Pancreatitis Blog Comments

I really enjoy receiving quality comments and questions on this blog about living with and overcoming Pancreatitis. If you have questions or comments regarding your acute pancreatitis or chronic disease please feel free to share. Your experience with acute or chronic pancreatitis may help someone else or you may give me a good pancreatitis subject to write about :-)

I have a comment below I am going to answer here in a post because if I'd have published it in the regular manner my reader's email address would have been available for anyone who might want to spam her. Please comment, ask questions but don't put personal info (email, phone, etc.) in your comments or questions. And asking questions or making comments is NEVER a "bother" to me. So do NOT feel that way at all. If I can help you feel better, lessen your pain maybe even help you heal your damaged pancreas from chronic or acute pancreatitis, via any of my personal experience, I am more than happy to do so.

Ok, let's get to the comment.

"Hi. My name's Julie and I left a comment a couple or few weeks ago including my email address and you responded via my email address. My email is so full of junk that I thought I'd ask you a question this way instead of searching for that email. I was wondering if you ever recommend any certain nuts/seeds. I love sesame sticks and was eating them but not sure if they were affecting me or not. I love nuts but know they have fat and not sure what I should try if I put some in a rice recipe. And then I saw a recipe including sunflower seeds. I also wonder if the instant oatmeal packets are ok. I was eating a lot of the cinnamon oatmeal and didn't know if that was affecting me. I guess I'm just so afraid to get sick again and was wondering if you had any insight on any of this. I know I need to add one thing at a time and then wait 48 hours. I did that lastnight with turkey breast. So far so good. I'm new at this and sorry if I'm bothering you. I really really appreciate all you've posted and wish you had a book with all the info in it. I'm planning on printing a lot of your articles and keeping them in a notebook to make things easier. Thank you so much for whatever you can tell me. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks again :)"

My answer:

Hi Julie ...

From the sounds of things you are feeling better - that is great! I hope the New Year is kind to you and your pancreatitis symptoms remain a memory.

Just as you already know and mentioned seeds such as sunflower and nuts all contain natural oils and fat. You may or may not be able to tolerate the fat content. If you have been well for 6 months (no pancreatitis symptoms) and want to try eating some seeds and nuts I would suggest going with SMALL amounts. You may want to hold off using nuts and sunflower seeds in cooking and simply try some alone first and see how they work for you.

Instant oatmeal shouldn't be a problem. If you eat it plain. If you eat it with milk or worse, cream, you may have problems due to fat from the milk or cream.

The 48 hour thing is for fruits, vegetables and other non animal or non dairy products. Any type of animal or dairy product should be given a weeks surveillance, even 10 days to see what the affects are going to be because it takes upto 2 weeks to digest animal type proteins. And for some reason many foods that trigger instant pancreatitis pain and symptoms one day will maybe take a week to do the same next time or visa-versa.

In ALL cases of MY pain and nausea, the culprits are ALWAYS foods that contain FAT or ALCOHOL. I made myself sick one time eating oatmeal and that is how I found out that vanilla extract just doesn't work. I used to add vanilla into my oatmeal for flavor, I don't do that anymore.

If you like chocolate be advised that most chocolate manufacturers use VANILLA. Chocolate also contains FAT. It may be a source of unwanted pain so tread lightly.

If anyone has some questions that need answers be sure to ask me.