Eating organic food significantly lowers pesticide exposure

Could also be that some things labeled as organic aren't as organic as claimed. That's all I was trying to get across in the other head. I think overall, generally speaking, organic foods are much healthier than eating all non-organic. Usually there is a cost associated with that and for some people the cost is just too high. I can certainly understand why many want to eat organically but I also believe that in most cases in doing so your UC probably isn't going to disappear, although it may get better.

You're probably right Stealth. In particular, *IF* you can decrease the cost of your meds through eating better those savings will more than pay for the increased costs of buying organic - assuming you are paying something for your meds in the first place. If meds are largely subsidized or provided at little cost either through small insurance copays or government programs then that part of the argument becomes less true. But, everyone does have their lifestyle as the poor are famous for being smokers, drinkers, lottery ticket buyers, and often have pets that they really can't afford to have, not to mention large screen T.V.'s and smartphones. Sometimes it does boil down to a matter of choice. Sometimes people would rather live on hot dogs, potato chips, twinkies, and sodas. While I'm not into making healthy food eating into a cult many people could certainly do better than they do.

The cost is kind of a big factor for some families. Some can't even afford fresh produce, which is very disheartening.

Trouble is many people get these expensive meds fairly cheaply so maybe "good food" does cost more than medicines, in many cases. I have nothing against eating "good food" but I don't think they should be led to believe that it is guaranteed to make their UC better because it might and it might not. Several have tried changing their diet to good food and it didn't help them one bit. Others it has.

I can agree with that. There is nothing guaranteed in life. Even if there's a 99% chance of something happening, Murphy's law dictates that some of us will get hit with that 1%. Knowing my bad luck and some of the adverse reactions I suffered from medications, I'm probably very close to that 1% range.

On the other hand-

If we're doing risk reductions and statistical analyses, then we improve our chance of healing by a statistically significant amount by tweaking some lifestyle factors around.

There are some detailed studies showing strong risk reductions of the hardest hitting cancers (breast, colon, lung, prostrate) by eating indole-3-carbinol foods, properly prepared legumes, antioxidant and polyphenals rich foods like berries/chocolates. If the recent chocolate study on the gut biome is indication of anything, we must continue (and I emphasize this with a bullet) to feed the critters in our gut.

In some minor way and I say this very sparingly, having UC is a blessing because it gets to the root cause of many illnesses like RA and MS. If I were going to a neurologist for MS, I'm sure they would hesitantly address the microbiome, but GIs nowadays are latching on to the compelling research on it and telling patients to supplement with probiotics. I like that very much.

Because some double blinded studies on probiotics are showing positive benefit for heart patients, they are being suggested by cardiologists as well for cholesterol reductions. We know that vitamin k2 produced by our gut bugs plays a strong role in heart health. This is very important and significant to me because I have a family history of heart disease. Virtually everyone in my family who got past the age of 50 developed heart disease.

Post Edited (Guardian7) : 5/2/2014 4:21:18 PM (GMT-6)

Read an article the other day about how people eating broccoli showed lower levels of pesticides in their system.