Dear Bogdan Cristescu,
Your first question was how many hours after eating the wrong food will your AS pains kick in? I think this is different for every individual, but I hear from some of my correspondents that the pain will definitely return the day after. With IBS pain and bloating, the pain begins to make itself felt much more quickly – about 30 minutes to an hour after eating starchy food. If you also have IBS, you can rely on those pains to tell you you’re in for an AS flare up. From my experience, when the IBS symptoms show, I know the AS symptoms will follow by the next day.
I’m afraid I don’t know whether hemp is starch-free or not, as I never tested it. My advice, as always, is to get yourself some iodine and test it yourself. Also test the protein powder, which of course should not show any signs of starch – but we can’t always rely on manufacturers to be completely upfront about these things. Just as gluten-free foods are not usually entirely gluten-free – because the process of separating the gluten from the wheat is not perfect and depends on the efficiency of the manufacturer – so we can’t really be sure about other processed foods until we’ve tested them. This doesn’t apply to raw foods, of course.
Now, I’m very perturbed about your fasting period when you give up meat, eggs and dairy foods. Is this for religious reasons? If so, you must obey your beliefs, but try to make it as short a fasting period as possible, because these are the foods you need most of all. If you are having to give up meat, I can’t really see that protein powder is very different. However, that is your decision. Your food options during a fast of this sort would be very limited. I can only think of salads including avocado, and cooked vegetables which are safe, such as spinach, asparagus, tomatoes, sweet peppers (not green) mushrooms, fennel and mild onions. You could make some great vegetarian dishes from these, but some cheese would make a tasty addition. Tell me what you eat in your fasting periods. I will be very interested to hear.
Lemons are not recommended in great quantity. The pith (white inner lining) is full of starch. The juice is OK, but better diluted with water and of course, sugar added. If you are experiencing a flare-up and you can trace it to any particular food, you should eliminate it, or use it sparingly. I have never recommended raw or toasted pumpkin seeds. I remember testing them years ago and finding them too starchy. But once again I recommend you test them yourself. There’s always the possibility that the samples I tested were not exactly normal: had been picked unripened, stored in cold store etc. etc.
Get yourself that bottle of iodine (original, rusty-brown in colour) and you’ll never have any worries about whether foods contains starch or not.
Feel free to write again if you wish.
Regards,
Carol