Posted 7/27/2012 10:34 PM (GMT 0)
Johno - no offense, but you sound like a weirdo or a stalker. Whatever chip is troubling your shoulder, do get over it, there's a good fellow.
Lisa - Hope the Asacol works better for you. I second trying Pentasa next if it doesn't. As far as diet is concerned, there is no special diet for Crohn's as such. At least not in the sense you're thinking of. There is a medical liquid diet, designed for bringing flare-ups into remission. Such diets used to be elemental, ie the nutrients were broken down into their simplest constituents, proteins into amino acids, fats into fatty acids, etc. But studies have shown that non-elemental drinks, such as Ensure, are almost as effective as elemental ones. This is good news for anybody on a liquid diet, since the elemental drinks are both utterly disgusting (this I know from personal experience) and ridiculously expensive.
Liquid diets are more commonly prescribed in Europe and Japan than they are in the US. And they are more commonly prescribed for children and adolescents than for adults. Nevertheless, even if you're an adult living in the US, a liquid diet is a possible, steroid-free, alternative for dealing with a flare-up. By the way, a liquid diet is more often known as enteral nutrition. EN includes tube-feeding as well, but don't fret: you're never likely to need that...
There are other diets available, but not ones widely known to the medical establishment or with clinical trials behind them. Probably the most popular one for Crohn's is a diet called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), popularised by a woman called Elaine Gottschall. It forbids nearly all carbohydrates and sugars from the diet, on the grounds that these 'specific' carbohydrates are not fully digested in the gut and thus provide food for 'bad' bacteria to flourish. You are left being allowed to eat meat, fish, eggs, nuts, fruit, veg, honey, almond flour, herbs, and spices, but not grains or dairy, except for home-made yoghurt.
The SCD certainly has plenty of glowing testimonials behind it. The thing to remember about the glowing testimonials is that, while the diet obviously works for some people, it still does not work for everybody.
Ironically enough, when the SCD does work it's probably for similar reasons that the liquid diet works: the complex carbohydrates have been eliminated from the diet, so there is less digestion the intestines need to do. But there are discrepancies: drinks like Ensure, or even the elemental drinks, are laden with simple sugars that are forbidden on the SCD.
Personally, I'd try pinpointing individual problem foods over eliminating food groups wholesale. You have mild Crohn's, so malabsorption is hopefully not a problem for you. But if it was, you would have a hard time getting enough calories on the SCD. This quadruply applies if high-energy foods, such as nuts or fatty meats, are a problem for you to digest.
One final word about strict diets like the liquid diet, SCD, etc. Even when such diets get you into remission, they have no lasting protective effect: in other words, go off the diet and you're liable to relapse again.
I ended up writing a mini novel... *collapses* @_@