Fruit May Spark Digestive Distress

The next time your gut goes to pieces after a meal, it may turn out that fruit was the source of all that digestive distress. Doctors have long recognized that lactose intolerance--an ability to digest milk sugar--is responsible for some of the irritable bowel syndrome that plagues about 10% of all Americans.

Now those studying the sources of all that abdominal pain, gas, bloating, diarrhea and constipation think they’ve found another culprit in fructose, the sugar found in many fruits and in honey.

Researchers at the University of Iowa tested 219 men and women with unexplained gas, bloating and abdominal pain after giving them fructose.

They took breath samples and found 78% of these people tested positive for hydrogen or methane gas, which only turn up in breath when someone’s body doesn’t digest fructose.

They also found that more than half the people given fructose developed the same unpleasant digestive symptoms they’d been at a loss to explain.

It may turn out a low-fructose diet could spell relief for some sufferers, according to lead researcher Dr. Young K. Choi, whose findings were set to be released today at the 66th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology in Las Vegas.