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Anyone done a fast or cleanse during flare?

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Ulcerative Colitis
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Posted 1/26/2016 8:47 PM (GMT 0)
Just curious if anyone has done a fast or a cleanse of any type during a flare? Did it help. I've been eating gluten free for a few days. Not seeing improvement yet but it can't hurt anything. I don't want a debate on diets. That's been overdone on here. I just want to hear what YOU had success with. Especially with bleeding. Bleeding is my main problem. So any fasts/diets etc. that have helped you let me know. God Bless
Garrett
Posted 1/26/2016 9:01 PM (GMT 0)
Yes, I did intermittent fasting a few years back (never done a "cleanse") and thought it was helpful, giving my gut a rest from working in an injured state. You can search this forum for "intermittent fasting" and find older threads about it.

I love food so was not looking forward to any kind of fasting but things were bad enough for me to try it. IFasting wasn't too bad and my gut calmed down a bit. Diet modification, that is figuring out what my gut can and cannot tolerate, has helped the most and I haven't fasted in years now. After fasting you can introduce certain foods one at a time and see if symptoms tell you anything.

It took me several tries at gluten-free to figure out it WAS a problem for my gut, it was never really obvious until the last time when bleeding stopped almost immediately. That doesn't happen for everyone. My main symptom when eating bread products was….nothing. My gut just stopped which was not a bad thing I thought. But it turned out my gut could not process grains (I do not eat 90% of grains now). The other food my gut cannot process and causes bleeding is fiber so I take fiber pills and eat a low fiber diet (among other diet mods.)

Good luck with your fasting. If you use juices try to keep the sugar (fruit) low because sugar is inflammatory. Green juices are healthy but are powerful so start slow with them and increase as needed.

Good luck.
Posted 1/26/2016 9:08 PM (GMT 0)
Yes, but not really intentionally. It just got so uncomfortable eating, I went for longer and longer periods without eating anything, until I was sometimes going nearly 24 hours without food. It helped in the sense the less I ate the fewer symptoms I had (although I was never entirely symptom-free), but had absolutely no healing effect whatsoever - it didn't slow the progression of my disease. Not even when I went on an ultra-strict liquid elemental diet, which had no solids in it at all.

Give gluten-free 4 weeks to be really sure you will see no improvement.
Posted 1/26/2016 9:25 PM (GMT 0)
the only thing that ever helped with bleeding was just healing in general - anything that's helps heal my body, reduces and ultimately eliminates the blood -

so in that context, the fasting I have done was never a quick fix - it was just part of a process - definitely valuable, but not a stand alone solution -

and definitely agree with ncot - 4 weeks to see if GF is a help or not -
Posted 1/27/2016 4:09 PM (GMT 0)
I did a juice cleanse right before a flare and I think it could have lead to the flare.. Too much fiber, veggies, etc. dr says not enough studies to prove that of course.. But I would think the right kind of cleanse if it was a dairy free product with all the nutrients you needed would be beneficial.. I'm actually going to talk to a nutritionist about this soon to see if she recommends and meal replacements that are safe and healthy as all I find myself tolerating now is bread, soup, pretzels.. And that's about it!
Posted 1/27/2016 6:02 PM (GMT 0)
Yes, I always fast when I flare. If I eat, the toilet trips become too much. Fasting, while it never got me into remission, did help me get through the day. If I ate, there was no way I could leave the house.
Posted 1/27/2016 7:32 PM (GMT 0)
yeah, I am like the others in that I just don't eat when I'm flaring. there is no point from all the pain and I really am not hungry anyway. I usually end up in the hospital when I'm this bad off.

I've tried juice fasts and elemental diets but besides giving my body some calories that I wasn't absorbing anyway, I was still bleeding profusely, in pain, and going to the bathroom 30x a day. they didn't make a difference at all in the actual flare.
Posted 1/27/2016 10:43 PM (GMT 0)
Ditto on the unintentional fasting. It hurt too much to eat. I eventually ended up in the hospital severely dehydrated. Low residue diet seems to help with minor inflammation but some sort of treatment is definitely needed.
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