There has been a controlled trial into the use of wheatgrass juice in the treatment of Ulcerative Colitis, which was published in the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology. This was a double blind placebo controlled study, involving 23 people diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. The patients were given either 100cc of wheatgrass juice or a placebo daily for one month. They found that wheatgrass juice consumption was associated with significant reduction in disease activity, and a reduction in rectal bleeding. There were no apparent side effects. They concluded that wheatgrass juice is effective as a single or complimentary treatment for Ulcerative Colitis.
This is a positive result, and wheatgrass has been used for a variety of health conditions since the 1950’s when it was introduced by Ann Wigmore. You can either grow your own wheatgrass and juice it, or it is nowadays possible to buy freeze dried wheatgrass powder on the internet or from health food stores, which you just mix with water and drink. Its a great addition to your Ulcerative Colitis Diet Plan.

Researchers at the Farncombe Family Digestive Health Institute have discovered that having elevated levels of Prostaglandin D2 is a key factor in Preventing Ulcerative Colitis flare ups, and triggers long term remission of Ulcerative Colitis. The discovered that people  in long term remission of Colitis have the same elevated levels of prostaglandin D2, this had also previously been found to be the case in lab experiments on rats. Whether or not the increase Prostaglandin D2 levels are a result of remission or a cause of it is not yet clear.

This is exciting news and it is thought that it may lead to new treatments being developed for Ulcerative Colitis prostaglandin D2 in the near future, which act by increasing prostaglandin D2 levels.

Prostaglandins are part of a group of lipids that are formed enzymatically from Essential Fatty Acids. Prostaglandin D2 is a major prostagalndin produced by mast cells, and found in the brain and in mast cells.

It appears that Niacin may naturally increase levels of prostaglandin D2 as well as lowering cholesterol and triglycerides.

One of the worst things about Ulcerative Colitis can be those moments when you need to go to the loo and you need to fast, but you have no idea where the nearest one is ! This can result in somewhat embarrassing accidents, which lets face it we have all had at some time or an other. Well luckily these days help is at hand,if you have an iPhone or Android powered smartphone you can get an app aptly named Toilet Finder which will instantly point you in the direction of your nearest toilet/restroom. If you have a blackberry there is an app for that called sit or squat, which also is available for iphone. Sit or squat also offer an SMS Text service where if you text them they will text you back with details of your nearest restroom. These apps at the time of writing are free, so its got to be worth getting one or other or even both of them, you never know when they might come in very handy!

The main symptoms of Ulcerative Colitis are -

• Very Frequent Loose Bowel Movements – can be over 30 a day
• Possible blood in stool – can be lots
• Abdominal Pain and cramps which really hurt
• High urgency to have a bowel movement – you may not be able to get to a toilet in time
• Weight Loss – you can loose a lot of weight very fast
• Fever, Tiredness, feeling wiped out

Secondary Symptoms

• Lethargy and feeling achy
• Joint Pains
• Back Pain
• Liver & Kidney problems – can also be caused by medication side effects

How can you tell if you might have Ulcerative Colitis Symptoms ?

• Diarrhea that has gone on for more than a week
• Abdominal Pain
• An urgent need to do a poo
• Blood in your poo
• Mucus in you stool
• Unusual Weight Loss

If you think you might have Ulcerative Colitis you need to be properly diagnosed by a medical Doctor. They will normally do this by either a sigmodoscopy or colonoscopy, which don’t worry isn’t nearly as bad or painful as it may sound.

This is an interesting bit of news that I just noticed. It seems that the first clinical trial into the effects of diet on Ulcerative Colitis is soon to begin at Rush University Medical Centre. They are going to investigate the effects  the Specific Carbohydrate Diet has on Ulcerative Colitis. Specifically how the diet affects intestinal bacteria and yeast. The study is to involve 200 people who have Ulcerative Colitis.

As far as I know this is the first study to be done into diet and colitis. I have been told many times by doctors that diet has no effect on Ulcerative Colitis, when I know from personal experience that with Ulcerative Colitis Diet most definitely does ! Hopefully this study will begin to change all that.

Whilst we will have to wait and see what the results are, perhaps when the results are out this study will change the way our doctors look at treating Ulcerative Colitis for the better.

Below is an excerpt from an interesting article I have just been reading on intestinal bacteria, I’ve posted the bit which discusses Colitis but you can read the whole article here

Many researchers are focusing on inflammatory bowel disorders to understand how the balance between the intestinal microbes and their human hosts becomes deranged. Incidence of these diseases has sharply increased since about the mid-20th century, just about the time the industrialized world started eating highly processed foods and antibiotics came into widespread use. For example, in bowel disorders such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, excessive inflammation leads to severe pain, diarrhea and vulnerability to opportunistic germs. Standard treatments include powerful steroids like prednisone, surgical removal of the colon and heavy treatment with antibiotics.

But a more ecological approach is beginning to offer hope. P. aeruginosa and C. difficile are common residents of human bodies and under normal circumstances are benign. So what turns them into enemies? Most of the time, says John Alverdy, an intestinal and critical-care surgeon at the University of Chicago, bacteria “have to have a reason to hurt you.” Surgery is just such a reason. A surgical patient’s normal metabolism is altered; usually nutrients are provided intravenously instead of through the digestive system, so in a patient being fed by an IV drip, the gut bacteria perceive their sustenance disappearing. A decline in available nutrients alarms them. And surgery triggers the release of stress compounds that bacteria also sense, Alverdy says. Chemotherapy and radiation have similar effects. When threatened, bacteria become defensive, often producing toxins that make the host even sicker. They also tend to speed up their acquisition of and purging of genes when under external selection pressure, of which antibiotics are an obvious and powerful example.

Alverdy is finding success in treating patients with a strategy he calls “ecologic neutrality.” In research reported in the August 2008 Surgery, he was able to prevent P. aeruginosa from turning virulent in surgically stressed mice by dosing them with polyethylene glycol, which supplies the bacteria with phosphate, one of their primary needs. “Once they sense there’s plenty of phosphate,” he says, “they figure everybody must be happy here.” The treated mice in his experiments, unlike the controls, did not contract fatal infections.

Some researchers are even exploring the idea of stool transplants — that is, introducing a healthy person’s gut bacteria into a sick person’s intestines via the donor’s feces. Although there are not many peer-reviewed studies of this rather disturbing concept, a review in the July 2004 Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology by Australian researcher Thomas Borody found that in a large majority of the cases reported in the medical literature, fecal transplants resulted in almost immediate and long-lasting relief for people suffering from inflammatory bowel conditions and for those with chronic antibiotic-induced diarrhea. (There’s definitely a market for fecal transplants. When one scientist mentioned the success of the procedure in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he was inundated with calls from desperate patients begging for the treatment, even though he does not practice the therapy.)

If new therapies based on human microbial ecology just lessened antibiotic resistance and relieved the suffering of people with intestinal disorders, they would constitute miraculous advances. But the intensifying focus on the role of bacteria in human health is turning up other possible avenues for improving health.

This is an excerpt from an article posted on Miller-McCune.com by Valerie Brown

A new grass-fed meat study (PDF) has just been brought to my attention, thanks to Aaron Blaisdell. It’s pretty fascinating. Researchers wanted to see two things: whether eating grass-finished animals instead of grain-finished animals would provide a significant influx of dietary omega-3s and whether the potential influx would actually make a difference in lab numbers. They took two groups of people, regular Irish folks, and provided weekly portions of beef and lamb, either grass-finished or grain-finished. The animals were “finished” for a minimum of six weeks. Both groups were told to avoid fatty fish and omega-3-rich oils for the duration of the study. All told, both groups ate roughly 469 grams of red meat a week for four weeks. Oh, and these were all healthy subjects with good cholesterol and blood pressure numbers and without prescriptions to any medications.

The results were impressive. Grass-finished eaters saw improved plasma and platelet fatty acid composition: less omega-6, more omega-3. This would presumably lead to a more balanced inflammatory response and, thus, better health.

A few takeaways:

1. The weeks leading up until slaughter appear to be the most crucial feeding period. Although the study’s authors don’t explicitly state what the animals’ pre-trial diets were, the cows and lambs were drawn from a region where the standard feed concentrate included “cereal, maize, and soya with a vitamin/mineral mix” and I think we can assume that both grass-finished and concentrate-finished animals shared the same diets before the trial. Whether those pre-trial diets were grass or grain-based isn’t clear. It is clear that grass-finishing is the key – at least enough to positively impact the omega-6:omega-3 ratios of whoever consumes the animals. Grass-fed and finished is probably optimal, but perhaps not absolutely necessary.

2. It’s interesting, but not really that surprising, that the intervention didn’t affect lipid numbers. LDL, HDL, and triglycerides remained pretty much the same across both groups. The heaviest impact was felt in the serum and platelet fatty acid content. Grass-finished animal eaters enjoyed higher levels of stearic acid (a type of saturated fat), EPA, DPA, DHA, long chain omega-3s, and total omega-3s, along with a reduced omega-6:omega-3 ratio. As we know from previous posts, the omega-6:omega-3 ratio of our fat cells determines what type of inflammatory cytokines will be secreted by platelets in the inflammatory response, and having too much omega-6 in our platelets results in a lopsided, overly inflammatory response.

3. If you look at the raw numbers, there’s not a huge difference between the omega-3 content of grass-finished and grain-finished, something on the order of mere mgs/100g. Beef and lamb, even the grass-finished stuff, just doesn’t have a whole lot of omega-3s to begin with. The folks consuming grass-finished meat ate, on average, 65 mg/d of long chain omega-3s, while those eating concentrate-finished meat ate about 44 mg/d of long chain omega-6s, yet the lab results – the big improvements in plasma and platelet fatty acid numbers – were lopsided. What’s the deal? This makes me wonder whether simply breaking food down into its various nutrients and fatty acids is missing the point. If you relied on that, you’d think grain-fed beef was essentially identical to grass-fed, but it’s clearly not, as the results of this study show. Maybe it’s the DPA, an often-ignored omega-3 fat that’s prominent in seal blubber and converts more readily to DHA, and that was increased in the grass-finished group. Maybe, and probably more likely, it’s the fact that omega-6 intake, especially linoleic acid (arachidonic acid intake was actually higher in grass-finished), was significantly higher in the grain-fed group than in the grass-finished group, about 8.5 g/day to 5.5 g/day. Or maybe it’s the fact that grass-finished animal flesh is a complex whole food that offers more benefits than can heretofore be identified and explained.

4. Oily fish is undoubtedly the most concentrated, most reliable source of long chain omega-3 fats in the diet, but you can’t live off fish forever. At least, I can’t. If I have fish more than a few times a week, I become physically repulsed by the thought of eating more. A three day stint of eating almost nothing but fresh sardines taught me that. That’s why I try to always eat grass-fed, grass-finished animals – because, the idea goes, when you’re eating grass-fed ruminants and avoiding concentrated sources of omega-6, you don’t need to supplement or worry about a steady fish intake. This study confirms it.

5. Grass-finished beef steak and mince samples actually had more saturated fat than grain-finished samples. The opposite was true for lamb, however.

All in all, this is just another reason to work grass-fed and (especially) finished animals into your diet whenever possible.

This is a republished article from a great site I found – www.marksdailyapple.com

Here is a pearltree of the most popular Ulcerative Colitis posts on my site

Kefir a cultured milk drink that provides beneficial bacteria and yeast, vitamins, minerals and complete proteins.You can make your own at home very easily. I make mine with goats milk and it is one of my favorite things that I take to help my Ulcerative colitis symptoms. I have found over time that it does several things which benefit me.

Firstly it is an excellent source of billions of probiotics – that is healthy microflora that help to clear out any bad bugs in my guts. Probiotics can be expensive to buy in large quantities but Kefir in contrast is very easy to make at home, costs virtually nothing and contains loads of live probiotics in a form that make it to my colon where they can help me.
These are fresh vibrant probiotic microorganisms which act to help stop any diarrhea very effectively. They are like a miracle solid poo maker!  As well as reducing flatulence which can be painful.

Secondly Kefir is a very nutritious food source, as well as being loaded with digestive enzymes. Even in a flare up you could ingest Kefir and because it is a liquid its not going to cause you any pain, and it will provide a good source of amino acids. It is also packed with B vitamins and minerals. There is also fat in it from the milk which is a good source of fuel. I generally have one glass of Kefir for breakfast each day with some fresh blueberries and it really sets me up for the day and is an integral part of my Ulcerative Colitis Diet.

Thirdly it has so many other reported health benefits. It is apparently antibiotic and anti-fungal, contains loads of good proteins to build you up, contains tryptophan to help improve mood, helps to regulate blood pressure, and has also been shown to prevent colon cancer in mice, as well as reducing tumor growth where cancer is present, I could carry on but there are just too many reported health benefits to Kefir to mention here.

Kefir is made using Kefir grains (photo above) and milk, I use goats milk because normal cows milk has been shown to be a bad idea for colitis,(although Kefir still transforms it) whereas goats milk is more easily digested. All you need to do is to take your kefir grains( about a dessert spoon full)  put them in a jar of about 300ml size, fill with goats milk and leave for 24 hours at room temperature. After 24 hours you should have a jar of milk which has partly separated in to curds and whey, if there is no separation it needs more time. You do not want lightly fermented Kefir for colitis, you need it well fermented so the Kefir will have eaten up all of the lactose in the milk, and produced lots of probiotics. Next sieve the kefir liquid from the grains and put the grains in another jar with some fresh milk. Its as easy as that. I then like to refrigerate my finished jar of Kefir as I think it tastes better that way.

There is an excellent site on the web called Dom’s Kefir site which is well worth checking out if you want to find out more detail about Kefir – http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html and you can also buy good quality Kefir Grains from Dom.

Ulcerative Colitis is a disease which varies in the intensity of its symptoms, when symptoms are mild to non existent it is described as in remission but when symptoms get bad it is described as a flare up.

During an Ulcerative Colitis flare up what is going on ?
Well the colon has become inflamed which causes diarrhea, and ulcerations which lead to bleeding from the colon, these symptoms are also accompanied by really painful abdominal cramping which can leave you doubled over in agony, as well as fever, dehydration and weight loss.
In a bad Ulcerative Colitis flare up the diarrhea is very painful with blood and mucus coming out and can be up to 30 times a day. Usually it happens more at night and in the early morning and it leaves you feeling exhausted not just because of the diarrhea but the interrupted sleep as well.
In this state you really need to eat plenty to get some nutrition however eating can cause absolute agony due to the stomach cramping which the food passing through can produce.
It is often difficult to eat and soups (chicken stock) and soft steamed vegetables are a good option, along with soft white rice, and steamed fish, these seem to be the least painful to eat. If its really bad just stick to some good homemade soups.
Anybody who has had a flare up knows how awful it can be, but it is difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t been there quite how awful the pain can be.