Hello All,
Please excuse me if this topic has been gone over. I have not been here in a long time. I am not a medical professional even in the slightest but rather a just layman UC sufferer with now years of my own experience, good and bad. Hopefully my experience and ideas may serve useful.
My point? I think that in my case there may be a connection between my UC and a food allergy I think I have with dairy products (lactose.) Please bear with me.
I was originally diagnosed with UC about
8 years ago after suffering with bad abdominal pain and bloody stools. Looking back, one thing that I remember leading up to that period was drinking an usually large amount of milk (for me that is.) I changed my diet to basically Brosco Broth for a while along with some medications and got better. Better to the point that I went back to a more regular diet and no medication for approx. 6 years. During that time I reduced my dairy intake just by guess that it would be a good idea.
After that 6 years I began using whey protein powder regularly as part of my weight training diet (It's my understand now that whey protein can have a lot of lactose in it.) Approx. 2 months later I began to get bad abdominal pain and bloody stools. As a last resort, I changed my diet to a simple one of whole protein, veggies and fats in hopes that it would make things better. It did not. I ended up in the hospital soon thereafter where I bleed badly, not even blood stools but just a lot of blood. I had a colonoscopy and the results were bad. My doctor said my condition was severe and surgery was on the table. I opted out of the surgery and went back on basically a whole protein, veggies and fats diet (very, very carefully and slowly) plus medications and supplements and eventually got better.
Finally one day it dawned on me that I should try lactose free milk and lactase enzymes when consuming dairy products to see what happens. Slowly working my way into it and with lactase enzyme pills, in a matter of a week I drank probably a few gallons of lactose free milk without any problem I would say was a result of that.
What I think may have happened to me that lead to the UC and flare ups at least in part was the lactose I would consume from the dairy products was not being digested but instead stayed in my digestive tract and caused inflammation. In addition, if that is the case, taking lactase enzymes are how I can rid myself of the lactose.
Hopefully this is food for thought for someone.
P.S. Because of all that I have experienced, tried and explored, please feel free to ask me questions as I think I have learned a lot about
my UC over the years.
Post Edited (j7) : 9/7/2015 9:15:20 AM (GMT-6)