Causes and cure of pancreatic insufficiency?

[Motif]

Are you eating enough animal protein?
If yes try consuming something acidic everytime you eat some to increase its digestion. Things like lemonade, orange juice, coca cola or even water with some vinegar should work. Just make sure to rinse your teeth afterwards or use a straw to keep your them clean.

Liquid zinc sulphate works well in my experience. Yea you dont wanna use it for more than a week, 2 weeks max.

Ideally you would get those things from food but if its not possible make sure the supplements are clean and dont have any of those nasty fillers like silica, modified starch and cellulose, talc, titanium dioxide,...

Cant tolerate OJ, but lemonade for example does absolutely not help this. Same for ACV.

what really helped my digestion was lemon water , but after a few days my skin broke out like crazy from it.

 

[Nemo]

Cant tolerate OJ, but lemonade for example does absolutely not help this. Same for ACV.

what really helped my digestion was lemon water , but after a few days my skin broke out like crazy from it.

Motif, Haidut points to a study suggesting pregnenolone for allergies:

Stress causes/exacerbates allergies, pregnenolone/progesterone therapeutic – To Extract Knowledge from Matter

 

[Kray]

Oh definetly! Alcohol abuse, medicine abuse, excessive dieting or, in my case, the wrong diet. I did the Eat Right For Your Blood Type Diet to better my health, and as well intended as it was and served me well in many ways, the addition of lots of olive oil, broccoli, spinach, oats, black beans & black eyed peas all void of calcium, created a mess for me too! I had stones everywhere! Once I added back in the calcium and took out ALL of those things I mentioned, I never had a stone or joint and muscle oxalate pains again. Thank you Ray Peat!

Hi there Rinse! Just skimming this thread for good folate foods and saw your post on oats, black-eyed peas. Not sure about oats for folic acid, but BE peas are a good source. Do you still avoid them? Want to use food over supplements but sometimes not so easy. As for oats, do you include them regularly, sometimes, etc? Appreciate your feedback!

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

Hi there Rinse! Just skimming this thread for good folate foods and saw your post on oats, black-eyed peas. Not sure about oats for folic acid, but BE peas are a good source. Do you still avoid them? Want to use food over supplements but sometimes not so easy. As for oats, do you include them regularly, sometimes, etc? Appreciate your feedback!

Hi Kray!

I do not eat beans at all at anymore, and I only eat oats, sprouted usually, on a rare occasion, when I make cookies, brownies, blueberry muffins or pancakes with them. It looks like I am getting the bulk of my folate from my 4+ fresh oranges a day and one to 3 egg yolks a day as well as my raw milk, cheese, shellfish and occasional beef…

“You can receive more folate from a moderate helping of grass-fed beef liver than from nearly any other food on the planet! Eating a 3.5 oz. serving provides 65% of the recommended daily value!”

Eating Grass-fed Liver Induces an Amazing, Healthy Pregnancy | Rafter W Ranch | Colorado Grass Fed Beef, Lamb, Poultry, Produce

Grass-fed beef liver is a great choice for your diet when your baby is developing in the womb. Beef liver is highly concentrated with vitamins and nutrients

rafterwranch.net

“Folate is naturally present in a wide variety of foods, including vegetables (especially dark green leafy vegetables), fruits and fruit juices, nuts, beans, peas, seafood, eggs, dairy products, meat, poultry, and grains (Table 2) [4,12]. Spinach, liver, asparagus, and brussels sprouts are among the foods with the highest folate levels.”

Office of Dietary Supplements - Folate

Folate (folic acid) overview for health professionals. Research health effects, dosing, sources, deficiency, side effects, and interactions here.

ods.od.nih.gov

 

[mostlylurking]

Anybody knows?

Pancreatic beta cells and islets take up thiamin by a regulated carrier-mediated process: studies using mice and human pancreatic preparations - PubMed

Thiamin is essential for the normal function of the endocrine pancreas, but very little is known about uptake mechanism(s) and regulation by beta cells. We addressed these issues using mouse-derived pancreatic beta-TC-6 cells, and freshly isolated primary mouse and human pancreatic islets...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

"Thiamin is essential for the normal function of the endocrine pancreas, but very little is known about uptake mechanism(s) and regulation by beta cells." and "These studies demonstrate for the first time that thiamin uptake by the endocrine pancreas is carrier mediated and is adaptively regulated by the prevailing vitamin level via transcriptional mechanisms. Furthermore, clinical mutants of THTR-1 impair thiamin uptake via different mechanisms."

also:

thiamine gastroparesis Archives - Hormones Matter

www.hormonesmatter.com

"The pancreas is one of the richest stores of thiamine in the human body, and the metabolic derangement induced by thiamine deficiency causes a major decrease in digestive enzyme secretion. This is one of the reasons why those affected often see undigested food in stools. Another reason likely due to a lack of brush border enzymes located on the intestinal wall, which are responsible for further breaking down food pre-absorption. These enzymes include sucrase, lactase, maltase, leucine aminopeptidase and alkaline phosphatase. Thiamine deficiency was shown to reduce the activity of each of these enzymes by 42-66%."

 

[Kray]

Hi Kray!

I do not eat beans at all at anymore, and I only eat oats, sprouted usually, on a rare occasion, when I make cookies, brownies, blueberry muffins or pancakes with them. It looks like I am getting the bulk of my folate from my 4+ fresh oranges a day and one to 3 egg yolks a day as well as my raw milk, cheese, shellfish and occasional beef…

“You can receive more folate from a moderate helping of grass-fed beef liver than from nearly any other food on the planet! Eating a 3.5 oz. serving provides 65% of the recommended daily value!”

Eating Grass-fed Liver Induces an Amazing, Healthy Pregnancy | Rafter W Ranch | Colorado Grass Fed Beef, Lamb, Poultry, Produce

Grass-fed beef liver is a great choice for your diet when your baby is developing in the womb. Beef liver is highly concentrated with vitamins and nutrients

rafterwranch.net

“Folate is naturally present in a wide variety of foods, including vegetables (especially dark green leafy vegetables), fruits and fruit juices, nuts, beans, peas, seafood, eggs, dairy products, meat, poultry, and grains (Table 2) [4,12]. Spinach, liver, asparagus, and brussels sprouts are among the foods with the highest folate levels.”

Office of Dietary Supplements - Folate

Folate (folic acid) overview for health professionals. Research health effects, dosing, sources, deficiency, side effects, and interactions here.

ods.od.nih.gov

Wow- many more sources than I had realized, but agree liver is tops. Sorry if this goes off-topic, but you mentioned beef. May I ask why you only have it occasionally? I'm curious if it's anything to do with overdoing iron. I haven't been concerned about it before, but as I am in the "older" range now, I'm not sure if I should be having much.

Thank you for all your resourceful information! You are a treasure trove of info, and I really appreciate your help. :)

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

Wow- many more sources than I had realized, but agree liver is tops. Sorry if this goes off-topic, but you mentioned beef. May I ask why you only have it occasionally? I'm curious if it's anything to do with overdoing iron. I haven't been concerned about it before, but as I am in the "older" range now, I'm not sure if I should be having much.

Thank you for all your resourceful information! You are a treasure trove of info, and I really appreciate your help. :)

I love all the appreciation Kray! I was really craving beef a lot last summer, but then I lost interest since November. I was happy to not want it because of the skin aging iron and the tryptophan, which grays hair, ages skin and because RP says a tryptophan lacking diet help to thwart cancer. I just don’t like the idea of it rotting me. I like it sometimes, like carne asada from certain places which I slather in butter. I feel pretty good too about my grass-fed ground beef tacos, with bone broth in it, and sometimes I throw some liver braunschweiger in it too for the copper. Eating meat regularly puts weight on me quick too. I just feel really light and more energetic on raw milk and sugar sources. I don’t put weight on either with those two things.

 

[Kray]

I love all the appreciation Kray! I was really craving beef a lot last summer, but then I lost interest since November. I was happy to not want it because of the skin aging iron and the tryptophan, which grays hair, ages skin and because RP says a tryptophan lacking diet help to thwart cancer. I just don’t like the idea of it rotting me. I like it sometimes, like carne asada from certain places which I slather in butter. I feel pretty good too about my grass-fed ground beef tacos, with bone broth in it, and sometimes I throw some liver braunschweiger in it too for the copper. Eating meat regularly puts weight on me quick too. I just feel really light and more energetic on raw milk and sugar sources. I don’t put weight on either with those two things.

I appreciate your feedback-- I am doing a 101 course on early Peat ideas, including more gelatin, less muscle meat. Some really helpful reminders. This is really good timing for some issues I've been struggling with. Thanks so much Rinse!!!

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

I appreciate your feedback-- I am doing a 101 course on early Peat ideas, including more gelatin, less muscle meat. Some really helpful reminders. This is really good timing for some issues I've been struggling with. Thanks so much Rinse!!!

I am keeping my diet basic and simple lately too Kray. I didn’t take gelatin since early last year because of it’s high histamines and it disrupted my sleep because of that. It gave me puffy eyes too. So now i have gelatin on an empty stomach before coffee and it feels much better that way. The coffee with sugar and salted acts as an antihistamine, and my eyes aren’t puffy after having it that way. If I make stew or soup with bone broth in it I have it earlier in the day, so the histamines don’t work on my sinuses all night. Strategizing when to have things has been ground breaking for me.

 

[Kray]

I am keeping my diet basic and simple lately too Kray. I didn’t take gelatin since early last year because of it’s high histamines and it disrupted my sleep because of that. It gave me puffy eyes too. So now i have gelatin on an empty stomach before coffee and it feels much better that way. The coffee with sugar and salted acts as an antihistamine, and my eyes aren’t puffy after having it that way. If I make stew or soup with bone broth in it I have it earlier in the day, so the histamines don’t work on my sinuses all night. Strategizing when to have things has been ground breaking for me.

Oh boy- happened to me just like that last night. I don't want to go off-topic here, could we PM?

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

Oh boy- happened to me just like that last night. I don't want to go off-topic here, could we PM?

Sure! I also have a thread about food layering…

Food Layering & Better Digestion

There is a lot of talk on food "pairing" whilst "Peating", but I am finding that food "layering" is a step worth taking farther. With digestion function being the biggest player in how successful we are at being healthy it makes sense to think about these things. Things like having my honeycomb...

raypeatforum.com

 

[Kray]

Sure! I also have a thread about food layering…

Food Layering & Better Digestion

There is a lot of talk on food "pairing" whilst "Peating", but I am finding that food "layering" is a step worth taking farther. With digestion function being the biggest player in how successful we are at being healthy it makes sense to think about these things. Things like having my honeycomb...

raypeatforum.com

That's great Rinse, lots of good info and posts there. Thanks so much!

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

That's great Rinse, lots of good info and posts there. Thanks so much!

PM me or let’s go talk in that other thread about your gelatin disaster last night..

 

[Kray]

PM me or let’s go talk in that other thread about your gelatin disaster last night..

I will PM

 

[eimearrose]

I'm just resurrecting this thread to leave my own experience of exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. I have a long history of digestive problems, since childhood. It got significantly worse in my 20s. I had acute pancreatitis in 2010 after a period of worsening symptoms, and began to suspect wheat. I found Ray's work a few months later, and that helped improve my nutrition such that I was able to put a bit of weight on and restore my menstrual cycle. However my digestive symptoms worsened a few years later, and after a 4 year journey, I was eventually diagnosed with exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, as well as indeterminate colitis, and 2 years after that (late 2022), coeliac disease. I was on pancreatic enzymes from the diagnosis of pancreatic insufficiency in late 2020 until earlier this year, when I asked for a repeat elastase test, and my function was back in the normal range. EPI from coeliac disease is usually reversible as it was in my case. As mentioned in the thread, I suspect overburdening of the liver because of the damaged intestinal lining letting endotoxin into circulation being the main driver. I suspect my own liver is still not up to par as I have painful periods, dark circles under my eyes, and puffy ankles/feet. But my health is much improved following resolution of the EPI and having a more intact gut lining. I am supplementing taurine, vitamin D and K, and drink coffee, all which I hope should help liver function over time. I also use a lot of ginger around meals, as well as a teaspoon of angostura bitters (made with gentian) in tonic water with evening meals. I appreciate any insight or recommendations but just wanted to share my experience on this thread as I haven't seen anyone else comment that they have had non-alcohol related pancreatic problems, although of course the mechanism must share similarities (ie the liver connection).