When you ask people about diet, make sure you know if they are on medication or not; if they ever have pain or not; what their BM's are like; when their last flare was. If someone tells you to eat white bread or rice and they are on medication, they are not using diet to control their condition in the way that I am being off meds. Maybe there are people who eat those things after years of remission, but within the first year I doubt it. Yes for 7 years I ate what I wanted and didn't think about UC at all, but I have been flaring off and on for 3 years so with this level of sickness, it's important to know from where you are getting your information.
The word diet has the connotation of something temporary that’s specialized and only done for a short period of time. A diet is what you eat EVERY DAY…write down what you eat everyday and that’s YOUR diet. The only difference between your diet and a diet that someone else has come up with is the name. You can name yours “Tiffany’s Eat Whatever the Heck I Want Diet” and it’s still a diet.
I started doing some
research while I was visiting family in Florida and I came across
Amazing Paleo after googling Ulcerative colitis cure diet or something like
that (please note that for MY purposes the term cure and remission are
interchangeable). There was a blog
on there by a man who had UC who had gone into remission by using Paleo
diet. I told my sister that I was
going to try it and immediately cut out wheat, sugar, etc. I noticed a difference within a couple
days and it was enough to decide I was going to stick with it, but when I would
go out to eat I wouldn’t be so strict and definitely cheated on the diet a lot
in the beginning.
I wanted to learn more and
more about people that had cured themselves so I continued my research and in
February I found Specific Carbohydrate Diet, or SCD, I think via one of the support groups on Facebook. I borrowed the book from the library and upon reading it found that it resonated with me so I decided I
would give it a go. I started the
diet in March but I didn't do the intro diet of chicken soup. I basically did an elimination diet
where I ONLY ate banana pancakes, chicken, kale, provolone cheese, and tomato
sauce, and nuts for about 3 months. I was
living with my Mom and I wasn't working full time so I was able to be pretty
strict with it. In June I found
out about the supplements that I now take. I had been getting better but there was still blood and
urgency having to go quite frequently.
When you add food back into your diet, make
sure you give yourself about 4 days at least to see if there is a
reaction. Obviously if it makes
you sick right away stop. Now that
I have come to a good place, I know I can cheat a little and be ok, but since
I've been on for so long I don't crave things like I used to.
IMPORTANT: The first two
weeks of eliminating wheat and sugar are the hardest because you actually do go
through withdrawals and you feel like crap, but that's the feeling you want
(hunger, cravings, headaches, short temper, tiredness, etc). That's how you KNOW it's working. I also look at those things as poison
to my body. Kind of a mind trick
to make sure I don't give up.
Healing via diet is hard ONLY because it's easy to get discouraged when it takes a long time or maybe
you move five steps forward then all of a sudden you are three steps back
again. If you are strict about it,
it should take a year to get healthy and then it's recommended to stay on the
diet for another year. Once that
is over moving to Paleo is the next wisest choice; or you can always stay on
the diet if you like. I would
probably add in some root veggies at the most.
Now, 8 months into it,
about 85% of my diet is SCD. I
don’t think any of the supplements are SCD legal, but they’ve helped so as long
as they are working I will continue to use them. I went from having bloody diarrhea 10-15 times a day to no
blood, going with mixed stool a few times in the morning and maybe once at
night. I don’t wake up in the
night anymore and there’s no pain or swelling of the abdomen. The terrible arthritis of the knees that I had in the beginning of the year is gone as well. It felt like razors every time I would kneel down or stand up - it was awful.
For me the diet didn’t put
me 100% into remission, but it set up my gut to be able to accept the
supplements I use. If you eat junk
or food that your body has to work extra hard to break down, there’s no way you’re
going to be able to get healthy with the supplements. Do yourself a favor and eat clean, make your own meals and
if you do cheat (once you’re healthy), do it within reason (e.g. last night I
had 1/2 slice of 1 tier of a 3 tiered cake my roommate made. Granted it wasn’t a whole slice, but at
least I got to try it…then I went and had a brownie I made LOL)
Please read Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall for more info on SCD. Other diets are FODMAP and GAPS, but this one resonated best for me.
