Sunflower Seeds and Spinach!

We have said many times to eat sunflower seeds or sunflower seed butter while following the diet. Sunflower seeds have never given me a problem if I chew them real well plus they are more readily available, cheaper and easier for me to eat on the go. But there are some who cant tolerate sunflower seeds so sunflower seed butter is better for them. And for most who are currently flaring its probably best to start with sunbutter, but I am not a fan of the sugar added to some sunbutters. Now that I am in remission I eat a variety of different kinds of nuts and seeds for good health and for their magnesium and other important nutrient content and they give me no problems at all. But yes, nuts and seeds are very abrasive on the colon while flaring.

I eat the roasted and salted seeds but I try to get the ones that don't have a lot of salt. Some brands are much more salty than others but you cant rely on the sodium content written on the package to find this out, you have to taste them. It seems that roasted seeds turn a lot more mushy and less abraisive after chewing them than raw seeds so I don't recommend raw ones.

Post Edited (Cfromutah) : 3/21/2009 9:35:58 AM (GMT-6)

I'm new to this site.
Was diagnosed in'98 with UC. Have been on series of Pred, & Rowassa, currently on 100ml Immuron daily, 6 Asacol and 2 months into Cimzia injections. Have stopped drinking-period-due to UC. And strickly limit my carbs and sugar intake.
After reading 4 pages of comments on this diet, ( which I definately want to try ) I have two questions for anyone who is on the Spinach/Sunflower seed diet;
1.) If it is the magnesium in the sunflower seeds that is beneficial, why not take a magnesium tablet
instead....?
2.) I try hard to stick with Dr. Sydney Valentine Hass's 'Specific Carb diet' from the book 'Breaking the vicious cycle; Intestinal Health through Diet'. He is firm on the canning process - not being good for our Intestinal health - at all. Any reason to NOT use fresh spinach from the start and through out the diet? Seems fresh would be best.

Thanks for your input - enjoying the info and the posts on this site very much.
cheers-

this study here with rats also points in the direction that spinach is better for us after it has been cooked.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8926539

Good News. I dont want to jump the gun here but I am getting better. Starting March 1st I elimated MSG from my diet (basically nothing manufactured), quit chewing tobacco, started lifting weights, and started the spinach and sunflower butter diet. I got worse in the begginning, but around day 20 I started seeing some improvements. I normally average about a bm every 2.5 hours, now its more like every 4 hours. I probably would be doing better but my friend got married over the weekend so I drank some beer!! I normally would be in bad shape today, but so far so good. I am going to be optimistic about this. I still have a ways to go, but I am hopeful. I have done quite a few things so its hard to say it was the spinach and sunflower butter, but given the fact other people have had success with it I would say it had a big part. I will keep everyone posted.

I can concur with cooking the spinach. I was eating canned spinach for a about three months and doing pretty good, but never got to remission and it could have been due to not enough sunflower seeds. Recently, I got a sinus infection and things went downhill a little. When I wasn't getting better very quickly I saw a naturepath and she gave me probiotics, enzymes and told me to stop eating canned spinach and switch to fresh or frozen. So I did everything she said and I went downhill in to a flare. I stopped the enzymes and probiotics, but things didn't improve. Now I have been cooking the spinach and making sure I eat the sunflower seeds and things are looking like they are improving. It is pretty tough to say one thing is the cause over another, but it really seems like cooking the spinach was very important for me. (I also cut out rice and rice bread around the same time so that may have been it too.)

well, after almost 4 months of joy, my blood has returned! i just too a poo and wiped and there it was in all its glory. hopefully this is just a minor blip. i was eating spinach every 4-5 days but i haven't been eating the sunflower seeds every day. i'm not going to increase my meds back to where they were at this time. i'm going to try to up the spinach/seeds and see if it resolves. in this way, i'll truly know if it's the spinach/seeds that were doing the job in the first place.

 bokscarracer, yeah that's what happens when you back off those foods too much and let magnesium etc. levels fall. You better get it under control quick by eating plenty of seeds and spinach because once the inflammation and blood starts it can snowball and get worse quick if you don't have enough of the proper nutrients so you have to catch it right as it starts. If you dont take action right as inflammation starts it can be difficult to get back under control.

Post Edited (Cfromutah) : 3/26/2009 9:40:29 AM (GMT-6)

Cfromutah said...
One can of spinach contains 220 milligrams of magnesium. The recommended daily allowance of magnesium is 400 milligrams. if your eating a can of spinach every 4 days and not seeds every day then your only getting half the daily allowance for one of those four days. I don't need spinach everyday to stay in remission. But I do eat high magnesium foods everyday, such as sunflower seeds, oatmeal, walnuts, peanut butter, etc. Anyway, you should eat some sunflower seeds or sunbutter every day and other high magnesium foods even while in remission.

i will do. the diarrhea just started hitting as well with lots of yellow yuckiness. my wife made a korean dish last night called bim bim bap. she said she used a lot of sugar so that may have set things off. i just had a bunch of seeds and a can of spinach. the popeye in my colon will surely reappear. from now on, i'll follow your advice and make sure to get enough high mag every day. will let you know my progress. thanks!

Unfortunately, some of us are that sensitive that certain foods can wreak immediate havoc and trigger a flare. However, it may also be that a flare-up was already building up from a sequence of bad foods/other factors and not necessarily caused by that one specific meal.

By the way bokscarracer, with a dish called bim bim bap, I think you're already forewarned that there'll be some internal/external fireworks after eating it! Speaking of Korean food, I've been in the mood for some kimchi, but spicy pickled cabbage definitely won't go down (and out) too well.

Just want to reiterate something for those of you doing the spinach/sunflower diet. If you also have IBS (which you may not even know about at this point), you may have trouble with the spinach/sunflower seeds. If you're doing much, much better but still not getting into remission, you may want to change the way you eat these foods. Specifically, only eat the sunflower butter (not the seeds) on some white bread, and only eat cooked spinach with white pasta or white bread. The seeds are too hard on someone with IBS, and the spinach is too fibrous - it must be eaten with a soluble fiber to be tolerated well.

I have no doubt that the nutrients in these two foods completely corrected my UC, but I needed to eat them in a certain way to make them tolerable for my IBS. If you suspect you may also have IBS, check out the website I have listed in my signature. It will tell you how to eat correctly for IBS. By following that IBS diet and the spinach/sunflower diet, I am in complete remission with no meds.

Geminisunset, you could try taking some fiber supplements to bulk up the stool, and maybe give you better control over the urgency. I'm taking metamucil wafers with every meal and it definitely helps me. And great to hear that you're doing better now.

Thanks, Rio. I'm hesitant though. Before I was diagnosed with UC, and I still thought I only had IBS, I started taking citrus flavored fiber supplements. And it tore me up! Or so I thought. Shortly thereafter I was diagnosed with UC, so maybe it was just coincidence. Maybe it's worth trying again.

That's great news, Gemini! You're very welcome! I hope you continue to see more success with both diets.