of severe food sickness that damaged gut nerves (this is a hand-wavy explanation, if you are curious there are more details elsewhere).

When you say she cannot tolerate 'fruits or vegetables without additional stomach pain and gas', this points to SIBO as well - the sugars, starches, and other oligosaccharides in fruits and vegetables can certainly set off bacteria in the small intestines, and can cause diarrhea, constipation, or a mixture of both.

Even if she was breath-tested for SIBO and that was ruled out, these tests are notoriously unreliable. Both false positives and false negatives are common. Treatment for SIBO usually involves several rounds of special antibiotics, but these are also rarely successful the first time and can be unpleasant.

If I were in your position, I would try a diet that avoids the foods most likely to set off SIBO like follows to see if it moves the needle one way or the other. Keep in mind that you may need to keep the diet for 3-4 days for to see the results, if you don't have results after 4 days, it is probably not bacterial overgrowth that is causing the issues. I am also happy to be more explicit in what she could eat, if you are having issues figuring out diet.

Absolutely need to avoid:
All gums - guar, xanthum, carob bean, etc. These compounds are sadly everywhere , so you need to check extra well.
Other starches including potatoes, rice, oatmeal, and even wheat, except for breads, see below etc.
Vegetables
Yogurts or anything else with live bacteria

Okay in small doses (small may depend on the person):
'White' breads that have been yeasted
Fruits or fruit juices, again small doses
Mission flour tortillas, although they have not been yeasted, seem to be well tolerated for whatever reason

Again, happy to trouble-shoot if you are interested in going down this route, but do not want to spend my entire morning yapping into the void if you are not.

Good luck!

@gboi THANK YOU for all of this infomation - she has been treated for SIBO but maybe more rounds of antibiotics are needed - THANK YOU fr the food information - this is VERy helpful and I am going to pass this along to her. Thank you for responding.

@redrockhiker THANK YOU for this info! I appreciate you responding.

@gingerdelmarco

If I may add:
Regardless of whether or not your daughter's issues are officially "caused by" SIBO or something else, it does seem that experimenting with diet is the most straight-forward way to claw-back some quality of life. Of course, this is a huge hassle to do, especially since she is at an age where she may be trying to life her adult life for the very first time. She already may be doing this, but my recommendation would be to try to do 2-4 days of a strict elimination diet testing one specific hypothesis, followed by however many days of eating at her baseline so that this doesn't become a chore. The whole time she needs to be logging what she eats, and reflecting strongly on how she feels and whether there is a positive/negative change.

Good luck again.

@gboi Thank you again! This is great advice that I am passing on to her immediately!!!
Appreciate it very much!