Well, I resisted this...and I ignored it...and I did just about everything else you can think about to avoid facing the change I needed to make in my life. But for some odd reason, none of those things made me feel any better.
So, I've decided to act like a grown up and see what happens. But before I get too far ahead of myself, let me back up and tell those who don't know me what we're talking about.
I was diagnosed a couple of years ago with an ailment called Ulcerative Colitis (UC) which is an Inflammatory Bowel Disease closely related to Chron's Disease. Without getting too far into the graphic (and quite unpleasant) details- I'll just tell you that when my disease is active, I suffer from...um...let's say an inability to digest normal foods. Since this is a food blog, I am going to spare you all the awful details, but trust me it isn't pleasant. For those of you who simply must know more, I recommend reading up on IBD at http://www.healing crow.com.
Now, for people who suffer from UC there are really three options:
1. Ignore it and hope it doesn't affect life too severely (which is what I've been doing).
2. Try different concoctions of medicines to find one that both works to control the symptoms AND has side effects you can live with.
3. Follow the more natural Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) as described by Elaine Gotschall in her book Breaking the Vicious Cycle and hope you're among the high percentage of people who are helped by this wheat free, gluten free, sugar free, lactose free plan.
Since most Gastroenterologists are traditional Western medicine doctors, they rarely recommend or prescribe the more holistic SCD approach. So, like many patients with all sorts of IBD, I first was put on Asacol and told to experiment with increasing the dose until my symptoms were under control. In answer to my questions about diet, my doctor at the time told me that if a certain food happened to make me sick "just don't eat it." That was the extent of his sage advice. No mention of common foods that cause symptoms, not a word about the dangers of wheat or lactose. Lucky me, I got to find all of that out through trial and error!
Needless to say, the medicine didn't work. Because I am fortunate enough to not have severe symptoms often, I was able to put off dealing with this for some time. Now however, I have decided life is to short for these episodes to pop up unexpectedly and impact my ability to do my job, spend time with my loved ones and generally have the energy for all that life has to offer.
So, as I said, I'm diving in. And because this diet is by all accounts hard...and at times it sucks...and because I am not alone in all of this, I will keep this blog. I hope that by chronicling my journey, I will be able to share it with those in my life who don't understand the disease or the diet and how it affects my world. More importantly I hope that I can both give and receive support from the community of others out there using SCD to manage their condition.
So here we go! Wish me luck.
