spinach and sunflower seed success stories

if you have questions about the diet please refer to the spinach and sunflower seed (part 6) thread and leave this thread open for just success stories to allow easier readability. thanks!  

this thread is for spinach and sunflower seed diet success stories. it's here to show others that actual people with varying degrees of uc have had success.

i have to make my story short. i was bleeding constantly for about six months between july and december last year. i was on the max dose of colazal and using rowasa enemas every night. i started using cortifoam and that only made it worse. i gave the diet a try and didn't really notice too much the first week with the exception of fluffy green poo. after about the third week the blood started to subside a bit and at about the fifth week there was no more blood or urgency. i went from around 8 bm's a day to 1. i also used to get that left-sided pinchie feeling and that went away as well. i've recently started decreasing my colazal dosage and haven't taken anything rectally for about three weeks. i'm still taking fish oil and probiotics for general health. my plan is to eventually get off colazal entirely and once i'm done with nursing school i'm going to try to wean off the celexa as well. please, if you aren't having any luck with your meds than give this diet a try. it certainly couldn't hurt things.

my initial diet for the first 4 weeks: half a can of spinach each night, 3-4 tbsp of sunbutter throughout the day, around 4 handfuls each of sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and lots of positive thoughts! if you have a whole foods or the like nearby go there to get your seeds by the bulk. i think i've read that there are cheaper "mom and pop" places to get seeds as well.

I was diagnosed with UC in 2003 but had symptoms for several years prior. After being diagnosed I was in an extremely severe flare and bleeding heavily and going many (10-20) times a day and tried many medications at the time and non of them seemed to help much at all. This flare lasted two years non stop till I started eating several large handfulls of deshelled roasted sunflower seeds daily and a large can of spinach every one or two days. After eating the spinach and seeds for one to one and a half months I went into complete remission with no symptoms and I was not taking any medications at the time. I was quite relieved because I was starting to wonder if I would ever get into remission again after such a terrible and long flare. At the time I wasn't completely sure that it was the spinach and seeds that helped and there was a few times when I quit eating them and symptoms started to return, then when I added them back to my diet symptoms disappeared. After seeing this pattern for a while I was so confident that it was these foods that put me into remission I started experimenting with deliberately removing them from my diet to see what happens, sure enough after a few weeks of not eating them symptoms would start to come back and then adding them to my diet again would quickly put me back to being symptom free. Now I am completely sure its these foods that put me in remission and have been in remission for nearly three years with the exception of the few times that I stopped eating the spinach and seeds and symptoms started to reappear for a short time till I added them back to my diet. I have been on absolutely no medication for UC in the last three years that I have been in remission from this diet.

 

Post Edited (Cfromutah) : 2/8/2009 11:46:28 PM (GMT-7)

CfromUtah, other than spinach and seeds what would you say your diet consists of?  I mean do you eat whatever you want or do you think trying to stick to a more natural whole food type of diet helps UC?

I eat whatever I want without problems but I do try to eat a fairly healthy balanced diet, although I work in construction and usually eat at fast food places with the guys every day at lunch. I don't eat much refined sugar but that has nothing to do with my UC, I didn't eat a lot even before I got UC. And I don't drink soda pop. Never had a cavity in my teeth either so I think not eating much sugar or drinking pop has paid off in that respect. Although every now and again I do go on a little sugar binge and eat a bunch of cookies or ice cream or what ever sounds good but only do this on some weekends or special occasions. There are some things I like to keep in my diet on a regular basis for the nutrients that these foods contain because I think they are important nutrients. I try to eat red meat a couple times a week for the zinc and b-12 content, But I did notice while flaring that if I ate beef for more than one day in a row it did make my UC symptoms a lot worse. I eat chicken a couple times a week for the B-6 and amino acid and niacin content. I eat potatoes two to four times a week for the potassium content, one potato contains the potassium content of two bananas. I eat an orange every day or two for the vitamin C content. And I still eat sunflower seeds almost daily and eat a fair amount of other nuts and seeds because most all nuts and seeds contain a fair amount of magnesium. I eat a few baby carrots every couple days and a few salads a week for beta carotene, or spinach for beta carotene and magnesium. If I remove foods with magnesium or beta carotene UC symptoms will start to come back, I need to get both of these nutrients from foods to stay in remission. I eat oatmeal every morning with two percent milk but I do try to limit my High calcium foods a bit because ingesting high amounts of calcium can interfere with your magnesium balance. And I almost always drink distilled water. Other than trying to keep the food items that I mentioned in my diet weekly I just eat whatever sounds good to me at the time.

Post Edited (Cfromutah) : 2/9/2009 9:40:44 PM (GMT-7)

You eat the things you normally eat but add lots of spinach and deshelled sunflower seeds to your diet. I don't know if it helps people with cronhs but it very possibly could.

I wasn't on the spinach and sunflower seed diet during my last flare, but I did eat a lot of spinach with garlic. It helped the inflammation.

i have had UC for over a year now with no remission and only relief is from prednisone ! i have just started (2 days) 6mp, with much resistance as i am afraid of what it is actually doing to me, but MUST get off the steroid! i just came across this spinach, seed thing and can't believe it could actually help, but i really would try anythig!! for real?? it actually helps? i am 36, with 3 kids and some days can't leave the house or want to get out of bed bcuz of the depression i have been in about not feeling well. what do i do? seriously just add spinach and seeds?

Sooo, after seeing all these threads about this diet, I decided to go get a jar of de-shelled dry roasted Planters kernals (thery are VERY good by the way).  I was a little nervous abou the spinach but last night we had some chicken and i picked up a few frozen packs of spinach...we boiled the spinach and added some garlic powder (another anti inflamatory apparently), needles to say, the spinach was actually really good.

So, i'm going to continue to down my seeds and eat frozen spinach with garlic 2-3 times a week...hopefully it puts me in to a remission for so long that I dont even think about the horrible diesease every again!

rowana, I eat my spinach without adding anything to it because I think eating it alone gives your body more of a chance to absorb nutrients from it but I know that some other people have had success with mixing it in other foods such as omelets.
If you have anymore questions about the diet please ask them on the thread titled
"spinach and sunflower seeds part 6"
Thanks

I was diagnosed with proctitis in Nov. 07, and it became very severe and developed into pancolitis by Sept. 08.  I tried numerous medications (see signature) and diets and never had success with any of them.  When my doctor began talking about Humira and Remicade, I had already heard about this diet and decided to give it a shot (I was desperate).  When I first started the diet (9/31/08) I was taking 13 pills a day plus rectal meds and I was down 13 lbs in weight. 

For the first two weeks, my symptoms got worse (probably because I was eating fresh spinach - big no-no).  By the third week, I started feeling better.  During those weeks I changed the rest of my diet to low-residue, so the only "scratchy" stuff was the spinach.  I used sunflower seed butter instead of seeds.

It took several months, but today I take no meds, have gained all my weight back and feel great.  The diet gave me my life back.