Torturing Ourselves About Diet...?

I'm wondering if anyone else can relate to this - I've eliminated foods that I know for sure are an issue for me (dairy, chocolate, coffee, nuts, seeds, popcorn, fatty foods), but as I sit here waiting for remission to kick in (and getting nervous that it's not), I feel panicky about diet, like I should cut out gluten, go SCD, etc.

Common sense tells me NOT to do that, because I'm trying prednisone right now and need to give that time to work, and also that I won't know what causes the remission if I do lots of things at once.

Also, eliminating gluten (I've tried it in the past, before being diagnosed with UC, with mixed results) causes me major stress - I hate depriving myself of yet another food group.

Does anyone else get panicky and stressed about eliminating food like this? Am I right to just sit tight and wait for the prednisone to start working?

I personally wouldn't go crazy with a new diet while you're starting on a high dose of prednisone. if you feel better, you will wonder if it's the diet or the prednisone, better to do one thing at a time in my opinion.

Of course, just because you feel better on the prednisone, doesn't mean you should eat whatever you want. I'd keep avoiding the food that you're aware are triggers.

Ultimately, once you're 100% on pred, you will need to taper off the prednisone and use a maintenance medication to keep the inflammation in check. What are you planning to take to maintain remission? If you're trying with diet alone (I wouldn't recommend this but others would), yes, I'd go 100% gung-ho on whatever diet you're trying - and start right when you start tapering pred. If it doesn't work, you may have to go back up to 40mg pred and start this whole process over. Seems like a pipe-dream to me, but that's just my opinion. It's worked for other people.

It never hurts to try to eat healthy, just don't make yourself sick with too few calories if you're struggling with a severe flare up.

Diet makes absolutely no difference to me.

Thanks, everyone, for the dose of common sense. I think the prednisone is making me extra anxious ;)

I KNOW dairy makes me sick - it has since I was a kid - and the results from eating nuts, popcorn, alcohol, spicy, etc. are very apparent the next morning. Everyone's advice was good and I am thankful to all of you!

@notsosicklygirl, thanks for that question - very timely! My GI had me on 40mg prednisone for 8 days and was supposed to start tapering today. I was also on Rowasa but had a bad reaction and was told to stop that on Thursday, which I did. However my GI did not recommend an alternative medication, saying the Prednisone was doing most of the work at this point and that once I was tapered to 20mg he would recommend a maintenance med.

That sounded "off" to me and I was also nervous about starting to taper today, when I was still having symptoms. I called the on call doc, who is part of this hospital's Crohn's and Colitis Group and is a UC specialist. He was wonderful and said not to start tapering yet - he said they look for at least 3-4 days without symptoms before starting the taper - and that I need to start a maintenance med before I go to 20mg, or I risk going back into flare. He is sending a note to my doc, but in the meantime, on Tuesday, I am going to request to be moved to the Crohn's and Colitis Group and see if I can be treated by the doc I spoke with today. No disrespect to the GI who diagnosed me, but he is not a UC specialist and if I have that option I would prefer to take it.