Started the diet/procedure 8/8/07
I started this a few days ago, as a last effort before I choose to get put on prednisone & immunosuppessants. I don't feel the disease is responding well enough to 5-ASA and it seems to just hang on the edge, never quite going into remission. Like others have done, I thought I'd update every now and again with how it's going.
So far I've been strict with the diet, following it carefully. I actually noticed some improvement fairly quickly, but I've experienced abdominal pains/cramps when eating. I'm not used to this quantity of vegetables so perhaps that's part of the reason. If anyone has any suggestions as to how to reduce (or what might be causing) the pain that would be great. I've never really experienced that before while eating.
Today (8/11) was fairly bad unfortunately. Painful cramps and very loose stool, much worse than before starting. Perhaps the shock of so much insoluable fiber is the cause, or maybe it's a specific food. I have tried several new things in the space of a few days (barley, brown rice, sardines, carob, molasses) which probably wasn't too smart. I also skipped the immodium that I usually take every morning because the diet seemed to be helping so well after only a few days. In hindsight, that was probably a mistake.
Probably the hardest part I've found so far is grocery shopping. It's been almost depressing walking past so many appetizing things at the store and knowing I'm in for another day of bland boiled vegetables & brown rice. I will say though that it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would.
I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but all the ingredients were on the diet so I'll throw it out there.. some soy milk, carob powder, and molasses makes a passable chocolate milk drink. Aside from sweetened rice, that's been the only sweet thing I've found so far so I'm hoping it's 'allowed'. Any insight on that would be really helpful too.
Thanks to all of you for posting your experiences & information in this thread, it's been a really good resource, and I'm very hopeful that following it will help get the disease under control.