Does the food you eat affect overall long run disease situation??

I know docs say that the food that u eat doesn't contribute to worsening the problem in u, just that it gives u flares based on what u eat....but is that really true? Does the food u eat worsen the situation of the disease for u? When I'm on steroids I can eat everything under the sun without any flares....but does eating everything affect the disease in the long run?

I guess what I'm trying to find out is if when I'm on medication and the food I eat doesn't affect me, can I continue to eat without the fear of it actually worsening my overall life with the disease? Don't want yo wake up to find out that all I ate over the years actually made me worse.

Thanks

Thanks

hi Sad&Troubled -

I'm pretty sure no one here on this forum knows the answer to your question. But my thoughts on the matter are like your own, in that I believe the drugs don't in fact limit the damage caused by certain foods that the body doesn't like. All the drugs seem to do is control the symptoms for a while. I think that is why people wind up progressing to more aggressive drugs, because the cause of the problem, if it is certain foods, hasn't been addressed.

I'm in no way saying that foods are the cause of every case of UC. But I do believe what we drink and eat is at least part of the problem, and if we don't limit those things, they will continue the attack on our body.

Did certain foods cause the problem in the beginning ? Probably not. Many people have come down with UC after use of antibiotics which can wreak havoc on our gut ecosystem, which will then affect how we digest food. Although food has changed, and I think we are still learning what those changes are doing.

So Yes, in my opinion, we can continue to harm our bodies while still taking meds.

Put me in the "agree" list too.

Maybe someday my gut bacteria and sensitive gut will have recovered to pre-UC status and I will be able to eat everything and anything again but there are certain foods that my gut cannot handle now and if I ate them regularly would start the slide down into flaring.

That is my reality, perhaps not everyone else's.
I love the food I eat now so don't feel deprived at all however it took a long learning curve to get here.

You can find a reason to not eat every single food out there, even from the organic fresh food stores. At some point you have to suck it up and eat something. People just have different levels of trust in their foods and everyone has their own prejudices, justified or not.

I'm with notsosicklygirl, in opinion.

Stanford University Medical is supposed to release the results of a clinical trial regarding the diet that I follow, SCD, so we may know something about diet and IBD soon.

I'm not sure you can really control for diets. I mean when you're flaring badly sometimes all foods bother you so if you eliminate half the foods you are eating that might make you feel better all by itself, no matter what foods you eliminate. This could seriously skew the results. If I understand the SCD diet correctly, many people lose weight on it in the beginning, which probably means you are intaking less calories and less food, which would decrease frequency somewhat, further skewing the results.

Sugars and yeast could mean you are histamine intolerant. Since discovering this on myself I have been doing much better and can now eat high histamine foods with no problems by taking DAO supplements.

I wont dive into details, but in short, there's an interplay between microbes, the butyrate some produce, and gene expressions related to inflammation, anyone telling you food has nothing to do with this disease and its progression, is not up to date with current scientific understandings.