Ulcerative Colitis, and how to live with(out) it
Keeping Yourself healther with Diet, Lifestyle, and Alternative Medicine
Taking care of myself: Learning about Diet and Lifestyle ...
In any case, here is my pathetically inadequate line of thinking
of a lay-person medical diagnose: My intestine is inflamed.
Therefore, there must be something that is inflaming it. Instead
of using anti-inflammatory drugs to reduce the inflammation, why
don't we figure out what inflames it, and cut that out of our
life. Novel thought, isn't it? Okay, now, big jump: The inside of
one's intestine is exposed mostly to the things we put into our
body in terms of food. The part that amazes me about the medical
society is that the average doctor knows absolutely nothing about
nutrition. Considering how important it is, in my experience, to
eat the right things, how can any doctor even remotely believe
that they can treat a person without telling the person what to
eat. So, my hypothesis is that my intestine is inflamed, and will
continue to be inflamed because of the stuff that I eat.
I decided to try that hypothesis. For a week, the only thing that I
would eat was white rice, which is something that I know I am not
sensitive to, nor are most people. Then I would start
reintroducing certain foods, to see what the effects would be.
The results were dramatic, and I found out that the largest
offender was wheat, with a mild reaction to egg-yellows, as well
as dark chocolate. After cutting those things out of my diet, my
health improved significantly, but not only the health of my
intestine. I have run several tests on this over the past two
years, and the results are, in my mind, conclusive: Eat wheat and
bleed. Not eat wheat and not bleed. Works for me. One other thing
that I noticed within a month of going off of wheat is a sharp
reduction in body odour. I used to sweat a lot, and naturally
have a fair amount of body odour at the end of the day. That has
gone away since. My skin was also quite bad for a long while with
acne, and I would frequently get cysts on my skin, and again,
that has all but disappeared, and this one was related to the
dark chocolate. But the most dramatic thing I learned about the
wheat is that, after a year on a wheat free diet, I started to
notice something: I have not had a cold this year. What you have
to understand is that I used to get six to eight colds a year. I
would basically walk by somebody with a cold, and would get it.
Suddenly that stopped. Finally, when I had to go to the bathroom,
it would at times be quite urgent. This has also decreased
substantially, and as a result I got to the bathroom a lot less
than I used to.
Iron: One last thing that has happened since I am
on my new diet is that my hemoglobin has stabilized. For over ten
years, I had to supplement my diet with some sort of iron
supplement. In the end, I found that iron-injections where
actually the most effective method of bringing my hemoglobin
levels back to where they should be, but I find intramuscular
iron injections very painful, preferring the intravenous ones,
but doctors don't usually want to give you those in this country.
Still, once in a while, I do need to supplement, and I do this
via a juice drink I came up with: One cup of spinach, two
carrots, one apple, one lemon. Looks awful, tastes quite good,
when you get the proportions right, and it works very well.
Back to Pouchitis: Another thing that will trigger Pouchitis in
me is the intake of too much sugar, or honey, and it doesn't take
that much. I am now investigating whether I have a yeast problem.
I know I have yeast, I saw it on the video from the
sigmoidostomy, but I am lacking many of the symptoms one is
supposed to have. In any case, no matter now careful you are,
eventually you will get a run in with the evil Pouchitis monster.
If it gets really bad, then you are back to Flaggyl, but I use
that as a last resort. Something that seems to be quite effective
to get things under control is some sort of anti-parasitic
medicine you will find in a health food store. It's basically a
collection of spices and other herbal medicines that is known to
kill parasites, and it also kills, or at least controls
pouchitis, at least for me. Not as effective as Flaggyl, takes a
bit longer, but with less of the side-effects. Once you get it
under control, your body's immune system can handle the rest.
As you can see, the whole things is an ongoing sequence of
trial-and-errors, and not all avenues taken turn out to get you
to your intended destination, but the alternative is to be
dependent on somebody or something, to not understand what going
on inside of you, and to not be able to control your destiny, and
for me, that is simply not an option.
Hope this helps
Also see: Living with(out) Ulcerative Colitis, what I have learned in the past six months
Back to the Ulcerative Colitis Introduction Page
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Disclaimer: These as well as all the other documents on this website are based on my own personal
experiences, and are not a replacement of a professional opinion by a qualified physician, for all that this
was worth in my case. The purpose of sharing my experiences with you is to help you get through this, and to
learn of other ways of dealing with your condition. I am not a medical doctor, I don't have any sort of formal
training in this or any other medical field. The only thing I can offer you is what it was like for the past 15
years and what it is like now, and in the future. Any advice I give is to be taken into consideration, and you are
welcome to act upon it at your own risk. I am not saying it will help you, or that it will not hurt you, all I am
saying is that this is what I learned, and I am wanting to share it with you. After that, you have my best wishes
for success and happiness. And if you find something that works for you, please, share it with the world, because
we need to know more than what modern medicine is telling us, which is not enough. Be well.
Copyright@2000-2004, Juergen Amft, All rights reserved