Having followed an elimination diet and discovered all the things you can eat and not eat, having spent a couple of years eating healthily and not having had a flare-up nor symptoms of your illness, it is soooooo very easy to slide down the slippery road of temptation and bite by bite, eat foods you shouldn’t eat. The typical feeling is “it´s just a treat; just the one won´t do me any harm” and before you know it you are eating huge amounts of foods that are in effect totally poisonous to your body and sooner or later you fall ill again because you have provoked a flare up! The terrible symptoms of bloody stools and weight loss, tiredness and bad moods return, and to resolve all this discomfort you have to be put on cortisone medication again!
Speaking from experience, this can happen and I hope my advice to you about strong will power and how to resist eating what you shouldn´t will not fall on deaf ears. Every time you have a flare up and your intestines ulcerate they DO NOT RECOVER! Having bled and formed scar tissue your intestines cannot regenerate new tissue and eradicate the scars, they stay forever and the less you take care of your intestines the more restricted they will become and this will eventually lead to you having to be operated on, which is totally avoidable! So please stick to your personal diets, and be adventurous with your recipes, just because you cannot eat certain foods, this does not mean your meals have to boring and bland forever, you can add flavour to dishes with many natural alternatives and still remain healthy. Take a look at the links below to Recipes and even Restaurants that cater for your dietary requirements.
LINKS
Recipes:
http://www.cookingforceliacscolitiscrohnsandibs.com/index.php
http://www.the-gluten-free-chef.com/gluten-free-recipes.html
http://www.the-gluten-free-chef.com/gluten-free-food-list.html
Restaurants:
http://www.london-eating.co.uk/occasions/gluten-free.asp
http://www.celiachandbook.com/uk.html
http://www.foodforfriends.com/
http://www.gluten-free-onthego.com/
http://cliffblog.eadv.co.uk/blog/_archives/2008/3/4/3559636.html
In my next post I will be talking about different types of diets and how what we eat makes us who we are. Did you know that if you have Crohn´s you are more likely to suffer from neck and back ache problems?? If you control what you eat you can reduce, or eradicate not only your symptoms from Crohn’s or Colitis, but also the neck and back aches you suffer from.
viernes, 23 de enero de 2009
Diet, Diet, Diet!
Following my diagnosis of Crohn´s in Paris, I was put on an elimination diet. After discovering what was causing my symptoms of bloody mucous stools, diarrhoea and drastic weight loss; I firstly had to follow a treatment of anti-inflammatories and steroids to quickly halt the bleeding and bring me back to health in the short term. Subsequently, to make sure the symptoms stopped in the long term, it was necessary for me make drastic lifestyle changes. This was imperative in order to be able to manage my illness on a daily basis without having to resort to taking more steroids and to avoid further hospitalisation.
A Chron’s sufferer´s digestive system is very delicate and cannot tolerate certain foods. To discover what I would be able to continue eating in the future without causing my intestines any more harm, the only option was to follow an elimination diet for several months. This was my only option to understand how my handicapped digestive system works and how to keep it well oiled in future.
So what´s an elimination diet?
An elimination diet involves totally removing the majority of what you would normally eat on a daily basis and sticking to a very bland diet, whilst slowly reintroducing a different type of food on a weekly basis. Each time a new type of food is introduced, the digestive reactions provoked indicate if you can tolerate that food stuff or not and whether you should include it or eliminate it from your daily diet in the future.
My elimination diet consisted of fish or white meat (mainly chicken or turkey) steamed or grilled, accompanied by boiled or steamed potatoes, white rice or pasta for several weeks. As I followed this bland diet, I slowly began to introduce different ingredients to my meals and after months of tests and trials, I finally knew which foods caused my gut the most irritation.
Not being able to eat a bowl of your favourite ice cream or munch on a chocolate digestive biscuit, or even eat something much more natural and healthy, like an apple, whenever you feel like it, is horrible. But in spite of how frustrating it is being on an elimination diet and how depressing it can be, I highly recommend trying it. The elimination process gives great results and a lot of help to those (recently) diagnosed with Chron´s or Colitis, and to those who are not sure what they should or should not eat. Elimination diets are also indispensable when a Chron´s sufferer is experiencing a flare-up, as it is essential not to aggravate a flare-up and cause any extra damage to the intestinal wall, because all damage caused to the intestinal lining is totally irreversible! Steroids and anti-inflammatories can stop symptoms in the short-term, however, they cannot repair, nor cure the scar tissue digestive ulcerations cause in the digestive tract.
There are lots of studies about what causes the symptoms in Crohn´s and Colitis, there are theories about lactose and gluten intolerance being the main causes, however, there is nothing better than knowing what affects you personally and how to deal with it, as everyone is different. Although I have Chron´s disease, I can eat garlic and onions and raw vegetables, and I love salads. However, this doesn’t mean that another person with Chron´s and the same symptoms as I have, will be able to eat the same foods.
A good book to read is Living with Crohn’s Disease by Dr Joan Gomez, which looks at Crohn’s disease and the related condition, ulcerative colitis. It explains what they are, who suffers from them, diagnosis, treatments (including side effects), day-to-day management and self help. The book helps you plan your own diet and contains examples of diets including an elimination diet.
A Chron’s sufferer´s digestive system is very delicate and cannot tolerate certain foods. To discover what I would be able to continue eating in the future without causing my intestines any more harm, the only option was to follow an elimination diet for several months. This was my only option to understand how my handicapped digestive system works and how to keep it well oiled in future.
So what´s an elimination diet?
An elimination diet involves totally removing the majority of what you would normally eat on a daily basis and sticking to a very bland diet, whilst slowly reintroducing a different type of food on a weekly basis. Each time a new type of food is introduced, the digestive reactions provoked indicate if you can tolerate that food stuff or not and whether you should include it or eliminate it from your daily diet in the future.
My elimination diet consisted of fish or white meat (mainly chicken or turkey) steamed or grilled, accompanied by boiled or steamed potatoes, white rice or pasta for several weeks. As I followed this bland diet, I slowly began to introduce different ingredients to my meals and after months of tests and trials, I finally knew which foods caused my gut the most irritation.
Not being able to eat a bowl of your favourite ice cream or munch on a chocolate digestive biscuit, or even eat something much more natural and healthy, like an apple, whenever you feel like it, is horrible. But in spite of how frustrating it is being on an elimination diet and how depressing it can be, I highly recommend trying it. The elimination process gives great results and a lot of help to those (recently) diagnosed with Chron´s or Colitis, and to those who are not sure what they should or should not eat. Elimination diets are also indispensable when a Chron´s sufferer is experiencing a flare-up, as it is essential not to aggravate a flare-up and cause any extra damage to the intestinal wall, because all damage caused to the intestinal lining is totally irreversible! Steroids and anti-inflammatories can stop symptoms in the short-term, however, they cannot repair, nor cure the scar tissue digestive ulcerations cause in the digestive tract.
There are lots of studies about what causes the symptoms in Crohn´s and Colitis, there are theories about lactose and gluten intolerance being the main causes, however, there is nothing better than knowing what affects you personally and how to deal with it, as everyone is different. Although I have Chron´s disease, I can eat garlic and onions and raw vegetables, and I love salads. However, this doesn’t mean that another person with Chron´s and the same symptoms as I have, will be able to eat the same foods.
A good book to read is Living with Crohn’s Disease by Dr Joan Gomez, which looks at Crohn’s disease and the related condition, ulcerative colitis. It explains what they are, who suffers from them, diagnosis, treatments (including side effects), day-to-day management and self help. The book helps you plan your own diet and contains examples of diets including an elimination diet.
Diary of a Crohn´s Sufferer
“La Maladie de Crohn”
My name is Mary and I was diagnosed with Crohn´s disease in November 2000. I was 21 and studying at University in Paris when i fell ill. I was in a foreign country, surrounded by people speaking a foreign language with no family near by to depend on and I quite honestly thought that my tummy upsets and diarrhoea were due to the culture change, exaggerated socialising and all the rich French food I was tasting. However, weeks went by and the diarrhoea and the belly ache still wouldn’t go away no matter what i took.
I started to loose blood, dramatically loose weight and needed to sleep more and more, I felt exhausted on a daily basis without doing anything more energetic than hop on the metro to classes and i realised there was something seriously wrong! In Paris, I couldn’t just pop to my local GP to get advice. So, I wrote down all my symptoms in French with the help of my dictionary and took myself off to the nearest Accident and Emergency, not knowing what they would find and thinking that I had just caught some awful bug. I hoped that they would give me some medication and send me home to my flat to recuperate for a few days.
Luckily in France the social security hospitals are out of this world, i was attended to straight away and in less than 24 hours, to my astonishment, i was admitted to hospital being informed that they suspected a serious digestive problem!! Seven days later, after a variety of endoscopies, colonoscopies and barium meal tests, i was officially diagnosed with Crohn´s disease and IBS. I was put on a 3 month treatment of steroids and anti-inflammatories and given a special diet to follow and sent home to England to recover. Being a young, energetic student, used to eating and drinking anything i wanted, it came as a blow to me to discover I was now to be on a 3 month course of strong medication that gave me a horrible list of side effects and not allowed to eat any of the foods I love.
My name is Mary and I was diagnosed with Crohn´s disease in November 2000. I was 21 and studying at University in Paris when i fell ill. I was in a foreign country, surrounded by people speaking a foreign language with no family near by to depend on and I quite honestly thought that my tummy upsets and diarrhoea were due to the culture change, exaggerated socialising and all the rich French food I was tasting. However, weeks went by and the diarrhoea and the belly ache still wouldn’t go away no matter what i took.
I started to loose blood, dramatically loose weight and needed to sleep more and more, I felt exhausted on a daily basis without doing anything more energetic than hop on the metro to classes and i realised there was something seriously wrong! In Paris, I couldn’t just pop to my local GP to get advice. So, I wrote down all my symptoms in French with the help of my dictionary and took myself off to the nearest Accident and Emergency, not knowing what they would find and thinking that I had just caught some awful bug. I hoped that they would give me some medication and send me home to my flat to recuperate for a few days.
Luckily in France the social security hospitals are out of this world, i was attended to straight away and in less than 24 hours, to my astonishment, i was admitted to hospital being informed that they suspected a serious digestive problem!! Seven days later, after a variety of endoscopies, colonoscopies and barium meal tests, i was officially diagnosed with Crohn´s disease and IBS. I was put on a 3 month treatment of steroids and anti-inflammatories and given a special diet to follow and sent home to England to recover. Being a young, energetic student, used to eating and drinking anything i wanted, it came as a blow to me to discover I was now to be on a 3 month course of strong medication that gave me a horrible list of side effects and not allowed to eat any of the foods I love.
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