Food is important to stay alive, whether you have colitis or not.
If you are dealing with ulcerative colitis, you might be always double guessing if a certain food item works for you or not. If you haven’t figured out from previous posts, I am a big believer that food can help to control colitis symptoms. If you’ve looked at other sites about colitis therapy, you can probably realize that opinions on this vary wildly. Until I leave the 1-2 craps per day, no blood, and hard stools program, I am going to continue believing that diet works for me, and can work for others too.
I like Mexican food. ALOT. Some friends used to call me “the Mexican” back in high school even though none of my family is from Mexico. I like going to Mexican restaurants(especially the hole in the walls no-“white” patron ones here in certain parts of California.) I was worried for quite some time(back during my SEVERE colitis days of 2008-2009) that I would have to give up Mexican food forever. I heard ideas that spicy food, and raw vegetables were horrible things for me to be eating since I have UC. As strange as this may sound, this was on my fit-list of things I hated most about ulcerative colitis. Maybe you have your own fit-list about things you hate about having ulcerative colitis too…
Not only do I eat Mexican food 3-5 times per week, I crap hard mexican stools afterwards too, it’s one of those things I can count on more than other stuff. So, let me introduce an awesome meal that I highly recommend. Two weeks ago I visited a friend in San Francisco and we went to a restaurant called “Nopalito” which is located near the Pan Handle. Just a few blocks from Haight/Ashbury if that rings a bell. This place in my opinion should be called “Colitis Heaven”. I would have posted this earlier, but I just got the OK to post their menu, which is great.
I ordered: Carnitas, and the menu says:
Carnitas: Long braised pork, orange, bay leaf, cinnamon, and beer cabbage salad, pickled jalapenos, salsa de tomatillo
Looks good right! And of course this comes with home made tortillas from organic corn. So, looking at the actual item, the “beer cabbage salad” looked like it might be against my diet rules, but I figured how much beer can actually be in a salad… so I didn’t worry about it.
Some of the other options on the menu were:
Torta de Chorizo Verde, sounds and looks good, but this comes as a sandwich with bread, so I had to scratch that
Huevos de Caja, poached eggs, refried black beans, corn tortilla, jack cheese, and salsa de cilantro, looks good to me
Enchiladas de Mole con Pollo, shredded chicken with mole poblano, tortillas, onions, queso fresco and refried pinquinto beans, looked good as well
And there were about 20 other things, nearly all which looked super great. If I could conduct one ulcerative colitis study, it would be to take 100 UC sufferers and go on a year long field trip down to some small beach town in Mexico. And of course, 3 meals per day would have to be authentic Mexican food. Nothing too crazy here, just a simple test to see if Mexican food is really helpful to stop symptoms of Ulcerative Colitis. Si un persona en este website es amigos con la persona con mas dinero en todo del mundo de Mexico, por favor pregunta si el quiere pagar para este idea. Gracias
So, can you imagine food being a therapy for your colitis? My doctors told me no, yet my bowels have told me yes. Some may say my UC is in remission, others may say the drugs finally took effect last August. I believe it’s diet.
As a quick little side note, you are going to see a new writer on the site who is from Jordan in the Middle East and is dealing with UC right now. I can’t wait to see and learn about what goes on in Jordan when it comes to ulcerative colitis. Maybe there is no Mexican food in Jordan?
I started site shortly after being diagnosed in October of 2008 with severe pancolitis (when my whole colon was inflamed).
For me, it was a very rough start with severe symptoms. Getting bounced from medication to medication was not easy or too helpful. But, I did meet another UC’er, changes several parts of my diet, and of course the rest is history.
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