How many of us have sat around and wondered what the heck should I be eating for my ulcerative colitis?
How many of us have sat in the waiting room of our doctor’s offices and waited to go in for another exam, and at the same time wanted to ask what types of foods are good to eat with our inflammatory bowel disease?
Our disease is dealing with problems in our colon, and our colon is responsible for some parts of the digestion process, so this must have something to do with diet and food right?
I can remember asking myself these questions so many times. I remember wondering how on earth could all the gastro doctors feel that diet has absolutely nothing to do with diet. I heard that so many times that I started to believe them myself.
Of course for me, this changed after I met another person who had been dealing with and beating ulcerative colitis for many more years than me. She had gone through with so many of the same medications that I had tried, and after she discovered they were not working for her, she tried using the SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet) to heal her colon. And the best part of all this is that she had some great success with it. Not only was she medication free for over two years when I met her, but she was also symptom free for a long time as well. This got me super excited to try the SCD diet plan.
That night, I sat at home and talked to my wife about what I was thinking of doing. As I was in the final part of my first year after being diagnosed, things were not looking too positive, and the next doctors I should have seen was going to be a surgeon to discuss the removal of my colon. The same type of procedure that happened to my uncle 35 years before. It didn’t take her long to say that there was absolutely no reason at all not to try the SCD diet for my colitis. So that was it. I never knew how great this decision was going to be for me.
The girl who told me about the diet also told me that there was a chance that the diet would not work as well for me as it had for her. She also said I should try the SCD diet for two months, and if I did not see results, to try something else. When she said this, the whole idea of it became more real, I knew that if she was going to say that it didn’t work for everyone, it must be a real colitis diet. I learned a few months before that ulcerative colitis is unique to everyone in some ways. No two UC patients are identical. And for sure, the colitis medications I had been given were not working out for me as they usually do for other patients.
The long story short is that the SCD diet did work wonders for me. There have been some ups and downs, but it has been an overall success. I have had symptoms return on occasion, right now for example things are not perfect, but I am willing to stick with it for a while longer. My joint pain has even gotten much better too. My doctors have said that the strange joint pain and also psoriasis are ulcerative colitis related symptoms, and funny enough, the SCD plan has seemed to work against them too.
There is a great book you can see about this diet.