How long do you stick to a new diet before you decide it doesn't work?

Diet did nothing for me. I tried gluten free for a month and then reintroduced. I tried dairy free for a month and then reintroduced. I tried a variety of others over the years, and can't remember them all.

I eat anything i want pretty much without uc consequences (greasy burgers, pizza, beer, etc). The only exception is no more tobasco sauce or hot chili; mild only. I find my gut likes junk, and I've seen a lot of folks with UC say the same, exact thing here on HW and elsewhere. My DW tries to make us eat healthy food and goes the whole organic, free range, gmo free etc route with our groceries. When she travels for her work then i go to pizza and fast food and no change in my uc lol.

the questions are meaningless outside of the context of particular diets or specific foods.

most people can tell if a food increases or decreases symptoms in a days to a week or two.

FOr some food, or food combination, or food elimination to work on more than symptoms and change immune response or condition of mucosal lining, that timing would depend on the chemical and biological mechanisms involved - different in each case.

the who concept of "strict" smacks of magical thinking about food and is devoid of thinking about mechanism.

Well how long should one be expected to wait for a diet to work: 3 months, a year? If it isn't showing symptom improvement then it just isn't working. I think a month is fair, that's what i'll give mesalamine or remicade to show at least some improvement or discontinue.

Our varied responses really make me believe that UC is an umbrella of diseases with simular symptoms. Perhaps some of us have intolerances to specific foods that inturn aggravate our symptoms.

Post Edited (iPoop) : 2/2/2017 5:31:59 PM (GMT-7)

I'm talking any symptom improvement not achieving a total remission. Might my stools firm up slightly or frequency reduce slightly within the span of a month on a diet? The next month continue to do so? That's how mesalamine works and shows symptom improvement (3 weeks a noticable improvement and remission after months). Remission can take 6 months or a year, but one at least knows they're steady on that path as milestones are passed along the way. Slow and steady improvements as we heal. Regardless of the means to that end you gotta have signs that it's at least doing something ... seems like a reasonable expectation.

Post Edited (iPoop) : 2/2/2017 5:58:12 PM (GMT-7)

I realize it's a pretty general question. If we wanted to do a case study on this many other factors would be questioned.
I found that following my hospital discharge from a severe flare, I didn't notice any positive effects of diet change along with my use of steroids until the 2nd week. It seems like the negative effects from eating common trigger foods were quick to detect, but the positive effects from diet change took much longer.

I just assumed my colon was so inflamed that it would take a while for the gut bacteria/mucousal lining to heal.

Post Edited (Natof9) : 2/2/2017 6:53:15 PM (GMT-7)

I would stick to it for a couple of days or a week. If you haven't noticed a positive improvement by then, I seriously doubt you will. My gut tells me what it likes and doesn't like very fast so I usually know within 1-2 days.

I tried strict diet modifications for months. They, by themselves, did not stop any of my Crohns symptoms but they did reduce some of the severity of some of the symptoms.

Remicade was added and with a semi strict SCD diet my remaining colon now appears to be healed. I had a colostomy Sept. 8 2016. Prior to colostomy deviation from the SCD diet worsened some symptoms. After colostomy... I can eat anything. Had a new scope after surgery and everything still healed and looking good.

I choose to utilize a low fiber diet. I eat organic....meat, eggs, some cheese and some vegetables. I limit gluton, dairy, fruits and some veges. I just feel better when I eat specific things at certian times. But now...now I have 8 ounces of coke or pepsi a day...and 8 ounces of grape juice.....but no other sugars..(I don't question it. I just know it makes my colon work better and it does not cause issues with my stomach..lol) I still have to eat the SCD yogurt daily or I will get the semi nauseous feeling back in my tummy and then my stoma starts pulsating. I will occassionally have organic fresh from the cow raw milk or cream..I do know if I eat certian things they will cause looser stools/output and other things cause thicker output.

I believe that there are some people that diet helps to different degrees and that there are some that it does not help and the timeframe is different for everyone.

I have a daughter in law with severe UC. The SCD took almost 6 months to work. She went from really bad to really good..and it was not gradual. We did not think it was working and she was strict. We all told her after 5 months to give it up. She refused to give up. It was like flipping a light switch for her. Now she can modify it a little once in a blue moon...but she is still just adding back in the allowed items and then only occasionally (Shes been strict since 2013)

So for me, diet does matter but didn't appear to be the main factor for healing...for my DIL...strict diet healed her colon, she is not on any meds currently and she is being monitored closely with blood work monthly and scopes every 6 to 9 months. So I don't have a good answer. I can only tell you what is happening to 2 different people...and the individual outcome so far is so different it boggles my mind.

Hope you get the information you need.

Clo

What these diet discussions fail to recognize - time and time again - is that spontaneous improvement of symptoms, even up to and including endoscopic remission, occurs quite often in people with no medical intervention and no dietary change. In placebo-controlled studies of medications, those in the placebo arm improve at rates around 30%, time and time again, and many of those even achieve remission.

So when somebody says that changed their diet and 3 months later, or six months later, they improved, how do we/you know that improvement is actually from the diet change? The answer is, there is no way to know that. The reduction in symptoms and/or remission may have happened even without the diet. You can't go back in time and re-live those months and keep your previous diet and then compare. So the diet *may* have led to the improvement, but that can't be stated for sure.

I've had my Crohn's flare and then spontaneously remit several times over the years, with no medication and no dietary change. But if I were a proponent of diet, I could get on here and claim my daily peanut butter sandwiches are what keeps me medication free.

I'm lucky to have had the time and resources to play with trial and error, diet vs medication, conventional vs traditional therapies prior to and in between flare ups. I understand correlation does not always imply causation, but through my own experience I am confident enough to dictate cause vs effect and have been recording my personal experiments since day 1.

Thank you all for the feed back! I was hoping to include this topic in my upcoming thesis. We are all aware that everyone's situation differs from one another. It is very interesting to me to observe the many different ways people manage this disease.

In the 10 years before I began diet mod. I never had any spontaneous remission whatsoever and took RX meds faithfully. Never got any symptom relief and no improvement with inflammation from RX. So IMO that is proof that diet modification is indeed the reason for my remission.

It took me a very long time to figure out trigger foods, foods that caused bleeding, foods that caused symptoms like gas and discomfort unrelated to other symptoms, etc. Super complicated. But because I could see improvement I kept at it because I really had no other choices, not wanting to take stronger drugs.

For those who have had success with diet, for how long did you stick with it before noticing positive effects?
Were you strict or moderate?

I saw some improvement right away with almost every diet mod I tried but there was also some "dis"-improvement because "name" diets included foods/drinks my gut did not like. It took me years to figure out to listen to my gut and not someone else's food list. SCD is the perfect example: I did it twice very strictly several years apart (bought the book twice). Yes parts of it helped me (gluten-free and dairy-free) and other parts were bad for me (fruit, homemade yogurt, many other legal foods).

It does take a long while for the gut to heal after years of dysfunction and it may never heal back to pre-UC levels. A famous MD once said "Once UC always UC". But I am so much more functional now than before and life is more predicable if I keep to the path of tolerated foods. Do I eat things that will trigger BM's? Yes. Do I keep eating them to the point of losing remission? No.

I get tired of non-diet people telling me I'm wrong.
Do I tell you that you're wrong doing what you do?

if folks want to let fate dictate their lives, i say go ahead and sit around and wait -

just not my deal - i know for a fact that the choices i make as far as controlling my UC do actually make a difference -

you wanna go along for the ride, that's just dandy - me, i'll be behind the wheel -

All we have is our own experiences, they are quite varied, and nearly everyone here defends his/her own experience (alternatives, meds, or some combination thereof). UC is crazy darn individual, we're collectively full of contradicting beliefs and results, and to that end it's good to have a big toolbox of things to try when wrestling with UC.

In the end, we all stick with what works for us. I doubt I'll ever convince those with opposing views to fill a Rx prescription, get a scope, or see their gasteroenterologist lol. And some haven't done any of those things in yeeaars.