Your Views on UC Treatment? (pills vs plant)

IPoop, UC is indeed very individual. That said, there is a universal consensus on foods that are unhealthy. I don't see them helping a poor gut. What people choose to do with their UC, however, is totally up to them. I think the Nobel Prize will go to someone who comes up with some microbiome formula for UC.

There is no “universal consensus on foods that are unhealthy”.

I recall years ago the Paleo diet crowd were insisting that rice and potatoes were 'bad'. They cited lengthy articles about glyco-alkaloids and the evils of lectins etc.
A year later, as newer information came to light, many of those same people began touting the benefits of resistant starch, and rice and potato were back in fashion.

The same can be said for so many foods– saturated fats, carbohydrates, red meat, legumes … and on it goes.

Some eat chocolate and drink alcohol, while others swear it hurts them. Some eat low residue bland foods, others eat processed foods, and yet others eat organic foods or are on various restrictive diets.

(Some find l-glutamine, VSL and other probiotics to be problematic.)

Individual circumstances determine what an individual can consume. Level of disease, surgery, location of inflammation, genetics, environment and a host of other variables all interact in a complex fashion that defies any simple solutions. There are no one-size-fits-all diets.

It is mostly a matter of trial and error, and to make things more difficult things can change over time.

I reckon human beings in general are intuitively and in the evolutionary sense drawn to food that is wholesome and fresh. Anything laden with sugar and grease speaks to our weakness, though some may take that as a value judgment. It's definitely enticing. Processed and fast food is a symptom of our ongoing Industrial Age in which we have become accustomed to quick results. I agree with an occasional treat, if it's treated as such we will greatly reduce obesity and a number of illnesses that the WHO recommends to govts in regulating fast food. That was my point and I get yours as well. I also think diet is only understood in terms of SCD etc. but it can be much broader and more individual with fewer restrictions. I think a lot of it boils down to cooking at home. And eating well for the purpose of living well. Cheers

NCOT - best post ever.

Nicely said NCOT. I gave up sugary foods 3 years ago but I have not eliminated sugar completely as I have it in my coffee every morning and obviously it's in some of the foods I eat. But when someone says they can't live without their chocolate, I don't feel the need to tell them how bad it is for them (such as milk chocolate).

For me personally, veggies and fruits in moderation is okay'ish for my fickle gut. Even if I can not digest 80% of it. One time (not too long ago) I tried keeping up with my hubby with his veggie diet - worst mistake! I was going to the bathroom multiple times a day, had cramping and I'm in remission!

No, the reason why people are so fat today is because their ancestors were drawn to fat and sugar and that evolutionary trait has not died out in us yet (and probably never will).

I disagree. Our ancestors may have been drawn to fat and sugar but they generally don't hurt us in their natural form. It is PROCESSED food that is killing us. We crave the sweetness of sugar because that is nature's way for us to eat fruit that is ripe. Eating sugar in grapes, grapefruit, and bananas isn't going to hurt us, unless your sugar metabolism is already damaged by eating too much refined sugar in the first place. It is eating refined sugar in candy, soda, and chocolate that kills us.

Same with fat. Eating wild game that grazed on the natural grasslands doesn't hurt us. It provides essential omega-3 fats that are healthy. It is eating meat from corn fed cows that overloads our bodies with a high proportion of omega-6 fats. Not to mention ice cream, chocolate brownies, etc. and other processed foods that are not found in the natural world.

Same with salt. Eating processed food, with tons of sodium and very little potassium, will overload your body with sodium producing hypertension and heart problems. But in the natural world fruit and veggies have a very high potassium/sodium ratio.

An extreme example are cocoa leaves that native Indians in South America ate with little harm to health. It is only when those cocoa leaves are refined into cocaine, that is not originally found in nature, that problems and addictions arise.

Processed food has warped our guts and transformed our microbiome to the point where we cannot tolerate natural fibers anymore. Hunter/gatherer cultures in Africa and elsewhere have never heard of IBD.

Thanks folks :p

A few years ago, before I developed a stricture and had two surgeries, I still had the luxury of being able to eat fruit and vegetables. During that time I made a real effort to eat healthily and kick sugar. The fanatics will no doubt say it was the chocolate bar I had sometime in June 2009 which scuppered things for me, but I not only saw no improvement in my symptoms, my disease continued to slowly but surely get worse.

In 2012 I tried a liquid elemental diet, which is one step below TPN. You can't get much more strict than that. My fevers and other signs of disease activity continued unabated. It was blatantly obvious that whatever was driving my disease, it wasn't the food I was putting into my body. After my first surgery I ate a low-residue diet consisting of lots of processed carbs and didn't go on any medication: I remained in remission until my second surgery two years later.

Coffeemate said...
It is eating refined sugar in candy, soda, and chocolate that kills us.

It's extremist statements like this which get right up my nose.

If you eat those things until you become mobidly obese, you're right - those foods will prematurely kill you. (Life has a 100% mortality rate, so not dying at all isn't an option.) If on the other hand you eat those things in moderation, as part of a reasonably healthy and varied diet, that statement is tosh. I remember reading an article about extremely long-lived people (i.e. those who reached 100) a couple of years ago - one of the centenarians was a 100-year-old lady who said she still enjoyed a glass of Coke every day.

Hunter/gatherer cultures in Africa and elsewhere have never heard of IBD.

That's because they're too busy dying at 40 of infectious diseases. That was what used to be 'natural' and still sadly is in some parts of the world.

Percy Pig anyone?

/www.britishfoodstoreonline.co.uk/products/Marks-%26-Spencer-Percy-Pig-170g.html

They're really nice :p

NCOT said...
Hunter/gatherer cultures in Africa and elsewhere have never heard of IBD.

That's because they're too busy dying at 40 of infectious diseases. That was what used to be 'natural' and still sadly is in some parts of the world.

Agreed NCOT. I hear that hunter/gatherer argument from people all the time when they are touting anti-western diets or anti-western ways of life. I mean no disrespect to cofeemate but I think what is always left out of that "African hunter/gatherers don't suffer from disease ABCD or E" is they don't live long enough to suffer from many of the adult diseases we westerners suffer from. They also are more susceptible to natural selection. A good portion of us would be dead without our lousy Western medicine we all complain about so much, leaving others with healthier digestive systems to spawn their bloody diarrhea-free children.

NCOT said...
I remember reading an article about extremely long-lived people (i.e. those who reached 100) a couple of years ago - one of the centenarians was a 100-year-old lady who said she still enjoyed a glass of Coke every day.

If you don't believe that everyone can be different then your example obviously proves without a doubt that coca-cola is a health drink. The following is absolute proof that smoking is good for your health and promotes longevity:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2500759/Whisky-15-cigarettes-day-secret-good-health-says-Dorothy-celebrates-100th-birthday-glass-favourite-tipple-course.html

“Hardy pensioner Dorothy Howe has reached her 100th birthday - despite smoking nearly half a million cigarettes during her life.
“The retired secretary took her first drag aged 16 and has puffed her way through 15 Superking Black ciggies every day since then.
“She has smoked around 460,000 cigarettes over the last 84 years - costing £193,000 at today’s prices.”

Uniform Charlie said...
I think what is always left out of that "African hunter/gatherers don't suffer from disease ABCD or E" is they don't live long enough

I don't think so. Recent studies are showing that diet can transform the microbiome and drastically affects the susceptibility for disease:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/847304_8
“Another study explored what would happen if a group of African Americans in Atlanta swapped diets with a group of rural black South Africans. The investigators were curious to see whether dietary differences could help explain the drastically differing rates of colon cancer between the two populations (65:100,000 in African Americans vs < 5:100,000 in rural South Africans). The South African diet was high in fiber and prebiotics, while the American diet was much higher in junk food, refined carbohydrates, and animal fats.

"Within 14 days of switching to the South African diet, healthy butyrate-producing microbial species increased by 258% in the American population. Butyrate is a byproduct of bacterial fermentation in the colon and is thought to protect against colon cancer.”

Butyrate also nourishes and repairs the cells in the colon from colitis ulcerations.
Dr Deans then mentioned the geneticist who put his son on a 10-day all-McDonald's diet and measured his microbiome before and after. It was found that the son reduced the diversity of his microbial species by 40%, as assessed by three different labs.

Post Edited (Coffeemate) : 3/4/2016 7:37:54 PM (GMT-7)

Well traveling from one place to another (such as on vacation/holiday) can also drastically change our gut bacteria makeup. That change is quite rapid, as soon as you get off the plane/boat, etc. Gut bacteria change based on the environment in which they're in. I don't think that's a cause of uc, it happens to healthy people as well. I'd wager a messed up gut bacteria makeup is more a symptom of uc rather than a cause of uc. So while your diet might increase Butyrate production it cannot undue the fact that Pandora's box of uc was opened, no more than uc medications can.