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Significant success with UC diet?

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Ulcerative Colitis
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Posted 6/20/2015 9:51 AM (GMT -5)
Hello,

Has anyone had significant success -- minimized symptoms, remission, etcc. -- with a UC diet? I have tried a dozen different diets, avoiding fatty food, avoiding spicy food, avoiding dairy, a vegan diet, a vegetarian diet, gluten-free, etc. I haven't noticed any significant impact from any diet variation I have tried so far, but I must admit that the longest I tried any of them was about a week.

Thanks,
JP
Posted 6/20/2015 10:06 AM (GMT -5)
Yes diet mod. is the reason for my remission but it was not an easy road due to failing all the "name" UC diets. They helped a little but almost every diet had foods my gut did not like. Finally I figured out foods/drinks made my symptoms worse and my life is so so much better.

Did diet alone get me to remission? Very hard to say because although RX meds never helped (10+ years) I never stopped taking them. I also tried many supplements and most made me worse but some helped so I took them until they didn't seem necessary.

If you've only tried diet mod. for a week at a time that's really not long enough to see results. Even Rx meds don't work that fast (except prednisone). Some people don't get any benefit from diet mod. but since I wasn't getting better with oral RX I really had to keep trying alternatives.

To get suggestions you'll have to go to your "Profile" and briefly list what meds you take and what your current symptoms are, etc. There are many roads to remission. The "easy" one is using RX meds and those people don't post here because they have solved their problem. This forum is for people who haven't gotten remission and have to keep trying different things.

Diet mod. is hard, very very hard in the beginning. The world of food is filled with things my gut hates and I had to change the way I eat. But my current diet is very nice (not hard anymore), I even get to have dessert haha, it's just very different than the Standard American Diet (SAD).
Posted 6/20/2015 10:24 AM (GMT -5)
How did you come to zero in on your successful diet... lots of trial and error? How long were you on your present diet before you started to see significant improvement in your symptoms?
Posted 6/20/2015 10:52 AM (GMT -5)
Many people have tried various diets and given them a serious trial and not seen any results. Others have had success with diets. If you are going to seriously try a diet though you need to give it more than a week. As imagardner said, even most meds don't work that quickly. My personal opinion is to design your own diet unique to you as there is no such thing as a UC diet that works in many. If there was then there wouldn't be umteen million different diets that are tried, we would just label SCD (or whatever) as the UC diet and tell everyone to do that one. I personally wouldn't give any diet more than four weeks.
Posted 6/20/2015 2:16 PM (GMT -5)
How did you come to zero in on your successful diet... lots of trial and error? How long were you on your present diet before you started to see significant improvement in your symptoms?

Long process of keeping notes about foods/drinks and and yes trial/error. Improvement was slow (months and months) but I could always see some progress which helped me to stick to it. It's very confusing in the beginning trying to figure things out when your gut is upset with everything.

Resistant starch turned out to be a big help (search for many threads/discussions on it) and white potatoes are great for my gut. Fiberous anything is not great.

Hope you can figure out what your gut can handle. Just remember that removing a food does not have to be "forever", just until your gut gets less inflamed and healthier. I am a food lover and removing a lot of my favorite foods was hard. But I'm much happier today than I was 5 years ago.
Posted 6/20/2015 2:51 PM (GMT -5)
I started out with SCD which seemed to show beneficial results (not perfect but noticeable improvement) in 2 weeks. BUT I seemed to stall on it and then revert to my customary low simmer. I am now trying AIP and it's produced huge improvements in a short space of time. Will see if it stops working after a few weeks as well. I do intend with AIP to reintroduce select foods carefully in a few weeks as it might be overly restrictive. I am also taking my standard meds of the last 8 years (Aza and balsalazide) and have added in tumeric, ALA, butyrate and vit D. Early days but doing very well.
Posted 6/20/2015 3:39 PM (GMT -5)
nope, no luck at all with diet.
Posted 6/20/2015 8:04 PM (GMT -5)
No luck with diet helping my uc. It doesn't work for everyone, or else it'd be a standard, defacto treatment for all uc patients.
Posted 6/20/2015 9:09 PM (GMT -5)
During a long six-year flare I tried every diet I heard of, usually about three months for each regimen. I was unable to tell that what I ate made a bit of difference in my UC. Some people find relief through diet, others simply don't.
Posted 6/20/2015 9:38 PM (GMT -5)
hi linc here we had great success with food use against ULCERATIVE COLITIS BUT NEVER EVER CALLED WHAT WE DID A DIET. its just the foods you go eat and the foods you avoid that wins the day against uc. we have one med left now, but regularly takes a number of supplements probiotics and the like to combat uc...all you do is to find the foods that suit you nd get rid of the foods that don't. we labored through the medicalkiasma until we just knew it was not working and almost 4 years latyer tried food in sheer desperation. it takes about eight months or more to work to find the foods and supplements that are uc friendly we got the foods from the w eb...we also went dairy food free gluten free and a lot more free.... you should go on the web and find foods that are good for you from other uc people and try them some wo remember rk some don't keep the iones that work get rid of the ones that don't ...always look at the success that uc people have with a food or a supplement and then you try it in the end you slowly build up a pantry o foods to eat and a huge list of ones ton avoid...its not a diet like a dietician would propose your gut tells you what to eat...supplements do work like aloe vera and many others use these and again your body will soon tell you what suits you...it is not easy..slow and steady wins the race your body always tells you if its the wrong food
Posted 6/20/2015 10:31 PM (GMT -5)
My current flare is taking a little longer than usual I'm at over three months. I'm going to try gluten-free and see if anything happens. I'm tapering pred now at 10 mg a day. I've never really tried to modify my diet through my 17 glorious years of this wonderful disease. I did eliminate eggs from my diet a year and a half ago and figured that helped because I had my longest remission at 2 years and 4 months. It's really hard on gluten free though because I love beer, honey buns, and bread.
Posted 6/21/2015 7:10 AM (GMT -5)
I'd eliminate a suspect food, give it 3-4 weeks, look for changes in uc symptoms during that timeframe, and then reintroduce suspect food and look for a reaction. It's a slow, evidence-based process. Try not to change more than one thing at-a-time, as it's important to know what exactly is working or not. If you've got lots of time, and your uc symptoms aren't particularly bad then it is worth a shot. Results aren't guaranteed, I never found improvements. It's just so darn individual.
Posted 6/21/2015 8:56 AM (GMT -5)
It's often recommended actually to take the opposite approach and start with a week of a very restrictive diet (turkey, carrots, pears, stock) and introduce new foods to that every other day or so. If have problems with multiple food items just eliminating one will not show any improvements.
Posted 6/21/2015 10:03 AM (GMT -5)

FSLondon said...
It's often recommended actually to take the opposite approach and start with a week of a very restrictive diet (turkey, carrots, pears, stock) and introduce new foods to that every other day or so. If have problems with multiple food items just eliminating one will not show any improvements.

I agree with this approach because that's what worked for me. I had many food intolerances and removing just one was not sufficient. Besides doing that I also during some periods used IF-intermittent fasting which relieved my gut from a lot of work.

But introducing foods one by one, and taking a week or more to see if that food is a problem takes a loooong time because I had so many foods to test. And yes it turned out many of those foods were a problem.

But even figuring out 1 or 2 or 3 foods to eliminate can bring success. Never think of this as "all or nothing" because any improvement is a good thing.
Posted 6/21/2015 1:03 PM (GMT -5)
Yes, diet makes all the difference. How can we heal the GI without talking about diet? It's your digestive system!

I'm doing a modified GAPS diet right now. None of the proscribed diets out there 100% work for me. There's always aspects that cause me problems, and that's how it's going to be for a lot of people. The education that accompanies the GAPS diet informed me the most of anything so far, so I appreciate it for that. You need to listen to your body and compile your own list of safe goods. If anything is iffy, even just slightly, then ditch it for the time being.

Most diet protocols require several weeks before you know if it's working or not, but I'll say that if you eat something aggravating you'll know right away. Trying a million different things but not really sticking to any of them is not going to tell you what's working. And believe me, I'm the master at doing that!... because I'm too darn impatient.

It's not just a matter of avoiding foods, but including foods that heal the gut lining. For myself, I'm finding that fatty bone broths made into hearty veggie stews and then pureed have been working well.

If nothing is working for you, then you should go back to basics. Liquid diet is best, to be honest. You don't need to do it for long, just a couple of weeks. Liquids provide maximum absorbancy, and if you use the right ingredients the liquid will sooth and heal the bowel. Consider smoothies, and blending your soups and stews. I know the thought of it might sound gross but it's actually fine... the taste doesn't change.

Also, eating more frequently and in less quantity is important. For instance, if you eat pureed soup, have no more than 8oz at a time, then wait a while before having more. Eating larger quantities more often will overwhelm the bowel and can cause problems. That's been my experience anyway.

The tl;dr version:
- make your own list of safe foods
- smaller portions more often
- liquifying food increases absorption

Post Edited (Chiron) : 6/21/2015 12:07:17 PM (GMT-6)

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