Introduction:
My name is Kelly and I’m an Occupational Therapist working in an industrial setting (folks working on a production line making cars) I’m married to my best friend and we have 2 beautiful daughters. My husband is the one who found the books, Breaking the vicious cycle (Gottschall) and Raman Prasad’s Colitis and Me, along with his SCD cookbook.
Symptoms:
Since I have been on the SCD, my symptoms have been greatly reduced. Before that, I would go to the bathroom between 3 and 6 x day (sometimes more depending on if something really tore me up), always loose (still are actually that hasn’t changed from being on the diet…yet), very urgent, tons of bloating and gas. I tell people, some know because they’ve been around me and have heard it themselves, but I would liken the sounds that my gut would make, to the sound of drain pipes with fluid running through them, like they just got unclogged! It sounded terrible! That has been gone since I have been on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.
I was diagnosed with celiac disease and lactose intolerance in 2006 and UC in 2008.
My problems started around the age of 30, and were kicked into full gear after my pregnancies. I haven’t had the severity of some of the problems I have read about, like hospitalizations, steroids etc., I just was feeling pretty lousy and going to the bathroom WAY too much, I figured I needed to do something about it. Having both CD and UC, I could never tell what was bothering me, so the SCD sounded promising for that fact – it really helps with figuring that out.
I always thought when I was younger, please don’t let me have digestion(mainly poop) issues. :) Well as life goes, you sometimes don’t get what you wish for. Now I am just wishing that I can stop this from getting any worse. My 2 biggest fears: colon cancer and having a colostomy bag!!
For the venting part of this forum, it sucks being limited in what we can eat! I mean you go to a grocery store and only about 10% of the food is ok for us to eat. (that’s a statement about all the crap that’s out there as well, but that is another story) I have found myself at times very envious of those who can eat whatever they want with no regard to their digestion, when EVERYTHING we eat we have to think how is that going to affect my digestion? It’s just a huge adjustment to get used to and I wasn’t even eating “bad”. The SCD has helped tremendously with frequency, urgency, gas, bloating and overall feeling blah in regards to digestion. It has also helped me to understand the digestion process and what is really going on, to understand that even some “good” foods aren’t good for people like us. Frankly, many foods people eat are not good for them either, they just may not have the symptoms that we have. The diet is very limiting but that’s kinda the point, to break the cycle by limiting the digestion process and I’m hoping for continued healing. It has not been easy, but I have been feeling much better on it.
Questions for Others –
1. Anyone else out there with both diseases?
2. Anyone on the SCD, if so, how long before you had normal BM’s? ( I know it’s different for everyone, but just some approximate range)
3. Anyone allergic to dairy? if so, how did you know it was dairy and not something else? is it the casein protein that people are allergic to?
4. On the diet, I have had a cup of tea, with lemon and honey – do you think that will affect things badly?
Where I’d Like to Be in 1 Year:
I personally thought the asacol made my gas worse since it’s a time released pill, the coating had to make it’s way through your entire digestive system to be released in the colon, and it always ended up coming out the other end. That just did not seem right.
I feel lucky that I never ended up taking steroids, I think I was dead set against that. But had my symptoms been worse I don’t know.
written by Kelly
My name is Kelly and I’m an Occupational Therapist working in an industrial setting (folks working on a production line making cars) I’m married to my best friend and we have 2 beautiful daughters. My husband is the one who found the books, Breaking the vicious cycle (Gottschall) and Raman Prasad’s Colitis and Me, along with his SCD cookbook.
