Foods

You might want to read Jordan S. Rubin's book "The Makers Diet". It is about his journey and his food choices in curing his Crohns disease.

My doctor (IBD specialist) tells me that food does not cause Crohn's disease. There is no known cause.

Foods can make certain Crohn's symptoms worse. That list of foods is generally different for different people, though there are small groups of people who have problems with (1) gluten or (2) dairy.

When you are flaring and have active symptoms, it is typically gentler on your system to eat a "low residue" diet. This basically avoids raw fruits & veggies and other types of roughage/fiber. Foods deep fried in a lot of fat can also be difficult to digest.

Inflammation doesn't come and go like that with this disease. It's not like you eat something, you get inflammation, then it goes away until you eat something else. Food does not cause this disease. It may aggravate your symptoms, but while you are flaring the inflammation is always there.

While I'm flaring my doctor will sometimes put me on a low fiber diet, tells me to eat things that are just more easy to digest. Because my guts are inflamed and in bad shape. The hope is the medications bring down the inflammation and get you in to remission (no active disease). So really what you want to find out for you is what foods won't aggravate what you have going on in there further. For some it doesn't matter what they eat, for others they stay away from veggies or fruits. Some can eat spicy foods, others can't.

There are diets out there that some people feel help treat the disease (with our without medication). That I think is a bit different from what you are asking. These diets come with controversy (you'll see that on this board) as to if they work or not.

ok so what you are telling me is I have inflammation but not actually any symptoms I can tell when this happened until I aggravated it with something I ate? Like I said I was feeling fine...no pain, not diarrhea, nothing....and then bam....it hits me very fast with the start of pains in upper stomach that progress within hours to massive pain, bloating and both time vomiting.

I just do not understand how it goes from feeling fine one minute and then within hours at Thanksgiving to a complete inflamed closed intestine. And this week I felt fine and within a few hours it happened again but not completely closed thank God.

HOw do I know I am flaring if I feel fine until the massive pains start??? UGH!

Post Edited (FayK) : 1/23/2015 6:34:03 PM (GMT-7)

yes they said it was a blockage at Thanksgiving. no surgery. had me on steroids, 2 antibiotics and pain meds...all iv while i was there for 3 days. I felt awesome when they sent me home. When I came home I was on 60mg of prednisone and have been trying ever since to work back off oof them as so I can go back on my humira injections. I was taking Humira up until the 1st of October when I had to stop it due to a very bad resp infection. so since I have been off the Humira I have had 2 bad bouts with the crohns acting up. Doc had me start injections again yesterday and I am working back down off the prednisone again. I was down to 20mg till the other day when it acted up and he put me back up to 40.

Ah okay, I see. Blockages can be so scary, and the symptoms are just like you described. Things get blocked up and you go down hill fast. Hopefully the Humira is going to kick back in for you now and get the inflammation down enough to where you won't have to worry about another blockage.

I would probably stick to a low residue, easy to digest diet right now. Stay away from things that are high in fiber. I wouldn't eat anything that causes a lot of gas, vegetables or fruits. Lots of fluids.

I've had times where things just get really bad out of no where and it not even be a blockage though. I think my flare just got really bad. Throwing up, bad diarrhea, lots of pain. They would hospitalize me for a few days and it would help stabilize me. It's so hard because it's such an unpredictable disease!

There aren't any foods which can prevent the kind of inflammation you're talking about, so don't blame yourself for what you ate: it's the disease's fault, not yours.

Prednisone works brilliantly in the short-term for most people. Operative word being "short term". Pred will stop working almost as soon as you come off it, so it's important to find another med which you can stay on long-term. Hopefully the Humira will start working again once you go back on it. Once you're in remission, you should be able to eat more fibre, fruit/vegetables, etc. But if you ever get those pre-warning signs again (I know you don't get much time...), my advice would be to not even eat a small meal or snack, but to stick to clear fluids until the danger has passed. If there is an obstruction building up, you should be able to hear/feel it resolving: it basically sounds like a blocked drainpipe unclogging itself - lots of gurgles, loud ones.

Good luck.