Also when you’ve been on the diet a while some people use probiotics eg

Also, when you’ve been on the diet a while, some people use probiotics (eg live yoghurt) and prebiotics (specialised fibre food) from health food stores to encourage growth of good bacteria. And for sweeteners, try honey, maple syrup, saccharine or aspartamine. You can kick of with two teaspoons of Epsom salts to get your bad diet out of the way.What, no cereals, toast and yeast extract?`Fraid not. And there are plenty of hidden pitfalls, eg preparing food for others or even licking stamps and envelopes can cause contamination Smoking should be stopped too. You can drink additive free non-citrus fruit drinks, herb and fruit teas. As Prof Brostoff puts it “We each have 30 ft of gut so it’s difficult to know what’s happening mid-way down there but of the studies that have been done, if you put patients on the right diet, half of them will get better quickly.”And what is the right diet?To kick out yeast, sugar and refined carbohydrate, you can only eat meat and fish, poultry and game (but not chicken), vegetables (but not potato, tomato and soya) fruit (except citrus) and nuts (except peanuts).

Also in are salt, pepper, herbs, olive or sunflower oil and rice. Also, a Gut Fermentation Test has been developed, on the principle that if you have a lot of yeast on board you do a lot of fermenting. Patients are given a 5g oral glucose load and their blood alcohol and aldehyde levels are measured afterwards.What, so eating sugar can make these patients drunk?Perhaps not drunk, but a number have been found to have blood alcohol levels above the legal drink-drive limit without having touched a drop. It’s called the auto-brewery syndrome.I must remember it next time I’m stopped.But most of the evidence is anecdotal, A lot of patients who’ve tried the exclusion diet perhaps in conjunction with some anti-fungal drugs, swear by it. Marita Cook, a theatre sister, who I met while filming Trust Me, I’m a Doctor, suffered from tiredness, aches and swelling of the face so severe that her mask couldn’t hide it Now she feels great.Hang on.

There are hundreds of books about the evil of yeast or Candida, all written by flaky people making outrageous claims – are you telling me they’re right?Some of what they say might be right, but they undermine it with unsubstantiated sensationalism. However, severe sufferers of DGS have often had protracted courses of antibiotics in the past which are well known to kill good bacteria and promote yeast growth. These are gobbled up by yeast in the bowel, which grow like crazy, wiping out all the good bacteria and mucking up bowel function.And what’s the evidence?Not conclusive and lots more research needs to be done. It’s called the Stone Age diet and it’s based on the principle that if we ate what our cave-dwelling ancestors did, our guts would be a lot healthier.So what is in our modern diets that does the damage?For many, it seems that refined sugars and carbohydrates are the culprits. But enthusiasts such as Professor Jonathan Brostoff at the Allergy Clinic at Middlesex hospital have found that once identified, a considerable number can be helped with an elimination diet. DGS has been adopted by allergy specialists to describe not just irritable bowel syndrome, but a condition where patients can suffer symptoms all over the body (headaches, impaired memory, nasal discharge, skin rashes, fatigue, tissue swelling, joint and muscle pains, thrush and irritable bladder.) In nearly all sufferers, investigations turn up nothing and most struggle on. Because it’s not a sexy, life-threatening disease, you don’t got money pouring in to find a cure.How about if you relaunched it – with a new name?Well that’s where Dysfunctional Gut Syndrome (DGS) comes in.

What’s that then?
Irritable bowel syndrome with knobs on. In IBS you get pain, diarrhoea, constipation, wind, bloating and you might even pass some mucus…Do you mind? I’m eating my breakfast.And then what happens?You’re told all the tests are normal and you’ve got an irritable bowel. It’s very common there are millions like you, it’s very miserable but it’s not going to kill you. Treating the mind helps for some (hypnotherapy, psychotherapy, relaxation etc) but most doctors go straight for the bowel (fibre for constipation, anti-spasmodic drugs for pain, codeine for severe diarrhoea).

Alas, this rarely gives complete relief and many patients end up giving up all drugs, which isn’t such a bad thing.So they’re just left to lump it?Yes. The association stresses the importance of keeping the rest of the body warm, and of eating hot food, taking regular exercise and using heating aids, such as hand warmers.The Raynaud’s and Scleroderma Association, 112 Crewe Road, Alsager, Cheshire, ST7 2JA, tel 01270 872776.. DYSFUNCTIONAL Gut Syndrome – your questions answered. It feels as if your fingers have been squeezed in a vice, or trapped in a car door. Picking up a milk bottle, or walking from one room to another, can be enough to shut the blood supply down.”For about 3,500 people in this country, Raynaud’s is the first symptom of scleroderma, an auto-immune disease which affects the skin and internal organs, and can be fatal.Warm hands are the often elusive goal for people with Raynaud’s, but gloves alone are not sufficient. There is no cure for the condition, which is named after Maurice Raynaud, the French doctor who published a thesis about it in 1862. No cause has been identified either, although some believe that stress can be a factor.Anne Mawdsley, who suffers from a particularly severe form of Raynaud’s, described the pain that she experiences “It’s excruciating.