Acute Pancreatitis Triggers: Keep a Food Diary

I began keeping a food diary because I needed to learn EXACTLY what the triggers were that caused an acute pancreatitis attack or made me feel at all unwell.

I take my life seriously, and pancreatitis is serious business to me. I know what can happen during acute pancreatitis and for me the picture ain't purty.

I began keeping a daily record of EVERYTHING I put in my mouth.

And what you need to understand is that even though pancreatitis is not what I'd call an enigma type disease it does have a lot of idiosyncrasies. And ...

What I found is that there are what I call "immediate triggers" and "advanced triggers."

Immediate triggers are those foods that can bring an attack within hours.

Advanced triggers are those that precipitate an acute attack but may have been eaten days previously. And ...

It's the "advanced triggers" that people disregard, thinking they are harmless simply because they did not result in symptoms right after or on the same day of ingestion. Plus ...

These "advanced triggers" cause people to believe that certain foods, additives, spices and so forth are triggers (because they get sick after eating them) when they are in fact, not responsible.

Very few things caused me to have an immediate response but tons of foods caused me to become sick as much as 96 hours down the road.

WHY some foods trigger and immediate response and others do not or why some that trigger an immediate response one day, trigger a response 2 or 3 days later on another occassion, I simply don't know.

If this condition, pancreatitis, could be considered an enigma this is the reason and why it is so important to discover the real triggers, foods that lead to acute pancreatitis.

For example you could think: "This guy is full of shit, I eat steak and don't get sick but I eat rice and veggies with cayenne pepper and blah, blah, blah 3 days later and am sicker than a dog."

It wasn't the cayenne pepper (many people believe cayenne pepper is bad for pancreatitis victims), it was the steak you ate 3 days ago.

I can eat cayenne pepper EVERY day, and I do eat it a lot, and NEVER get sick. I can also eat steak and think I got away with it because I didn't get sick that day or night or even the next morning but maybe the next night I'm sicker than hell wondering what the &^%$?

What in the hell triggered that? Because ...

I know the oatmeal for breakfast (with no milk or vinilla extract), the fruit I had for lunch and the rice and beans I ate for supper were NOT the triggers.

Eating on the day I did get sick may have been the last straw for my pancreas and it just said: "Screw you buddy, you fed me steak and I'm pissed" and so it was in fact the steak, the red meat full of saturated fat that was the real trigger.

Or the baked potato with sour cream, bacon bits, butter and chives you ate 2 days ago or anything else that you THINK is safe but in fact, is NOT safe.

The hard part about the Pancreatitis diet is figuring out the REAL triggers and avoiding them like you would the black plague.

Broths made from anything that is an animal is NOT safe.

I don't even LOOK at fat content on labels. I could care less what the label of a soup can or can of broth says in regards to fat content. What I DO care about are the INGREDIENTS.

Split pea with ham soup (I don't care if the can says 99% fat free) is gonna make your pancreas pissed off. You may not pay on the day you eat it but you are gonna pay in some way, later, and then you will blame something you ate that day instead of the real trigger which was the ham.

So, if you think I am full of shit, keep a food diary and when you get sick, go back as much as a week and look at what you ate to find the real culprit. When you find something I have told you not to eat, you'll hopefully begin to see the light.

Leave a comment and let me know you are alive!