UC and diet.

Your doctor makes the very common leap from "there's no scientific evidence that diet plays a role" to "diet does not play a role".

When in fact, both statements are incorrect. There is research demonstrating dietary factors. For one reason or another this hasn't made the rounds within the medical community yet. Perhaps because there's not a ton of such research yet: such as you would expect with treatments that don't make any corporation money (so the corporations naturally will not sponsor such research and research money needs to come from elsewere). A diet regimen is also more difficult for the patient to subject themselves to and for the doctor to track and manage.

Well, I think joining or at least reading this forum is an important step towards taking matters into your own hands and finding something that works for you. So welcome aboard. Lots of people here have had success with dietary measures and there are tons of posts about SCD. I personally eat SCD. Some people prefer Paleo. And there are some other diets too with their adherents, the sunflower seeds and spinach diet comes to mind. And there are plenty of non-dietary things you can look at too: Boswellia, Low Dose Naltrexone, Slippery Elm to name a few.

I find it incredible that anyone never mind a doctor could think that there is no evidence linking diet and IBD.

In my case, I have learned through experience that diet is an important part of the puzzle. I also work for the National Association for C&C here in Scotland, and so over the last few years I have spoken to hundreds of people living with IBD. I have yet to meet a single one who can just eat what they want and its not related to their condition. So I would say ,for my own experience, there is an unlimited amount of evidence linking IBD and diet.

More generally, it is now an established scientific fact that nutrition and diet are essential to human health so OBVIOUSLY diet is even more important for anyone suffering from a chronic illness. Hardly very constructive for you to be told diet is not a factor.

I can't help but feel there is a fundamental training gap in the way IBD is treated - our GI's have zero training in diet and nutrition.

Diet is well worth looking into but your best best is to do research online, read books and ask for advise on here. Everyone is different so I can be a case of some trial and error to find out what works for you. Once I identified the foods that caused me problems and cut them out I have had some relief.

Its also worth thinking about exercise, stress management and any other factors in your life that you think might be having an effect. I am a big believer in looking at every area of your life for solutions and not just focusing on one.

A couple years ago I asked my doctor about SCD and he poo poo'd it. Last week he gave me the website for the Breaking the Vicious Cycle. Go figure.

Why did you start to eat wheat again? Just curious. And good luck.

very strange... :-b

Quincy is right about emphasizing meds, especially rectal enemas which are very, very effective but for some reason rarely prescribed. 

But she is wrong to say that diet has no effect on UC. Maybe it really does have no effect on HER IBD but there are scores of people on this forum who experience otherwise.
  
Monitoring my food intake is very important for my remission, but I find special diets to be a waste of time. I recommend a food diary instead. Gluten and dairy are the usual suspects but any food can trigger symptoms.

Special blood tests indicated that gluten was safe for me to eat, but in reality it causes me problems. The SCDiet and Paleo say to avoid starchy vegetables, rice, corn, and grains in general but I find that they are no problem, except for wheat which contains gluten. They also say that shellfish and cruciferous vegetables are perfectly legal under their guidelines, but these are ‘poison’ for me and trigger serious symptoms.

Everyone is different, you need to find your own path. 

BTW many of us find that supplements help. Probiotics are probably the most popular. Check our signatures to see how each of us manages this disease.

I haven't had any luck getting my UC to respond to diet. It seems like when I am flaring, anything I eat causes gas, bloating, cramping and MANY trips to the toilet The only way to improve these symptoms is to eliminate the inflammation. For me, diet doesn't do this. For some people it does. You have to figure out what works for you - nothing works for all of us. Welcome to HW :)

IBD is associated with a failure of the immune system to clear out bacteria from intestinal walls. Diet is more proven for Crohn's than it is for UC, which is why GIs will occasionally prescribe a liquid diet for Crohn's. In an elemental liquid diet, everything is absorbed in the upper small bowel. It is quite likely that very limited diets, such as the SCD, work on a similar basis by depriving the bacteria of their food and thus starving them out.

But otherwise, it really makes very little difference to the course of your disease what you eat or don't eat.

This is my opinion on this. Diet, grains, gluten, gummy bears, dirt is not the cause of UC. However, diet will help aliviate symptoms when you DO have UC. I'ts pretty logical that eating difficult to digest stuff when your intestines are inflammed is counter productive.

However, if someone tells you that you will go in remission or be cured with diet, they are bull****ting you. Nobody can guarantee this, yet some people and most books often try to do.

All in all, I think best practice is to try everything, diet, meds, etc.

I couldn't care less what diets people follow, but it irks me when they portray food as the be-all and end-all. Or, my particular bugbear, as 'healing', implying that the right food will heal you in a way that meds won't. This is nonsense. Even if diet can control the symptoms, you are not necessarily endoscopically or even histologically healed. But more to the point, diet is absolutely not a cure. If you come off your special diet, the symptoms usually return, meaning the underlying mechanism for the disease has not gone away.

Word, dude :p

PS: I thought you were from Canada? Don't they speak English there now, or are you from the French-speaking part...? <_<

Obviously the underlying the mechanism of the disease is still there - its a chronic illness, a life long condition. The underlying mechanism will always be there unless they find a cure. Clearly anything you can do to help control symptoms including diet, exercise, stress management or anything else is worthwhile.

I think your getting mixed up - diet does not heal your body neither does medication. The point is that these things control symptoms to the extent that they allow the body to heal itself.

"I think your getting mixed up - diet does not heal your body neither does medication."

I am ok with this statement.

"(Dude and I agree once more)."

Of course ;)