The #1 thing that you need to know is that you cannot eat your way into or out of any inflammatory bowel condition. It’s not about food. You could eat the worst possible diet and it would not give you IBS. The same can be said about eating only organic food — that will not heal your Colitis or Crohn’s.
But YES, eating a certain way can make your life less miserable until you get this problem fixed.
It is very, very simple. Just 2 things you need to do.
The 1st rule of eating when you have an IBD is to eat a low fiber diet. This means no raw fruit, no raw vegs, no nuts, no seeds and no corn. Eating this way is temporary and doing just this can reduce your symptoms by 50%. But don’t fool yourself by thinking that you are healed. You aren’t. You just are not aggravating the source of the symptoms as much.
The 2nd rule is to temporarily avoid any other foods that you are absolutely sure to aggravate your problems. I emphasize this because almost all of you are juggling foods based on what you have seen online or what a friend has told you worked for them. That is just theory. The only thing that matters is how your body reacts to any foods. Otherwise you are unnecessarily denying yourself foods that you could be enjoying. Other than the fibrous foods the most common to cause problems are dairy, wheat and soy. This is because they are complex foods and require more stomach acids to digest. One of the secrets of treating IBD is knowing that in addition to fiber aggravating the bowel tissue it is your acids that actually eat-erode the bowel wall.
That’s it. There is no more to it. The real diet for inflammatory bowel conditions is not what to eat but what not to eat and this is temporary.
Remember that it is not really about food – you cannot eat your way into or out of IBD. But you can make it a more comfortable ride.
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