Introduction:
42 year old business owner, wife & mother of two young girls. She spent 13 yrs working with physicians as an association executive and currently lives is West Sacramento, California.
Some more about me:
I have been practicing yoga for more than 20 years and recently started taking taekwondo with my daughters. I love bike riding, taking our Chesapeake Bay Retreiver on hikes and swimming & I enjoy traveling to see new lands, cultures and foods. I’ll be moving to Australia later this year to live on a farm and spreading the word about healing UC (assuming my recovery is successful). My friends love to tease me about my weak bladder and the many times it has embarrassed me – as well as the fact that I’m always willing to “give it a go” even when an idea or approach is untested or fails. I believe that innovation & learning is a key to growing and staying young. Mostly I try to follow a path & journey to keep my faith first & foremost as it has never let me down.
Symptoms:
When chronic or having a flare up I have bloody diarrrea & painful cramps that had me buckled over crying.
Diet to Help or Heal
I was diagnosed with UC in November, 2009 after a series of other diagnoses including fibromyalgia & c-deficile. Now those diagnoses were true, but masked my UC until a colonoscopy revealed bleeding, weeping ulcers 23cm up my large intestines. I was immediately put on a dosage of asacol – 3 pills/ 3x per day & some awful enema prescription that is only made in Israel. After about 6 weeks of nightly enemas the pills started to work and I was feeling better. Everything was ok, unless I missed a dose. Then I started to be bothered by the side effects o the asacol: tired, headaches & my eyeballs would rapidly wiggle from left to right making it difficult to read or concentrate for long periods of time. In October, 2011 I started eating Mila and between the nutrient density of this blend of chia seed, and the way it coated my intestines I noticed improvement in my energy and a decreased sugar craving. After 6 months of eating it dail y I gradually reduced my pills to 2 pills/2x/day. I was just over a year symptom free and no side effects. Then after the loss of both my grandparents withing 6 months, the flu (without taking any medication or Mila for nearly a week), and a cold over the holidays I started to relapse, just before an international trip. Needless to say that the lack of schedule & many meals eaten out further contributed to this relapse. Last month it was so bad that I was bleeding and curled up on the couch crying. I was sick & tired of this! About 6 months ago a friend mentioned that she knew a friend with a young son who had UC & that she went to an expert in SF (Dr. Cowan) who had her son on the GAPS diet. I called my friend and asked for her contact info & and after leaving a message I spent 4 hours straight researching GAPS. The next day I started the intro diet without completely knowing what I was getting into & literally within 24 hours of stage 1 I was not bleeding, no diarrhea or cramps. I was astonished and in disbelief. This rapid turn around was enough to convince me to see this through. I’m three weeks in and in stage 3. It’s not easy, it is boring at times & I was initially very tired, moody & headachy, but I felt good enough to walk the do over the weekend and work out and go to yoga today.
My question is has anyone on GAPS been drinking kombucha as it seems like it would qualify & does it matter whether you use raw or pasteurized organic milk for making yogurt?
I’d also like to know what has been the biggest challenge for folks and what helped them through it?
Medications:
Asacol – works to mask symptoms in high doses, but expensive and problematic side effects
Enema – life saver to calm symptoms within 10 days – not fun to implement
Mila – helps with energy & to coat intestines (helped me to reduce prescriptions)
Gaps diet – miracle within 24 hours. I don’t yet know if it will heal my UC, but I’m encouraged!
written by Rachel Smith
submitted in the colitis venting area
42 year old business owner, wife & mother of two young girls. She spent 13 yrs working with physicians as an association executive and currently lives is West Sacramento, California.
