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Abdominal Pain Is a Pain in the Neck Your abdominal discomfort may be caused not by what's happening inside your belly but by what's happening out side. According to one researcher, there's such a thing as Tight Pants Syndrome, which is abdominal pain lasting two to three hours after a meal. Its cause? Yup, pants that are too tight. (The researcher says there's as much as a three-inch difference between waist size and waistband.) Funny, but the same thing happens with men and shirt size. Two-thirds of men purchase shirts with a neck size that's too small, so they get headaches, changes in vision, and even changes in blood flow to and from the brain. Why Some People Stall We'd like to think that our bodies work like cars-press the accelerator to go faster, tap the brakes to slow down. But our body's metabolic switches don't quite work that way: We may not gain or lose weight at the rate in which we expect to. When we have inflammation, our bodies are less efficient, meaning that we burn more calories-as a way to protect you, even as you gain weight. As we lose weight and decrease inflammation, our bodies go back to being efficient, and we may not burn calories at the proportional rate in which we gained them. So when we eat the right foods and more efficiently metabolize them, weight also may stall temporarily- meaning you still may be heavy, but might not have as many health risks associated with the weight. Internal Conflict Food and toxins continually line the frontier of our intestines. Good foods slip through to provide us nutrition, but combatants stimulate an aggressive response from local immune cells. The resulting inflammation causes swelling, gas, and belly cramps. Milking It If you suffer from a milk allergy, kit can make your gut feel like a washing machine in the rinse cycle. Here are some ways you can help manage it: Milk's one of the easiest ingredients to substitute in baking and cooking by using an equal amount of either water, fruit juice, or soy or rice milk. Watch out for hidden sources of dairy. For example, some brands of

canned tuna fish and other nondairy products contain casein, a milk protein. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently working on requiring products to eliminate the term nondairy if they contain milk derivatives. In restaurants, tell your server about your allergy. Many restaurants put butter (which comes form milk) on steaks and other food after they've been grilled or prepared to add extra flavor, but you can't see it after it melts. Some ingredients seem to contain milk products or derivatives but actually don't. These are safe to eat if you have a lactose allergy: Cocoa butter, cream of tartar, and calcium lactate. By the way, there's a higher ethnic predominance of lactose intolerance in those of non-European origin. It's just another example of how genes-not willpower-help dictate what you can and cannot eat. Is There Such a Thing as A Bad Food? Fast-food franchise owners aren't the only ones who may say that there's no such thing as good or bad food-that it's just the volume of food that you eat. There are plenty of dietitians, nutritionists, doctors, and food growers who believe the same thing. Our research leads us respectfully to disagree. Good, healthy foods saitate you, they decrease inflammation in your body, they decrease the tendency to yo-yo, they're nutrient-dense, and they make you younger. Bad foods make you more hungry, increase inflammation in your body, make you feel sluggish, make it more likely you'll yo-yo,, have few nutrients, and make you older. After all, when you eat fries (no matter whether it's two fries or two bags), you're taking in calories that taste good, but have as

much nutrient value as plywood. In our works, bad foods add to your waste; good foods make waist management easier because they help keep you satisfied so that you never feel like gorging on nutrient-low and calorie-high foods. We call those good foods the YOU-th-FULL foods. FACTOID: For those of you who've stayed up wondering, here's the reason why your gas may smell and other people's gas may not: Think of your body as a refrigerator. If you let food sit in there, it's going to smell after a while. In your body, sulfur-rich foods like eggs, meat, beer, beans, and cauliflower are decomposed by bacteria to release hydrogen sulfide-a smell strong enough to flatten a bear. Avoiding these foods is the ideal solution, but when stinky gas persists, the best solutions are leafy green vegetables and probiotics (specifically lactobacilli

GG or Bifidus Regularis), which work like baking soda in your fridge to reduce odor. Beano can sometimes work with beans, but soaking the beans ahead of time is useful as well. Probiotics like lactobacillus GG or Bifidus Regularis repopulate your small intestine's bacteria with healthful bacteria, especially after a course of antibiotics. The good bacteria calm down the dangerous ones-meaning that they can help you have less GI irritation, less gas, and less risk of an inflammatory uncivil war breaking out. We have two main sources that power nature's rear-propulsion system. Gas comes from the air we swallow (20 percent) and the digestion of foods by bacteria in our intestines (80 percent). These bacteria love digesting sugars, fiver, or milk (if you're lactose-deficient) . The result is lots of gas made up of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and methane (which-duck!-is flammable).

You can reduce swallowing air by avoiding cigarettes, gum, and carbonated beverages, or by eating and drinking more slowly. Fat is like an organ, but the omentum is the supercharged version. Omentum fat has more blood supply than any other kind of fat and is quickest to mobilize itself to feed the liver. About 10 percent of Americans have fatty livers that are overwhelmed with fat sent from the intestines and omentum for processing. Fatty livers can lead to fibrosis-reduced liver function, and eve the serious liver disease cirrhosis over time, although for most folks, you just end up looking like foie gas on the insides. You may hear that celebrities get colonics because they seem like some sort of miracle weight-loss cure. Here's how they work: You get a tube pushed up into your lower intestines (via your back end). You're infused with a solution, and you roll

around to wash out your colon, then the fluids gets sucked out (you're given coffee, to help you go the bathroom quickly). The purpose is to cleanse out the toxins and "reboot" your intestines. You'll produce a lot of waste after a colonic, but the main waste here is of money. Your colon only absorbs water, so there's no weight-loss benefit from colonics. In fact, you can get the same colon-cleansing and toxin-eliminating effect with a twenty-four hour fast. While hundreds of herbs and supplements have been purported to help you lose weight, many of them have not been studied well enough to support those claims and are not regulated by the FDA. Safety can be an issue-as was the case with ephedra, which helped people lose weight through adrenalinelike action but put them at risk of heart attacks. Here are some common herbal remedies and why they may not be all they're supposed to be, which is why you

shouldn't put your weight-loss faith in any of them: Calcium: It's been touted as an ingredient that speeds weight loss. Studies have shown that those with low calcium are more likely to gain weight and be overweight. but the people who lost weight with increased calcium were also on short-term, calorie-restricted diets, so the weight loss was ore predictable than an winner's speech. Bitter orange: It's been shown to decrease weight but has the same side effects as ephedra, such as increasing heart rate and blood pressure. Chitosan: It's extracted from the shells of shellfish, and the theory is that it works a little like some weight-loss drugs, by blocking fat absorption in your body. But studies show that chitosan doesn't lead to weight loss. About 2.5 percent of us suffer from milk allergies,

making it the most prevalent of food allergies. While allergies to dairy products are generally outgrown, peanut allergies are not (and they're the most potentially lethal). By the way, it seems like allergies are more prevalent the earlier in life we're exposed to the foods. Most of our body parts are adaptable enough to use multiple energy sources to survive. Only two organs need sugar directly: the brain and the testes. Evolutionary hints often come in these forms of clues About 95 percent of your body's serotonin is found in your intestines, while your central nervous system has only 2 percent to 3 percent. Remember, serotonin is what helps control depression in your brain. The additive olestra looks like a fat, cooks like a fat, and tastes like a fat, but is not a fat and isn't absorbed as a fat-which is why it's used in some food products to lower their

fat and calorie contents. The problem is that olestra gives your stools the consistency of tea and sucks away some of the valuable fat-soluble vitamins, especially carotenoids. So it's smart to eat lots of yellow and green vegetables if you're eating chips made with olestra. By the way. a useful insight into its mechanism of action: "sucrose polyester." Preliminary studies in animals show that the scent of grapefruit oil-yes, just the scent-has an effect of reducing the appetite and body weight. Rats exposed to the scents for fifteen minutes three times a week enjoyed the effect. The cause? It's unclear, but it may work through grapefruit oil's effects on liver enzymes. Grapefruit oil is widely available through aromatherapy stores and websites. As a bonus, try to eat a couple of grapefruit while you're searching.