Newbie questions

You've asked a polarizing question: Is there a diet I should follow? Some people think diet doesn't make any difference.

I'll give you my answer: yes, diet can help quite a bit. But...there is no simple answer of what particular foods are good or bad for you. There does not seem to be common agreement on what diet is best. Most agree that you need to start a food diary and start noting symptoms each day. Then you can start figuring out what your gut likes/dislikes. Sounds easy but it's not because some foods react right away and others can take until the next day.

Specific Carbohydrate Diet has helped many. It was developed for UC and eliminates many common food triggers: gluten, grains, starches, sugar and most carbohydrates. It's a good place to start. There's a book but all of the information can be found online so buying the book isn't absolutely necessary.

Good luck. It took me years to figure out that diet made a big improvement for me even though I tried it and failed in the beginning.

P.S. If your doc hasn't mentioned enemas yet you should ask for an RX for generic Rowasa. Helps with urgency and bleeding. If you have neither then just keep it in mind if you ever do.

That is exactly what happened to me. I didn't understand anything about the disease - not sure I even knew about it - prior to diagnosis.

For me, I have not found diet to be a contributing factor. I have tried a few different diets, including SCD, and they were not helpful. I do find that food that used to bother me before UC are good foods to avoid still.

Many recommend the bland diet while flaring, but others also say it doesn't matter. Unfortunately, with this disease everyone is different in how they react to diet, drugs, flares etc.

Get the meds going for now, and see if they work. Once you have things under control, you can start looking at diet etc.

Good luck!

Welcome to the forum!
One of the frustrating things about UC is that we are all different. Diet may have a huge impact on one person and not on another. Diet doesn't affect my UC, as far as gluten, dairy, etc - but when I'm flaring I stay away from greasy or fried foods, raw or scratchy foods (salads, apple peels, corn, popcorn.......) gassy foods (because the gas hurts more when I'm flaring)..... when I'm not flaring, I can eat pretty much as I wish.

Probiotics help me a great deal; they may not help the next person.

The best thing I did was to start a food journal, and also note how my gut was doing - and then I'd check to see if I could relate how my gut was doing today, for instance, to what I ate yesterday. (Eventually I came to know the approximate speed of my own transit time, which is faster during flares and slower when the disease isn't active.)

To ask a question about food - as Imagardener suggested, folks here have very strong feelings one way or the other about the relationship of food to UC. She has an amazing story of how her diet has helped her over the past year or so! But this is so NOT a "one size fits all" disease that it's hard to say for sure what will help everyone.

However - this forum is a great place to ask questions and gather information! And the 5-ASA meds: Asacol, Canasa, Rowasa, are a good place to start, medication-wise.