LDN used with the SCD Diet

[healthy]

HI- My 18 yr old daughter was suddenly diagnosed in dec 2012. It was a shock as she had been fine before but at thanksgiving picked up something and had bad diarrhea. after 3 weeks of this a GI did a scope and said she has CD. Wanted to start her right away on remicade that day! We wanted to do some research and she did 1 week on pred, started the scd diet then tapered off the pred ( 1 week to taper) and decided to try LDN and SCD first.

She is taking LDN and eating the SCD diet. It has been about a month. At first the diet alone produced real results in bowel changes and felt good but now is feeling a little tired again and looser stool. She also has some pain in her stomach after she eats. Unfortunately she is also a senior in high school and exposed daily to all the flu and stomach flu germ out there. sure it is not making it easier on her immune system. she has been getting acupuncture, chiro and even chelation vitamin boosts to help boost her as she goes through this period.

My concern is that since she was feeling so good after the first two weeks we may have introduced the stages too quickly- she really hates squash (the stage one veggie) so we added veggies like broccoli and eggplant. Also she was eating a little peanut butter which we got rid of. we re sure everything is 100% SCD legal. She went back and did a three day intro diet again but is so turned off food now is eating very little.

we have read the books on scd etc but i am just not sure if we are doing it correctly- the foods yes, but the order of intro etc. does anyone have experience with this who can help us? id really appreciate it.

also did others feel kind of bad and run down til the LDN starts? She wants to push through and give it a chance - we figure 2 months is the minimum. any suggestions are welcome. thanks!!

 

[muppet]

It's definitely worthwhile to look into exactly how you're using the SCD guidelines to make sure you're applying them correctly. I can't advise you on that, but many on this forum certainly can, as well as LDN and their experiences with it.

I just want to chime in with my two cents and say that it's also worthwhile to consider that LDN and SCD don't work for everyone, and may not work for your daughter. Your initial success might not have been related to SCD or LDN, but some other variable, maybe a lasting effect of the short steroid course. Crohn's is a highly variable disease and there's just no guarantee that 100% compliance with any given regimen will equal success for any given patient.

That's not to say that you might not have success with this regimen, just that you shouldn't rule out changing to some other regimen like Remicade/Humira, 6MP, Budesonide, etc, if this one doesn't pan out for her. None of us want to use medications with nasty side effects if we can avoid them, but sometimes trying TOO hard to avoid them can do more harm than good.

I wish you and your daughter luck.

 

[David]

Hi Healthy. I'm sorry to hear about your daughter

Did your GI prescribe the LDN or did someone else? Is your GI continuing to monitor her disease state?

For the Specific Carbohydrate Diet questions, I'd suggest heading over to our Diet and Fitness forum. There's lots of people there who are on it and some great threads you can join.

All my best to you and your daughter.