hi there,

i was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for my situation.

i have a uc diagnosis since last march, after four or five months of serious diarrhea. at the time, i started taking sulfasalazine with a mesalamine enema. in the time since then, i've had some ups and downs, and experimented with various levels of sulfasalazine and various foods, including variations on the specific carbohydrate diet.

i have been pregnant since july -- in fact, my weight gain on sulfasalazine to higher than before the diarrhea began enabled my getting pregnant at all. at the time i got pregnant, my symptoms were fairly low-level and decreasing, but i was also still taking sulfasalazine. i had a lot of nausea and vomiting in the first trimester, which i did not have in my first pregnancy (which was before any intestinal issues). i began to suspect the sulfasalazine, and since my bowel-movements were more solid and stable than they had been in a long time, i tapered off the sulfasalazine and eventually stopped it. within a couple of weeks, the nausea utterly disappeared and my capacity to eat was much more equal to my appetite. the irony, though, is that i was gaining weight in the first couple of months, when i was taking sulfa, and i began losing weight in the tapering-off time, up to the present. at 21 weeks, i now weigh slightly less than when i got pregnant.

my problem right now is that my symptoms are increasing. i constricted my diet somewhat, cutting out rice (the only grain i was eating) -- but i have not yet been successful in keeping it under control with diet alone, neither in my experiments before nor in this case. it helped only by slowing down the worsening of symptoms. i tried starting asacol (as it's supposed to have fewer side effects than sulfasalazine), but in two days i was not only vomiting, i had a restless, sleepless night with adrenaline-like rushes. so i stopped the asacol.

now i am coming to loose ends. it's been a few days since then, and the pain and diarrhea are increasing, and my weight is decreasing. it's not very bad now, but i feel that i need to get it in hand quickly. i can't afford either to flare or to lose weight, but it is not clear to me what course can prevent both those things. it almost seems like i was better off taking sulfa and vomiting -- at least i was gaining weight, somehow, then.

i know that dairy, grains, and nuts are bad news for me. more than that, i'm unsure of. for a time, i was trying to add whey shakes to increase my caloric intake, but i feel ill on whey. i've made some scd soup recently as a "safe food" to have around, but it's hard to calorie-load on that. i hate to say it, but i get really bored with so much bland food, and it's really difficult to tell how damaging, if at all, is, say, some very mild indian food, or thai, or even japanese.

after much equivocation and procrastination, i finally started probiotics (natren capsule with 3 species) two days ago. i am also taking cod liver oil and a multivitamin.

i think i will try restarting sulfasalazine, since it's at least a known quantity for me, starting very low dose and titrating for effect and side effect. but i know that it's insufficient by itself, and i don't like depending on it alone in any case. so here is the question: any ideas where to go from here? at one point, flaring like mad and without a diagnosis, i was living on scd soup, ground beef, and ripe bananas -- can that possibly be a good idea during pregnancy? where is the balance of diet?

first of all -- never mind about the probiotics because that's not going to work out for me right now.

rectal meds, i forgot to mention, i am actually doing, 2 days out of 3 (so i don't get constipated) -- but i have pancolitis, so it doesn't reach far enough, and though it's impressively powerful, i haven't found it sufficient.

i'm hesitant to try egg protein because i get a heart arrhythmia when i eat eggs. it's the strangest thing i ever experienced, and i can't account for it -- i can scarcely believe it, even, except that it keeps happening -- and health care professionals whom i ask about it think i'm hypochondriac, so i just stay away from eggs and leave it at that...

(i also saw "hypochondriac" in their eyes over my bowel issues, too, even after i started flaring like mad last year -- but now i have to deal with the "ulcerative colitis" curse instead. if only the naturopath had more experience with ibd -- at least he believed me. if only the bowel issues were as easy to reverse, too -- ah, sorry, too much personal griping...)

Hi, snowcrocus.

(What a pretty user name you picked!)

I'm going to ask Jini to comment on this one personally. Although I am diagnosed with Crohn's, my problems began well after I had my children. So I feel that any comments I make would be theoretical rather than grounded in my actual experience.

Check back in a day or two....

All the best,
Nicole

Hi there,

First thing I need to know is: which of my books do you have?

And could you please list your food allergies/intolerances.

Also, please list any other supplements you're taking.

Then I can feed back with some ideas....

hang in there,
Jini

ugh, my guts are starting to go south...

i have the book listen to your gut. honestly, i've read it in bits and pieces, and skipped a lot. the thing that i most needed was the first chapter -- i was sobbing through it. the first, best thing i needed to stop moping, take charge, and be active was to get over the fear that was surrounding me, and the emotional impact of the "curse". it's still hard, but revising my approach to it gave me a boost...

my current supplements are a prenatal multi (twinlab) and cod liver oil (carlson's in capsules) only. i tried the probiotic (natren 3-species capsule) a few days ago, but unfortunately i think it was what kicked my irritated colon into the beginning of a flare, so no more of that for now. i am also taking some drugs -- mesalamine enema once a day and sulfasalazine (currently 500 mg twice a day, which i intend to increase slowly to double).

i did an allergy blood test for all kinds of things recently, all of which tested negative, so anything i do react to is either not immune (that is, some other hypersensitivity) or too low-level for the test. basically, dairy and eggs are a problem for me, as are tropical fruits (mango, papaya, melons -- possibly also pineapple, though that may only be the acid). soy and coconut are suspect -- i'm not entirely sure about them, but i still have miso and occasionally young coconut. no chocolate. everything else i've been avoiding (grains, nuts, sweets, spicy foods) affects me intestinally. (well, dairy does, too, but i also have other reactions to it.) i think that's a pretty full list, but after a while i forget what i'm not eating because it ceases to exist, and i just eat other things...

I guess the thing that comes immediately to mind is (since your allergy testing was negative) to explore the other things in your mind/body that may be producing allergic-type reactions.

And the best way to do this is with EFT. Do a search on this forum as there are MANY posts on this topic, or read Ch. 6.

The other must-read chapter for you in LTYG is Ch.9

But honestly, skip the treatment summaries in Ch 2 (you can come back to them later), but the best course of action for you now would be to read LTYG and do the Workbook (on the CD-Rom) at the same time.

This, combined with EFT is the best way to figure out what to do and keep you from spiraling into panic and hopelessness.

In the meantime, just try to eat as much protein as you can - fish, meat, seafood, etc. Also, try eggs raw and see if they're okay that way - then you can really load nutrition with a shake:

2 raw organic eggs
1.5 cups rice milk (or tolerated substitute)
1 black banana (if tolerated)
maple syrup or honey if needed to sweeten

whip for a few seconds on low speed. It is not thick, slimy, or anything else. If I made one and gave it to you, you would never know there were eggs in there.

all the best,
Jini

do you know what that recipe sounds like? ice cream! really ripe bananas are usually sweet enough that no additional sweetening would be necessary... i'm beginning to think of getting an ice cream maker...

another food i'm trying is pemmican. it is an ancient food, like a "powerbar" kind of thing, made of (approximately) 40% fat, 45% dried meat, 15% dry fruit. it seems like a real calorie booster, and portable, and not likely to excite my guts.

regarding allergies, i don't discount mind/body issues with food reactions, especially since some of my reactions are profoundly psychological, but i also know that IgE tests are not terribly sensitive. however, one very interesting thing that i have noticed lately is that i seem to react to some carbohydrates psychologically -- or, more probably, to the changes they produce in my physiology. i've observed lactose intolerance and sucrose headaches in myself for some years now, but now that i'm being so much more watchful i notice more general trends. i begin to wonder whether many of my anxiety-like symptoms are not so much an actual food allergy or intolerance as one of the consequences of the general disaccharidase deficiency that is so pronounced in ibd.

here is another question related to the pregnancy: i have had a vaginal yeast infection for a while, and i have tried over time a few different topical remedies (otc antifungal, garlic, tea tree oil), none of which the yeasts cared two bits about. the only thing that seems to modulate the yeast is how excited my guts are -- if my guts are quiet, the yeast goes down; inflammation and diarrhea make the yeasts increase. my guess, therefore, is that treating this vaginally isn't going to do anything, and i have to take care of them on a systemic level, or at least intestinal. i am particularly interested in taking care of them now because i'm not enamoured of the idea of a yeast infection being my child's first microbial exposure -- that seems like an invitation to lifelong problems, starting with thrush. on the other hand, i'm reluctant to upset the balance i've finally come to, where i'm off pretty much everything, and not having diarrhea. is it imprudent to try wild oregano oil? i am a little dubious of its advisability during pregnancy; and, considering how my guts rejected the probiotic, i also wonder if they can handle this. is a simple carbohydrate restriction powerful enough? can i restrict carbohydrates enough during pregnancy to make a difference? any other ideas?

Wild Oregano hasn't been tested vaginally during pregnancy by anyone I know of, so you'll have to make your own decision about that. If you did do it, I would dilute it 20:1 with olive oil.

Hydrogen Peroxide can be used during pregnancy. I used it for a bacterial infection whilst pregnant. Take a sterile pad and soak it in 6% hyrdorgen peroxide solution. Stuff it up your vagina and lie down on a towel for about 20-30 minutes, then remove it. I just did it once a day for a week and it worked great.

all the best,
Jini