Fructose Malabsorption

The foods we eat are made up of many components, including sugars. Fructose is a sugar found in many foods including honey, wheat, fruit and vegetable. Fructose is present in a single sugar form and also as a chain of fructose sugar units (fructans).

Fructose mal-absorption is a disability of the small intestine to absorb fructose properly. Typical symptoms include:

• bloating
  
• diarrhoea & or constipation
  
• flatulence
  
• stomach pain (varying from mild and chronic to acute but erratic)
  
• aching eyes
  
• fuzzy head
  
• fatigue
  
• depression

To complicate matters, not every food that contains fructose is a problem for people with fructose mal-absorption. Strategies to minimise symptoms include

avoiding foods that have a high fructose content:

apples, coconut milk, dried figs, fruit juice, guavas, corn syrup, sucrose, honey, lychee, mangos, melons, pawpaw, pears, persimmons, prunes, quince, raisins

avoiding foods with a high fructan content:

artichoke, asparagus, green beans, leeks, onions, wheat

reduce the fructose load, by steering away from:

sodas & other beverages, dried fruit, tinned fruit in natural juice, sorbitol, sweet wines, too much fruit of any kind in a short time-frame.

Fructose mal-absorption can be diagnosed using a hydrogen breath test, which recognises unabsorbed fructose (that creates rapid bacterial fermentation, changing gastrointestinal motility & produces gases such as hydrogen, methane & carbon dioxide detected with the test).

While it is advisable to speak with a dietician with experience in Fructose mal-absorption, this "condition" is mostly regarded not as an abnormality but as a physiological process offering an opportunity to improve functional gastrointestinal symptoms by dietary change.