I can remember the day very clearly. I had just gone to my gastroenterologist’s office to get the formal results of my recent colonoscopy. He told me when I came out of anesthesia that I had ulcerative colitis, but on this particular day, I was going to find out how bad it was, and what we were going to do about it. My doctor wanted to put me on Asacol Back in 2013, that drug cost around $500. Today I see that it is double that. I am very grateful to say, I couldn’t afford it then, because it sent me on a journey to figure out what I could do about my condition on my own without medicine.
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Food Doesn’t Affect the GI Tract?
One of the first things I asked my doctor was, is there anything that I am eating that is contributing to this condition? He stood right there, in all seriousness, and told me that food does not have any effect on the GI tract. I was gobsmacked! How could it possibly be that the stuff I was sending through my stomach and intestines for digestion didn’t have any effect on these organs? I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe that now. So I went home and started doing my own research.
What I found from Facebook pages and other forums, was something called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, or SCD.
The author of the book was Elaine Gottschall and she had a fascinating story. Back in the 1950s, she was a young mother with a 4-year-old child who was suffering from all sorts of stomach and intestinal issues. The child was losing weight, not thriving, bleeding rectally and doctors were afraid the child would die. The doctors wanted to remove the child’s colon, and they tried to bully Mrs. Gottschall into allowing it. But she did her own research (in the decades before research meant doing a Google search in your own home office I can only image how strenuous that must have been!), and came upon the research of 92-year-old Dr. Sydney Haas.
Dr. Haas was a published medical doctor who specialized in foods and nutrition. The very first thing he asked Elaine Gottschall was, “What has the child been eating?” They quickly changed her diet and the little girl kept her colon and grew up to be a healthy adult.
When Dr. Haas died, Mrs. Gottschall wanted to continue his research that had benefitted her family so much. So she went back to school and at age 47, she graduated with degrees in biology, nutritional biochemistry, and cellular biology. She wrote her book which is currently in its 11th printing.
You can read more of the story here.
I was mesmerized. I bought the book and quickly put the diet into practice. Even though it was going to be challenging and completely change the way I ate and cooked, I went cold turkey and dropped all grains, cereals, and pasta from my diet.
A couple of things happened. First and foremost, my colitis cleared up and I have not had any problems with it and certainly no bleeding, in over five years. That’s what I hoped would happen. Unexpectedly, I dropped 39 pounds AND my chronic eczema that I had battled for years completely disappeared. I never took a single Asacol pill.
So how did I do it?
My doctor had prescribed some steroidal enemas and I did those every night until I used up the prescription. In the meantime, after reading the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, I knew that I had to build up the normal flora in my colon again. I started taking Align probiotic. This was the probiotic my doctor recommended, but it also got good reviews in the Ulcerative Colitis forums I was hanging around in back then.
I also bought a yogurt maker. My reading taught me that one thing my gut didn’t need was more sugar or lactose and that homemade yogurt had a lot of the healthy bacteria my body needed. This is the one I bought. I needed it to be able to take 24 hours to make the yogurt to reduce all of the lactose in the milk. I also liked that I was making individual cups of yogurt that could store easily in my refrigerator.
I had to get a few other things for my kitchen as well. I bought a food processor to help me process more veggies and chop nuts, and a heavy-duty blender as well as some decent kitchen knives. We invested quite a bit of money in this but I kept reminding myself that I wasn’t spending $500 on prescription drugs, so it was worth investing in the tools I needed for this new way of eating.
Around this time I also discovered Danielle Walker and her website, Against All Grain. I bought all of her cookbooks too so that I could re-learn cooking without using flour and grains.
I mainly eat meats and salads for dinner now or a small entre with a veggie. I save leftover portions for my lunch the next day. I’m trying to eat one main meal and one very small meal with the family at night. When I do bake I am using coconut flour, almond flour, some Arrowroot powder and some coconut aminos for flavor. I get all of that on Amazon. Everything else I can easily get at my local grocery store including almond milk.
People do ask me if I miss it. Honestly, no I don’t. Once I gave up all grains the craving for them disappeared in a day or two. I don’t feel drawn to them at all. Do NOT fall into the habit of eating everything you used to eat but in a gluten-free form. Most of those products are higher in carbs anyway. The only exception to this I might make is having some gluten-free bread when I visit my son’s restaurant or if I make my own blender bread. That bread in the graphic is bread I made from cashews for Good Friday.
A graphic came up on Facebook that summarizes my journey perfectly I think.
I choose to spend time making real foods in my own kitchen then trying to figure out how to pay for a caustic medication that would fry out my kidneys and make me lose my hair. To me, that was just exchanging one set of problems for another. This is a lifestyle choice now, and for me, it’s been the best one.
To Your Health!
