Putting Ulcerative Colitis Into Remission
Hello Everyone. I hope that you are well. This post comes out on Christmas Day, and I hope everyone is having a stress-free, happy time. It can be challenging when you have health conditions and need to be near a bathroom or somewhere quiet to lie down.
If you have colitis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s, diverticulitis, or any inflammatory and autoimmune condition that causes such discomfort with physical, mental, and emotional challenges, I know exactly how that feels.
You see, I have ulcerative colitis (and hemolytic anemia), and I used to suffer so much with the symptoms, flare-ups, medication, hospital admittances, medical procedures, exhaustion, frustration, stress, juggling family and work life with two young boys, and worried whether I would survive.
I am now in remission, feeling fantastic, and enjoying life, with the best body composition I have ever had, and I cannot remember the last time I had a flare-up.
If you, or anyone you know, has colitis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s, an inflammatory disease, and autoimmune conditions, read on and share. It could very well be the lifeline that you/they need.
Living With Ulcerative Colitis
What Is the Best Management of Ulcerative Colitis?
A Recommended Diet for Ulcerative Colitis
What Is the Best Natural Remedy for Ulcerative Colitis?
Does an Ulcerative Colitis Diet Have to Be Bland?
What Common Thing Can Make Ulcerative Colitis Worse?
What Is Good Comfort Food for Ulcerative Colitis?
Reducing Stress With Ulcerative Colitis
How to Put Ulcerative Colitis Into Remission
Living With Ulcerative Colitis
I took supplements and medication and tried everything that was suggested to me by nutritionists and doctors. I traveled the world seeking help for my autoimmune conditions, going from specialist to specialist, following all of their advice. Nothing helped me get well.
It felt like there were lots of plasters being put on lots of cracks to cover the symptoms up, but no healing was going on. Nothing was healing the cause of the problem, and some treatment was contributing to the problem.
In a way, what saved me was the fact that my body wasn’t responding to medical treatment, and I ended up at one point being kept alive with weekly blood transfusions.
I was so overwhelmed and almost wanted to give up! I had no choice but to find a solution to this, which I could apply to my daily life as a busy Mother of two young boys.
This is what led me to start researching.
It is understandable people are not getting their symptoms under control, despite taking on specialist advice for their ulcerative colitis, colitis, Crohn’s, and so on. You are given medication and supplements and told to watch your diet and keep up with tests and procedures.
You may be given a supplement for this and something for that, and the problem is, if you already have poor gut health, these will only exacerbate the issues, adding to a more unbalanced gut microbiota, which then leads to more inflammation in the body, which leads to more flare-ups.
Coping with ulcerative colitis can be exhausting. There are physical, social, financial, and emotional complexities that may be running alongside your inflammatory condition.
Dealing emotionally with ulcerative colitis symptoms is challenging, and not everyone understands what you are going through. The impacts on relationships can be challenging.
You could very well be dealing with bone and joint issues like arthritis, which presents itself in the cooler months, which throw extra challenges at you. I developed hemolytic anemia.
What Is the Best Management of Ulcerative Colitis?
The other issue is that you may have excellent care and doctors around you, but they cannot think for you, eat for you, exercise for you or follow you around and advise you.
Finding resources to help you reduce stress, reduce ulcerative colitis symptoms, heal your body, get good nutrition, and calm your system down is essential, as well as your medication.
Finding a resource of education and helpful tools all in one place to aid in healing ulcerative colitis is tricky, I know. This is why Eat Burn Sleep exists and is available to you 24 hours a day, every day. Your own nutritionist advice, which doctors worldwide recommend and is Bupa-global-approved, is there on your app, following you around, guiding you on what to eat, how to exercise, etc.
I searched everywhere for something like Eat Burn Sleep through the years. I have read anything and everything to heal myself and then qualified at a top London naturopathic nutrition school.
There’s a minefield of information about ulcerative colitis out there. Believe me; if there’s a diet recommended for ulcerative colitis, I will have tried it.
Some, like medication, worked for a brief time, and I was so happy that symptoms died off for a while, but sure enough, they came back with a vengeance. It is so disheartening—one step forward, three steps back.
The unfortunate thing is that once you get one autoimmune or chronic inflammatory disease, the pathways are open, putting you at high risk for developing another disease. Like I did. The toll on your physical and emotional health is intense.
A Recommended Diet for Ulcerative Colitis
A recommended diet for ulcerative colitis on the internet by many medical authorities is the low-residue diet so that your intestines won’t need to work as hard as they usually do. The low-residue diet is very restrictive and does not meet nutritional needs, so it is only for temporary measures under medical supervision.
This restrictive diet plays a role and is often recommended after bowel surgery or preparing for a colonoscopy, for instance. For an extremely limited time only because it won’t reduce inflammation or treat ulcerative colitis and will likely cause more inflammation.
It is no wonder that people with ulcerative colitis often have to seek a nutritionist or dietician because there are so many ulcerative diet recommendations that will cause more inflammation and malnutrition.
If you already have weakness, headaches, anemia, and fatigue due to ulcerative colitis malnutrition, these diets will only contribute to gut dysbiosis, weaker immunity, and less-than-optimum health. This, of course, opens the body up as high risk for other illnesses and conditions.
Nutrition deficiency will present symptoms like mouth ulcers, tingling in your limbs, itchy rashes, feeling drained and weight loss, and the list goes on. If you have Diabetes, a low-residue diet will impact blood sugar and present more challenges, and so on.
Medical professionals worldwide recommend Eat Burn Sleep, as it pertains to clinical practice and has shown excellent results.
What Is the Best Natural Remedy for Ulcerative Colitis?
A nutritionist experienced with ulcerative colitis can provide a detailed gut health nutrition plan with a day-to-day schedule, weekly menu ideas, and hopefully advice on eating out (they are all in the Lifestyle Guide, members).
They will help you recognize your triggers and reduce flare-ups (members can find it here) but also ensure that you get optimum nutrition that will be absorbed.
Gut microbiota contains trillions of bacteria that change continually with lifestyle factors such as food and drink we have, stress, what we breathe, medication, health conditions, and so on.
An alteration of your intestinal microbiome is a major factor in the pathogenesis of a chronic inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract.
This means that promoting good microbiota with the right type and quantity of foods on a regular basis will reduce gut dysbiosis, promote regular immune activity, reduce inflammation and aid the healing and repair of the inflamed, permeable digestive tract and putting ulcerative colitis into remission.
Optimally modulating gut microbial diversity and stability will prevent gut dysbiosis. This will prevent chronic inflammatory diseases. Eating the right balance of good foods is imperative to further allow for nutrition absorption.
Pairing this ulcerative colitis nutrition protocol with an anti-inflammatory lifestyle will help you turn this all around. I assure you! It frees up a lot of thinking time.
When you have any inflammatory condition with flare-ups, you are continually thinking about food and flare-ups: what food will not create a flare-up, or how hungry you are, or trying to work out what was in something that caused a flare-up, how to navigate a day without one, and so on. It truly is exhausting all around.
Check out what others say on the Testimonials page. There are also video testimonials in most of the chronic inflammatory conditions under the Conditions tab.
Does an Ulcerative Colitis Diet Have to Be Bland?
So often, when you want to avoid the issues that come with colitis, Crohn’s, inflammatory bowel disease, and autoimmune diseases, you can stick to very few foods that seem safe and can miss out on nourishment, even when you have your bowels under control.
Fearing an attack at unpredictable times can make you not trust what you are eating, and when you are out and about, traveling and visiting (which is all worried about, I know), what can you eat that won’t cause a flare-up?
All of this worry increases the chances of abdominal pain and needing the bathroom.
Chances are also that your body will not absorb enough nutrients because of the attacks, causing dehydration, fatigue, anemia, and headaches.
You can often be starving, but that is easier to deal with than worrying about navigating public transport, attending a meeting, being social when you need a bathroom, etc.
You may know your triggers and head to a health food store for alternatives, only to find yourself in pain not long after eating. The thing here is that the food industry relies on good marketing. We are leading such busy lives that we are not reading the small print.
What Common Thing Can Make Ulcerative Colitis Worse?
Even with known triggers, you can miss the fact that there are inflammatory ingredients in millions of ‘healthy foods’.
For instance, soy lecithin. It’s practically in everything. Check the packets of the box of healthy crackers that you may have picked up or the healthy cookies. It is linked to gut inflammation, obesity, metabolic disorders, and Diabetes.
People are misled because soy lecithin is also known as a health supplement. The fact is that the soy lecithin that is promoted as a health supplement is supposedly different than the soy lecithin that is processed to be used as a food emulsifier.
Soy lecithin, as a food additive, goes through a multi-step chemical process that strips it of soy and protein, and it involves pesticides, solvents, and goodness knows what else.
Whether the purified soy lecithin supplement is healthy is also under debate since supplement companies are not FDA-regulated. Many supplements contain bulk items that will cause inflammation.
It is good to keep in perspective that shielding ourselves from chemicals would be near impossible, but limiting damage and reducing the amount we are exposed to in foods is possible.
But an ulcerative colitis diet can be the complete opposite of bland. All of the 270+ anti-inflammatory recipes on this platform have been devised by me, using carefully selected anti-inflammatory ingredients that have nutritional properties. I then test them on myself and others before uploading them to the Eat Burn Sleep platform.
The specialized advice section includes extra support, advice, and flare-up protocol for many symptoms, situations, and conditions. Again, all were tried and tested by me and recommended by me.
What Is Good Comfort Food for Ulcerative Colitis?
People are often surprised at the variety of food I eat to keep my ulcerative colitis in remission. They are amazed by my having wine and champagne, a steak now and then, and the cake I eat.
Oftentimes, they are shocked when they see me have a slice of pizza at a party.
When I devised this anti-inflammatory lifestyle to put my inflammatory conditions into remission, I knew that it had to be exciting, and the foods had to be delicious and varied. It could not be in any way boring, restrictive, or bland. That is not how I would ever want to live.
Food is life! It is beautiful. We need it, and we need nutrition for vitality to enjoy our lives.
No compromises!
So, there are now 270+ comfort foods for ulcerative colitis and all inflammatory conditions on this platform. Sweets, savories, snacks, breakfasts, lunches, dinners…
Life is to be enjoyed. It is not about perfection. That is unattainable and unsustainable. It is about damage limitation.
Reducing Stress With Ulcerative Colitis
If you have ulcerative colitis, there is no doubt that your days will be challenging. The debilitating symptoms and the psychological stress that can come alongside your condition is so significant, and what that entails puts extra stress on you.
Ultimately, extra stress is the last thing that you need because stress can trigger a flare-up.
Comfort is what you need and what will calm your system down.
Although there may be some things that you cannot control, there are things that you can control to live your life well with ulcerative colitis and other inflammatory diseases, which may just control the rest.
To have a chronic condition every day is a challenge (let alone the holidays), but I am here to say that you can live life well (if not better) with an inflammatory disease.
How to Put Ulcerative Colitis Into Remission
You may feel even better than before because you may like me; after being so ill for so long, without light at the end of the tunnel, feeling amazing, feels miraculous.
To have a fitter, nourished body without flare-ups, and to be able to plan and enjoy holidays, plan and enjoy every day, and not have compromised time with my boys, family, and friends.
I am grateful that there are things I do now that I didn’t do before that I know help me and others tremendously.
If you have an inflammatory condition, know that you are not alone and that others understand. Reach out to me, my team, and our beautiful community forum. Being part of a community of understanding people, who know precisely what you are going through, is incredibly supportive and inspirational. Your physical, mental and emotional health can be improved immensely.
Alternatively, you could book a 15-min Zoom Call with me in the new year, and we can work through your ulcerative colitis condition in a private consultation or an extensive Bespoke Coaching Session.
I hope that you have a wonderful, stress-free holiday.
One in which you can enjoy some stress-less activities, which will help your condition.
I wish you all comfort, good health, and joy.
