Hi Everyone, I am new here. Just wanted to tell my story quickly. I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease in 2009. I suffered with it for a year before I went in for help because I didn't have health insurance.(Husband is self employed and insurance was too expensive for us at the time) But when I got diagnosed, I didn't want to believe it. I also didn't want to take the drugs. I figured that there had to be some natural way to make it go away. So I tried taking lots of probiotics every day. I would swallow like 10-15 pills at every meal. Well, it helped very slightly, but not much. I also tried eating yogurt for the probiotics, and that didn't help. I tried avoiding dairy, but that didn't help either. It seemed like nothing that I did helped. Just when I was about to give up and go on the drugs, I happened to buy some store bought kefir. I drank that, and the whole night I had a lot of gas. (sorry if TMI) I was in pain the whole night because of that, but the next day I didn't have diarrhea one time! And that was saying something because I usually had to go 10-15 times a day or so. So I looked at the empty kefir bottle to find out what was in it. It turns out that it had something called Inulin in it. It is a soluble fiber that the beneficial bacteria in our guts love to eat. It is actually called a prebiotic, because it feeds the beneficial bacteria that are already inside of us, as opposed to a probiotic which attempts to put bacteria into us by pills. ( I did a lot of reading about it) Inulin is in beans(which is why they are the magical fruit and make us toot they get it from Jerusalem artichoke and refine it out into a white powder, and sell it as a supplement. (I don't sell it, I just buy it) It isn't an irritating fiber to our intestines, like veggie cellulose is, because it dissolves in water. If you have ever wondered why babies are so gassy when all they drink is milk, it's because there is a type of soluble fiber in breast milk that is called trans galacto oligo saccharides, look it up on Wikipedia....lots of interesting info on it there. I won't include it here. But I didn't take GOS-it's shortened name. I took FOS(fructooligosaccharides) that's what Inulin is. The reason I am posting this is because I feel guilty that I am back to normal and there are people who are really suffering with Crohns. I feel that I should take the time to at least tell people what helped me. IF they try it and it helps them, then I will be happy. I am afraid that I sound like someone who is trying to sell a product...but I am not. A number of different companies sell Inulin, and as far as I know, the quality is about the same. I don't recommend any one company over the other. Or a person could eat beans to get the same effect-lentils have the most fiber of all the beans. One warning for anyone who might want to try it. Inulin is so good at firming up the stool, that for someone who has had an inflamed colon for a long time-they might have strictures-which are very narrowed parts of the intestine. (I actually had this, at my colonoscopy I had a stricture right at the terminal ileum of 7mm.) The doctor couldn't even get his instrument in there to get a biopsy of the small intestine) anyway, taking a lot of Inulin at once may produce stool that is too big to fit through the stricture, causing the person to have a blockage. So it would serve the person well to take a very small dose at first, like 1/2 a gram per day, and gradually increase it. The inulin will actually soothe the irritation because it is food for bifido bacteria(the good kind) they digest it and produce butyrate and gas as waste, and butyrate is actually the preferred food for our colonocytes.(colon cells) I was able to not go on medication, and within 3 months at 8 gram per day I was having one normal stool per day. And I could eat anything I wanted-except artificial sweeteners. They all upset my stomach. I waited for 3 years to see if it continued working before I recommended it to anyone, and so far so good. I have been able to lower my dose to a tsp every other day ( I mix it with hot water or tea and drink it). I am kind of afraid to stop taking it all together because I am afraid the Crohn's will come back, but I have forgotten it for a couple of days with no ill effects.
Well, I hope my post doesn't get deleted because someone thinks I am a spammer. I am a real person who this happened to, and hopefully this will help other people, too. I even recommended this to my cousin who had chronic diarrhea because she had her gallbladder removed, and it helped her too. But she didn't need half as much as I did to become regular again, and she had been having diarrhea for 6 years, and the doctors told her that there wasn't anything they could do for her! So even though doctors are smart, they don't know everything. Well thanks for reading my post, and take care.
Well, I hope my post doesn't get deleted because someone thinks I am a spammer. I am a real person who this happened to, and hopefully this will help other people, too. I even recommended this to my cousin who had chronic diarrhea because she had her gallbladder removed, and it helped her too. But she didn't need half as much as I did to become regular again, and she had been having diarrhea for 6 years, and the doctors told her that there wasn't anything they could do for her! So even though doctors are smart, they don't know everything. Well thanks for reading my post, and take care.