IBD
Diet and IBD
December 13, 2021
in IBD
I'm just curious if any of you all follow a specific diet to help manage symptoms. Before my colectomy, I had tried the low FOD-MaP diet, briefly, and did the specific carbohydrate diet for 2 1/2 years. I found limiting my diet made me feel better at first, but after a while things just went back to the way they were.
Have you identified trigger foods or found a diet that helps you feel better?
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I never could do diets or eliminating foods. Every day was different for me. One day I could eat pizza but another I’d be rolling in bed with stomach pains & diarrhea. I don’t eat a lot. Me & food have a love hate relationship.
When I decided to stop the SCD diet, I thought, well, I'm in pain, going to the bathroom constantly, and pooping in my pants, how much worse could it be? At least if I feel bad, I can enjoy pizza and ice cream and beer. I ate pizza that day and my symptoms didn't get worse.
When I was a preteen, we noticed I had what we thought was a "sensitive stomach" and that certain foods seemed to make me feel worse. So I cut all of the way back to Italian bread and chicken broth (my safest foods), and then kept a food journal and figured out which foods were fine for me and which ones weren't. It was a very long and slow and agonizing process, but I started to notice trends. Foods that are more likely to be problematic for me are greasy, fried, or high in fat, red meat, melons, and dairy.
But I also learned that it isn't as simple as being able to eat something or not being able to eat it. Just because pizza is more likely to make me feel unwell doesn't mean that I can never have it. I ended up coming up with a traffic light system for foods to describe where things stood for me. Red foods were the ones that almost always made me feel ill, yellow foods would make me feel sick if I was already feeling unwell but would be fine otherwise, and green foods were safe foods that I could eat no matter how I felt. It's obviously a spectrum. There are some foods that are maybe more of a yellow-green or orange, but the point was that I was able to communicate as a 12-year-old how different foods made me feel.
I also learned how to think about my meals in a way that allowed me to eat more variety safely. If I ate a meal of nothing but yellow to red foods, I was almost guaranteed to feel unwell. However, if I had a meal that was mostly composed of my safe foods, then I could integrate something like pizza just fine. It allowed me to avoid completing eliminating my favorites.
Diets can be a great tool to help people figure out which foods make their symptoms worse, but I also think it's really important for people to recognize that every single one of us is unique, and that's the inherent problem with those diets. Our bodies are unique and what works for one person won't work for another. Additionally, diets only help control symptoms. They don't control the disease. So while they might make things easier to bear, they aren't a cure-all. You can eat your safest foods for months and still feel horribly unwell (at least with IBD).
Care Partner of Adult
What everyone has said about diet and how different we are as individuals is all true. However, we all need to accept the fact (proven by science) that the gut is the second brain of our systems. Just like a machine, if you put the wrong fuel in, the mechanics will eventually be affected. We are human machines designed for the appropriate fuel, and figuring out what that "good" fuel is for you is crucial to gut and mental health (yes, they are directly connected).
Definitely appreciate that point! What we eat is important. Like you say, it's fuel for our bodies and minds, so eating nutritious food is an important piece of the puzzle.
I think that could also be where food preparation comes in, too. Sometimes, the way we prepare foods changes how our body processes them. For example, it can be easier to eat cooked fruits and veggies vs raw ones. That distinction is important because that can enable patients to eat healthy food without it causing uncomfortable symptoms.
Patient
I think all these comments prove why so many IBD patients have really complicated relationships with food. Not being able to tolerate fuel for your body is really complicated.
When I was really sick, I tried all the diets. Gluten Free. Dairy Free. Vegetarian. Nothing relieved any symptoms and everything still caused pain. Similarly to other comments, I also just gave up and ate whatever I wanted because everything felt terrible, so it might as well taste good.
Once I had surgery and was able to tolerate food a lot better, I found I had new sensitivities with my jpouch, but those also got better over time. Now I'm really fortunate because I'm able to tolerate almost everything. There are still things that don't go through as well, but nothing like how it used to be.
THIS! I used to facilitate a CCF support group and new people would come in asking what they could and couldn't eat. A lot of people think what works for them is what works for everyone. That couldn't be farther from the truth. IBD is so idiosyncratic. People really need to figure out what works for them. It's hard to accept that there is a lot that's unknown, but if we pay attention, we can figure out somethings that can work for us as individuals.