Binge Eating While in Remission/Treatment

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone else experiences binge eating when they are on meds and feeling better and/or in remission. I have always had a problem with binge eating and compulsive overeating (I'm not sure if that lifestyle contributed to my UC). I was rushed to the hospital about a month ago because of shooting pains in my life side. the pain was so intense that I had a panic attack.

I'm currently on my first-ever round of prednisone and it is making me crazy hungry, fat and bloated. Add to that the fact that I'm feeling better (sort of - no D but the pain is still there) and I seem to be eating with abandon. For the first time in months, I am able to eat whatever I want and not have to poo five minutes later, so I am eating everything in sight, and even bingeing on fast food, chips and ice cream.

I'm trying to follow Dr. Weil's anti-inflammatory diet as much as I can, to help get me into a healthy lifestyle so I don't flare up again when I'm done my meds, but I can't stop myself from making unhealthy choices and eating far too much. I feel lost. I know I should be eating healthy, and that if I don't I can make myself really sick but I can't seem to stop.

Compulsive eating is an eating disorder. I think you need to seek medical help for that because it is common for IBD sufferers to develop disordered eating patterns due to our disease. If you already had that tendency prior to diagnosis, you are in even more danger. The restricted diets that some patients choose to follow (e.g. the anti-inflammatory diet you mention) can be particularly triggering and may do more harm than good for you.

I would have eaten my right arm while on prednisone. Nasty drug.

Hello and thank you for the responses. I'm having a hard time understanding how to treat my illness, as my doctor informs me that there is nothing I can change in my diet that will help me with the UC. I don't know why, but that doesn't seem right to me. It's an GI issue, so wouldn't the types of foods you eat have something to do with the symptoms?

I went through a period here of about 3 months where I was going poo, urgent D about 15-20 times per day. I was malnourished, losing a ton of weight and finally collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital. I'm on prednisone, Alacol and a mesalmine suppository.

I think what scares me the most is the side effect, especially from the prednisone and a sort of denial that there is nothing that I can personally do to alleviate the symptoms other than take medication. It's like I got a big does of reality, and with that came a mindset of ****itall. I don't know, but it's discouraging and I'm scared I'll start flaring again once I am off the prednisone. I'm on a tapering dose and still have about 10 weeks left on it.

You would think that someone with a chronic illness would do everything they could to eat healthfully, but I find myself sabotaging myself all the time. I'll go into the day with good intentions - low fibre foods, nothing processed, clean eating essentially....but then I feel pretty good and start thinking about all the stuff I couldn't eat before because it would make me poo and I just eat it, even if I'm not hungry. It's very hard and the guilt can be overwhelming. Then I start worrying about cancer or other effects from being constantly in inflammation and I wonder how someone can just keep making themselves ill even though they know it is bad for them. It's the same with the guy with lung cancer who just keeps on smoking.

I've been to a few doctors and all of them are in agreement about the meds. gotta be on the meds! but I don't want to be on them forever, and part of me thinks that if I have to do SCD or low fibre low residue or anit-inflammatory for the rest of my life it's going to be horrible. Imagine wanting yummy food over a healthy body. Darrrr. It makes me shake my head, but I feel so sad about it. Like my illness is my fault. I don't know if that is the case, but I've eaten horribly my whole life, got up to 350 pounds (I'm down now to 275 after 3 years of REALLY trying to eat better - sometimes successful, sometimes not) and can't shake the feeling that being fat has something to do with this.

Anyhow, thanks so much for listening. I've been to talk therapy before, but not for a long time and not since diagnosis. Maybe that's something I should look into.

and part of me thinks that if I have to do SCD or low fibre low residue or anit-inflammatory for the rest of my life it's going to be horrible. Imagine wanting yummy food over a healthy body. Darrrr. It makes me shake my head, but I feel so sad about it. Like my illness is my fault. I don't know if that is the case, but I've eaten horribly my whole life, got up to 350 pounds (I'm down now to 275 after 3 years of REALLY trying to eat better - sometimes successful, sometimes not) and can't shake the feeling that being fat has something to do with this.

I felt for you upon reading your post. The bolded part of your paragraph really resonated with me. Time and time again I have asked myself if I would have been prepared to follow the SCD religiously for the rest of my life if it meant never having surgery? The honest answer is I have no idea. I hate having an ileostomy, but on the other hand I'm free to eat the foods I like; bread, noodles, sweets, chocolate, etc. My one sop to good health is trying to cut back on cheap food with preservatives, but my fondness for imported Asian ramen ensures I fail at even that; it's monosodium glutamate hell, but oh so tasty. (And I eat them with organic eggs! >_>)

One thing I want to try to remove from you is the guilt that being fat caused your UC. Being overweight has no increased risk factor for getting IBD whatsoever. Here is a 2013 study on the subject: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23318483

You said earlier than UC is a GI issue: yes and no. The root causes of UC are not understood, but seem to be a combination of genes (less so with Crohn's, but the associations are still there) and environment, in particular altered gut flora. Diet may play a role, but it's so much more than diet alone.

As far as staying on meds "forever" (such a loaded word) is concerned, some people are very doom'n'gloom about that, swearing that you will relapse if you so much as miss a dose of Asacol. Nonsense. People have been in remission for 20 years without taking a single medication. The truth is, IBD can spontaneously go into remission, just as it can spontaneously go out of it, and nobody really knows why. Meds have been proven to delay the time to relapse, and to perhaps make the resulting flare-up less severe, but they are not miracle workers. People relapse while being on meds, and some people do just fine not being on them. The problem is that there is no way to tell if you will relapse if you come off meds or not. For this reason, most people prefer to stay on them, particularly with more severe disease: I would too.

Also, the 5-ASAs are about as safe a group of long-term meds as you'll find: I would have absolutely no worries about taking those for the rest of my life. Another bonus to 5-ASAs is that they appear to reduce the risk of colon cancer, even if you are not in remission.

Phew. I have rambled on, but I hope something amongst this wall of text helps you to feel a bit better.

thanks everyone for your kind responses and information. I'm fairly newly diagnosed (December 2012) but I know I have had this for at least 10 years. All that time I thought it was because I was eating crap food, so never went to the doctor. People are strange creatures!

I am going to talk to my doctor next week to see about extending my Asacol medication, which runs out in about 2 weeks. My GI doctor has a 3 month waitlist, so I hope my GP will be able to prescribe it. Thanks again, and I will come here more often now for support, it seems like a very safe place.

Please don't blame yourself for this. There's millions of people out there who don't watch what they eat, don't exercise etc and they never get IBD. We have had an unlucky combination of genes and environment.

I work in the therapy field. There is so much evidence that the more compassion you can build for yourself, the better you are likely to feel mentally. It is hard to have IBD on top of difficulties around eating. Especially when you have to go on Pred.