Please read? (Need of food plannings)

[Jinta]

I'm not sure if this belongs here so please pardon me, I'm a newbie here and just wanted some help from people with crohn's.

I have a very lovely boyfriend with crohn's, and all his life he's been eating food that he isn't suppose to. No one in his life has ever told him not to eat this and that. He's been getting worse, a bit acidic and has been coughing up a bit of blood and it has got me worried sickly. He can't afford to go to the hospital at the moment because he's low on cash. And obviously if I did have money I would pay for his visit, but I can't either.

All I am asking is for food plans that I can get him into. Like, any basic food that he is allowed to eat and I'll set a recipe utilizing the foods he can eat, etc.

Any prayers and support for his health is sincerely appreciated. Thank you so much for reading.

 

[Sascot]

Diet is such an individual thing. There will probably be lots of better advice than mine as our GI pretty much says let my son eat anything.
As a general rule too much fibre is bad - hard for the gut to digest. I give my son white bread instead of brown, cook all veg, peel all fruit and keep food reasonably plain. We definitely avoid popcorn, seeds, nuts and fizzy juice. I tend to try avoid lots of preservatives and sweeteners. Chicken and plain fish is good. Plain pasta or potato too.
Good luck hope it helps.

 

[Cookie]

As Sascot mentioned, it's hard to say because it is such an individual thing. But usually, by controlling his diet you can one of two things:
Minimize inflammation by figuring out which foods he is sensitive to. Most commonly this can be dairy, gluten, sugar or other carbohydrates. It takes some trial and error and often leads to a very restrictive diet and eating just a little bit of these things can have a big impact. This is a tough route to take and not everyone has success in finding their culprits.

The other thing you can do is to try in minimize the irritation of an already inflamed digestive tract by eating low residue foods. (Google low residue diet). Foods that are not easily digested such as nuts, seeds, popcorn, berries, beans, tomato skins, etc. can irritate the walls of the gut as they pass through causing a lot of pain. The easiest thing to do is to remove these types of food from your diet. It will not usually help to prevent a flare, but can definitely help to minimize the pain when he is having one.

Hope this helps a little. Kudos to you for trying to help him!

 

[hugh]

While i agree that low residue is good it is only a maintenance diet for times when food is painful (like during a flare).
The reason is that the intestine is so sore (ulcerated, bleeding, infected etc) that any roughage or fibre is painful.

Unfortunately most low residue diets recommend absolute **** (highly processed 'food-like products'). It is possible to follow a low residue diet based on real foods[1]

A diet that i recommend investigating is called "the Perfect Health Diet"[2]. It is a variation of paleo but allows (and even recommends) carbs from safe sources (paleo carbs[3] and white rice) This makes it a lot easier and cheaper to follow than Paleo or SCD. He has also posted a very interesting theory on the origin and progression of Gut disease that i recommend you read to aid your understanding of why diet matters and how it can help[2]

After a while (once some healing has occurred) he will be in a better position to re-evaluate his diet and make it stricter if he feels there are more improvements to be made or add more foods (keeping to paleo/PHD principles) if he feels well enough.

The most common mistakes i see when people are on the diet (any of them PHD,pale,SCD,GAPS) are
a/ Eating food that is not allowed -not being strict/cheating/not reading labels.
b/ Eating food that is not allowed -feeling better after a time on the diet and celebrating with ....... **** food

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/balanced-bites-blog-talk-radio/id461802297
Go down to "#43 - FODMAPs, AGEs, and....." listen from 8:50 t0 19:46
(Not the 43rd listing, but episode #43)
there's a whole heap of 'like' and 'so' and 'you know' and it's all a bit 'valley girl' but all good information.

"So, just you know, kind of keep that in mind, and if she wants to eat a lot of sweet potatoes and fish instead of, you know, salads, things like that, that’s fine..............There’s a huge variety of foods that are whole, real foods, so we just don’t need to be pigeon-holed to, you know, steak and kale, for example. So, just you know, kind of keep that in mind,"

"And there’s just nothing more rewarding than shifting that mindset from, "oh I already stopped eating so many foods" to "hell, yeah, I can control my destiny and I’m not a slave to some like chewable, swallowable, gut irritating, inflammatory nutrient-poor non-optimal food that hurts me""
Podcast Episode #43: Low residue diet, weight gain, cooking methods
http://balancedbites.com/2012/06/po...residue-diet-weight-gain-cooking-methods.html
(the transcript is still on the page but the only link that worked for me is the i-tunes one)

[2] Bowel Disorders, Part I: About Gut Disease (1 of 4, read them all)
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/07/ulcerative-colitis-a-devastating-gut-disease/

[3] guide to: dense sources of paleo carbs
http://www.balancedbites.com/PDFs/BOOK_EXTRAS/PracticalPaleo_GuidetoPaleoCarbs.pdf

 

[Jinta]

Thank you guys for helping me, I sincerely appreciate it. I will keep this thread bookmarked and in mind. I sincerely appreciate it a ton, thanks once again!