I’m Mathilde, I’m 29, French. I’m a PhD student in Psychology. I wanted to share my story with you because it’s first coming across this website that I learnt about the SCD diet. It’s been 7 months I am following it, I have been free of symptoms since September. I have no doubt the diet help me and I don’t see a better way to thank you than to share how it went for me. I hope this will help those who currently encounter the same nightmare.
Some more about me: I enjoy hiking, horse riding and playing guitar.
Current Symptoms: I have Ulcerative Colitis but currently free of symptoms.
My Ulcerative Colitis Story:
First, all of this started with a parasite infection in August 2018. I was found with Anasakis parasite after the consumption of raw salmon (homemade type). Although, it seems I had IBS before.
After a long antiparasitic treatment, my symptoms stabilized but soon it all started again (lots of blood, cramps and shap pain in places, tenesmus, muscle weakness,etc. you know them). I couldn’t even go to my office anymore (500m from the house).
I was diagnosed with UC early December 2018 and got prescribed Pentasa and Prednisolon for 8 weeks. The treatment relieved me very quickly, and by the end of January 2019 I was feeling great, with only some bloatting problems.
In February, I cut off gluten of my diet because I felt especially bad when I would eat something wheat based (such as a croissant or similar things) my belly would triple size each time (I kept a food diary). I was only taking Pentasa 2g/day at that stage. I also stopped lactose thinking it could perhaps help too.
Although, after a period of acute stress in March I felt symptoms were coming back again. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I don’t think so! Despite what doctors said. In April, I had it all again and was in tremendous pain. Doctors increased my Pentasa dosage to 4g/day. After a week of that, I had back pain, headaches, was unable to feed at all and felt just so terrible that I decided to stop everything. I fasted for 3 days. Only drinking lots of clear soup and a little avocado and olive oil and I felt much better! Even my bleeding had stopped by the 4th day on which I could finally see another doctor.
The doctors said that I might have became intolerant to Mesalazine (Pentasa) and so they decided to start me on Adalimumab (Humira) at the end of April 2019. I got the first injections. For two weeks, I was not improving at all and still felt very crappy so then they prescribed me an other course of steroids.
About that time, I got suddenly really scared, I had only been diagnosed and was already on the second course of action of treatments. So I started to searched for other kinds of approaches to the disease. I read about the SCD and started to implement it. I was eating solely some chicken or salmon (very well cooked!!), zuchini, and carots, and veg soup for many weeks. But to me, these still are the best meals ever, since I had finally found some food that felt bearable.
This was a scary time because my symptoms where still active although slowly getting better. A dietician had advised me in the meantime to only eat pasta and rice for 3 weeks at least!! I could not do that. I felt this person was a fool and I started to solely rely on my “gut feeling” (this expression make a lot of sense for me today!). I followed my own instinct, and it was telling me to try the SCD, along with the treatment. I was 57 kilos before and by the end of June I had lost more than 8 kilos. I was really friking out then and I nearly gave up on the diet.
I decided to take a long break from my studies over the summer and autumn in order to focus on getting better. By the way, summer is a super convenient time to start on this diet! And finally, by doing enough resting and feeding, I regained some weigh, some strength, and some muscles. I followed the SCD diet very scrupulously, the only exception is that I would take a tiny bit of cashew nuts and almond butter (and also some dates and cashew nuts bars) after a feww weeks on it in order to help with the calories intake.. But only a little bit here and there, preferably along with other gentle food and making sure to chew as much as requiered. Also, I would drink fruits and vegetable juices that I made myself from a juice extractor every morning.
I also got rid of all my stress factors including big life changes (I was living in Ireland and I decided to go back to France). I took up yoga, and worked hard on my psychological heath. I have also been to several types of alternative medicine (osteopathy, magnetism). All at once, because that’s what you do when you’re deperate. So, I am not really sure of what exaclty did it for me, maybe all of them.
But the important thing is that by the end of September, I was having no bloatting, no pain. All was normal again if I avoided the food that caused me trouble (for instance, it took me weeks to figure out that I couldn’t bare bananas and raw apples… ). Then, I had a sigmoidoscopy at the end of September, and the doctor said that by the look of things, my physical health and the results of the biopsies, all was so perfect that if we didn’t know I was so sick a few months before they wouldn’t never have guessed that I was.
The doctor could not believe that I would be part of the 10% of people reacting extremely well to the Adalimumab treatment knowing that I wasn’t even on it for 6 months yet. So, their explanation was that they had doubts about my initial diagnosis (believe me, there wasn’t any doubt back then!!!). Anyway, they preferred to stop the treatment saying that it seemed useless to carry it on at this stage. So we are keeping an eye on it now, to see how it evolves over the next few months.
Today I am free of symptoms and I regained 4 kilos. I stopped my treatment nearly two months ago and I am still feeling great. I actually have never had so much energy in my life!! I carry on the diet with some exceptions here and there. I can drink alcohol and cafein with moderation. AND I started my studies again. I just wanted to say that no one will know your guts better than you, and it’s vital to listen to your inner feelings and feedback. Maybe I just got lucky, I guess we’ll see. But please don’t lose hope because things can change quickly in a better way.
Thank you to all of you who wrote posts on this website and convinced me that this could work for me. I’m forever grateful. <3
Medications, Supplements, Diets and whatever I’m doing right now to treat the UC:
I tried aloevera juice, I’m still not sure how much it helpt me or not. Research seems to be divided about it. But that’s definitely not what helped me in the past few months.
I drink a homemade orange juice (2 oranges, 1 lemon) every morning and I add a spoon of Baobab powder, it seems it has healing vertus (I have been taking it for 5 months). I feel this is helping me a lot. (Organic Baobab Powder (from iHaveUC’s Amazon Affiliate link))
written by Mathilde H
submitted in the colitis venting area
‘m Mathilde, I’m 29, French. I’m PhD student in Psychology. I wanted to share my story with you because it’s first coming across this website that I learnt about the SCD diet.
