Suggest Diet After Vagotomy

Hello, I am so sorry you seem to be a victim of poor medical education and no nutritional instruction. Settle down. All may not be what it seems. First, to have diverticulitis (the infected intestinal wall pouch), you must first have the pouches in the bowel (diverticulosis) which should be identified by your last colonoscopy whereby dietary instruction should have been individualized as to whether they found the pockets before or after the Bilroth 1. Now, plain diverticulosis is generally handled by a high fiber diet with avoidance of nuts,seeds -things that may get caught in the pocket, not be able to get out and gets infected. I worked with a surgeon who swore peas caused most of his pocket infections, yet peas is not on my evidence-based food plan. Corn too is often problematic. Get the idea? When pockets are infected you switch from a high fiber diet to a low fiber diet and generally end up in the hospital. Now, cutting the vagus nerve should not have come as a surprise to you if the surgeon had explained the procedure properly prior to it being performed. Cutting the vagus nerve causes a complicated array of metabolic changes, many in favor of loosing weight, decreasing appetite (affects the appetite hormone, gherlin among others). My official Nutrition Care Manual does not offer a meal plan for the Bilroth 1 procedure, so I am going to the historical archives. I will do my best, but a public forum is not the optimum place to give diet guidelines without an assessment. Are you having problems digesting foods? Are you on a pancreatic enzyme? How are you tolerating milk and do you have to use the enzyme lactase to break down the milk sugar?Do you have symptoms of poor stomach emptying? Common deficiencies to check for are folic acid, vitamin B12, iron. Iron deficiency can be a difficult problem to deal with if you try to replete through the gut instead of IV. Check vitamin D status. I think what symptoms you are referring to are gastroparesis where things just seem to sit around in your gut and not go anywhere very fast? It can contribute to constipation, formation of bezoars (clumps of pills or fiber), bacterial overgrowth,so the avoidance of fiber is called for if you have gastroparesis, but attention still needs to be paid to the pre-and probiotics your gut needs and may not get with your dietary problems. To get probiotics you can choose Greek yogurt with active probiotics. Greek yogurt is often lower in lactose than other milk products and if it does bother you, you may always take a lactase pill. For the best meal plan, I recommend making an appointment with a dietitian and going over your diagnosis, surgeries, medications, symptoms, food diary and labs. She can help you fix your diet. Best Wishes, Kathy Shattler, MS,RDN