Ulcerative Colits & Whole30

[ElizabethRose]

Hi everyone!

I'm looking for some advice for battling ulcerative colitis and starting the Whole30.

In 2013, I attempted and successfully completed my first Whole30. It was truly a life changing experience and overall I felt so much better. I used to even experience a lot of upper GI issues that got exponentially better after following a Whole30 lifestyle. So from then on I loosely followed a Whole30/Paleo lifestyle until I started to become sick in June of this year with intense lower GI symptoms. By the beginning of August, I was officially diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis that isn't appropriately responding to normal forms of treatment. Although, things seem to be slowly improving, if things do not continue to improve then I will have to start a more aggressive form of treatment. Given how much I've had to go through this past month to try to achieve remission and considering how much farther I have to go in order to feel normal again, I'm starting to feel hopeless that things will truly improve. My last bit of hope is that if I try the Whole30 again, it will give my body the extra boost that it might need to get closer to being in remission. As of right now, my only lingering symptoms are lower abdominal pain (ranging from constant cramping to sharp acute pain), complete lack of appetite, and significantly decreased energy level.

Any advice or anyone who's maybe gone through something similar?

E

[littleg]

I posted something like this the other day - I don't have UC, but I'm a pediatric nurse who takes care of new-diagnosis kids who do.  And I'd love to find some success stories to share with their parents that diet interventions can make a difference.  

 

Have you looked into the SCD diet at all?  That is more specifically for IBD.  I have IBS and found their homemade yogurt (you must make it with very specific strains of bacteria - for a 24 hr ferment) to be incredibly useful for me when I had a flare about 1.5 years ago.  In listening to some podcasts lately with "gut" experts the one thing that comes up time and time again is gut dysbiosis and the importance of repopulating it with good bacteria.  And gelatin - that comes up a lot too

 

Good luck!  I hope that you find dietary changes can make a difference - those treatments... I can see why you'd want to try something else first

[Rocko25]

ElizabethRose- 

I am in the exact same position as you. I tried a Whole30 a couple of years ago with an overall increase in energy and decrease in GI symptoms. Ive played with diet on/off since then. Then, a couple of months ago, my GI symptoms became more severe and I was just diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. At this point, I'm trying to figure out what to do with this new diagnosis. Should I do another Whole30 because it made me feel better before? My issue is that the research for ulcerative colitis prevention and remission supports the use of carbohydrates and a low protein diet. Did anybody else see this research? I'm just confused.

Did you ever try doing another Whole30 again?