Gastroparesis and Other Health Diets

Sometimes when you have multiple health problems with conflicting diets, you start to wonder what you can eat. Add in some food allergies and things get even more confusing. I hate the word “diet,” but I am not sure what else to call it.

Gastroparesis can make things challenging in the food department. Things that normally would be healthy for you to eat cause a lot of problems. If undigested food remains in your stomach for too long, it creates something called bezoars. A bezoar is a hard mass of food that may need to be surgically removed. Vegetables are very hard to digest so you now have an excuse not to eat your vegetables. Fruit is also very hard to digest. The two food groups that we are told are healthy and we should eat are now dangerous with gastroparesis.

If you have other health problems, you may have other restrictions on what you can eat. If you have kidney problems, you have restrictions on how much protein you can eat. If you have heart problems, they want you to watch fat. Fat causes problems for gastroparesis, so that won’t be a conflict, but if you look at the diet on the AHA website, they recommend 4.5 cups of fruit and vegetables a day. That would cause a different set of issues with gastroparesis.

What should someone do? I would recommend starting with the gastroparesis diet then cross off any foods that you cannot eat because of the other health issues. The reason I say start with the gastroparesis diet is if you are eating the vegetables and fruits recommended by the AHA, you are going to make yourself sick. When you have food sitting in your stomach for days at a time, it makes managing your blood sugar even harder. If you have heart or kidney issues as a complication of diabetes, having out of control blood sugar will only make those issues worse. Following the gastroparesis diet will help with blood sugar management. Better blood sugar management will help prevent the other problems from getting worse.

If you are not familiar with what foods you should be avoiding with gastroparesis, you can find that diet here.