One of the weirdest things that happened when I first had Ulcerative Colitis/Colitus was that a food that I had previously loved eating became about the most painful thing I have ever consumed. It was Potatoes, in my first ever flare up just the tiniest piece of roast potato would have me in absolute agony! Which was quite upsetting because as I said I used to love Potatoes, especially roast potatoes.

So why is it that potatoes caused me so much pain? and in fact still do cause me Colitis problems to this day. well according to Paleo diet principles you shouldn’t eat them anyway and this is because they apparently have some chemicals in them which can increase intestinal permeability, or Leaky Gut Syndrome as it is more commonly known.

If you have colitis you basically have a leaky gut in to the bargain, so thats why potatoes may not be one of the best foods if you have Colitus.

I have a wonderful recipe for Chicken Stock Soup which I find really soothes my Colitis. It’s very nutritious and great if you’re having a Flare up as it is easy to digest and doesn’t cause any abdominal pain.

The recipe is as follows -

Get one Free Range or Organic Chicken a big one, Roast it and have for dinner but don’t eat all the meat.

Once you’ve had your dinner put it in a big pot with enough water to just cover it and bring it up to boiling point. Then turn the heat down to a simmer.

Next add 2 peeled and chopped Onions, 3 cloves of Garlic, a tablespoon of Sea Salt, 3 Courgettes, 4 Carrots, and few sticks of celery.

Leave the whole lot to simmer for 3-4 hours or longer if you like.

Next take out the vegetables and put in a separate bowl with the liquid. Then separate the remaining meat from the carcas and put it with the veg and liquid stock. Now take your veg, stock,  meat and add some parsley  and blend it all up to  a nice smooth consistency and voila! you have chicken stock soup. Its delicious and also very good for you.

I have been able to have this even in the midst of my worst flare up – its a great way of getting much needed nutrition when you need it most.

Meals That Heal Inflammation

One of the first alternative ideas I tried out when I got out of hospital apart from improving my Diet was Probiotics, there have been some proper clinical studies done in to how these can help ease Colitis Symptoms and  induce remission, the research is really very exciting. There was one study I read about that used just probiotics ulcerative colitis treatment – very strong ones and lots of them to induce remission in patients with a flare up and they worked ! There is also a study in which one brand of probiotic was used to maintain remission and worked as well as the drug Mesalazine. There’s lots of different types of probiotic such as Acidophillus and Bifidobacteria, and there are loads of different products out there, so its difficult to choose which one to use. I found out the brand which was used in several clinical trials with good results – because that seemed to be the best – and ordered some. Well the results were brilliant, I was on the mend from my big flare up of Ulcerative Colitis(Colitus) but I was still pooing 3-4 times a day and things were still pretty loose. Within 2 days of starting the probiotics my stools were suddenly well formed – like normal poo and the frequency went down to 1-2 times a day ! Wow – I was amazed and very pleased to have found something that wasn’t a drug that was helping to make my Colitis go away. In fact my only other flare up since happened at a time just after I stopped taking probiotics. Probiotics work to rebuild the good bacteria in your guts, which in Colitis are often struggling against the bad bacteria. They also have an anti-inflammatory effect which is really good because after all Colitis is literally inflammation of the colon. Another benefit is that Probiotics help to heal a leaky gut which could be one of the causes behind Ulcerative Colitis. I just can’t understand why these Probiotics aren’t being prescribed by Doctors because they really Do WORK ! The best Probiotic for Ulcerative Colitis sufferers and the one I still use today is called VSL-3, it has over 450 billion bacteria per dose and has the following strains of probiotic in it – Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus paracasei, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp Bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, Bifidobacteria breve, Bifidobacteria longum, Bifidobacteria infantis. It really is the best one avaliable and has been tested several times in proper clinical trials and has proved to be very effective. I take a sachet every day and I can’t recommend it highly enough, find out more about VSL-3 click here and then click the probiotics link on the left had side. If you want to read more there is also an excellent book on Probiotics and Ulcerative Colitis here.

After my first Colitis flare up I was left weak and unable to even walk up stairs. I had drop foot which meant whenever I went for a walk I was likely to keep falling over, so I needed to find a way to get exercise which wasn’t to hard, would build me up and wouldn’t cause me to damage my self in any other way. Basically I needed exercise that wasn’t like normal forms of exercise. Prior to my illness I used to go to Tai Chi classes, which I really enjoyed. Although I was really too weak to do Tai Chi, there is an exercise that I had learned in Tai Chi called Zhan Zhuang which is pronounced Jam Jong in English. It is best described in simple terms as Standing Exercise, that’s right an exercise that only involves standing still!. In china it is used as a method to heal the weak and sick, but it is also far more that that. Zhan Zhuang is a form of Chi Kung (Qi Gong), which actually forms the basis of many Martial Arts, often in China Marial Arts students are taught Standing Exercise before learning any kicks or punches ! It really is a unique form of exercise and has many benefits, it helps to build up muscles and tendons, improves balance and coordination, builds up your Chi energy, exercises the Heart and also has a meditative element which calms the mind. It  is an amazing form of exercise, which has really really helped me in so many ways. If you want to learn this form of Chi Kung and I would strongly recommend that you do there is an excellent book on the subject for beginners called The Way of Energy.

Finally after nearly four weeks in Hopital I was home, which was wonderful. I was looking forward to improving my diet and building my self up again. I was also keen to get started on research as to what had caused my Ulcerative Colitis. There was one initial problem, having been in a Hospital for 4 weeks in bed and being quite weak I was shocked to discover when I needed the loo and had to go upstairs that I couldn’t actually walk up stairs anymore ! My legs were so weak that I literally couldn’t lift up my feet to climb the stairs – I had to crawl ! Also my right foot was droopy – I was unable to lift my toes up. So the next day I went out for a walk to try to begin to build myself up again, and I fell over flat on my face. It was the foot that caused me to trip over and it also meant I couldn’t drive anywhere. I thought it was just lack of use causing it but I later discovered that the foot problem was in fact Toxic nerve damage caused by Ciclosporin. Fortunately I saw a very good osteopath who helped to get it moving and I was lucky that when the doctors found out they stopped the cyclosporin and it started to improve some more. Eventually it recovered but it took another month and half before my foot was fully functioning again, I was lucky that kind of thing can be permanent.

Finally I was getting better, I was down to 3-4 poos a day, feeling better in myself, and boy was I ready to go home! The hospital staff had been great, very attentive and kind, but hospitals are weird places to be in for too long, after nearly four weeks I was glad to be escaping, back to my family. The doctors agreed to let me go but of course you can’t just walk out there and then, it was the next day before I got to go and even then leaving took all day, by the time they had done all the paperwork and organized me a huge bag of drugs to take home. I was leaving with instructions to take over 20 pills a day, which is a lot, but at least I no longer needed IV drugs. Eventually at about 5 in the afternoon I left the ward, but then had to go to the discharge ward which took another hour. Before I left the hospital the Registrar came to see me and very briefly told me about another drug that they wanted me to take when I left called Azathioprine, he was quite brief in his description of what it was but left me some notes about it and said I would probably be on it for at least 4 years. Anyway I when I read the information about the drug I was somewhat concerned as the side effects were quite bad, possible lymphoma being one of rarer side effects as well as bone marrow problems and low white blood cells, basically it just squashes your immune system so it doesn’t do much, thereby reducing any inflammation in a similar way to ciclosporin, in fact it is used in organ transplants to prevent organ rejection. Well I didn’t much like the sound of all that – the risks seemed to outweigh the benefits to me, and I don’t think that long term drug use is a good idea for anyone. So I didn’t start taking it and the next time I saw the consultant I somewhat nervously told him that I didn’t want to take Azathioprine. To my relief he was very understanding, he explained that it was their standard treatment plan for Ulcerative Colitis to prescribe Azathioprine & Pentasa, but that he had other patients that were managing on just Pentasa alone. We agreed that I would just take Pentasa and see how things went. This was a big relief to me as I really didn’t want to take Azathioprine, and if i had have started to take it I think that stopping it would have been very difficult.

I’ve been here how long ? Was my reply to my wife when she pointed out that I had been in Hospital for 3 weeks, I thought it was only about a week and a half! They say time fly’s when you’re having fun, although I don’t think that exactly fits in this case. I had completely lost track of time and reality whilst in Hospital for Severe Ulcerative Colitis. I must have been in a bad way, but I was on the mend, after 9 weeks of illness I was beginning to improve. I only weighed 7st 11lbs but my symptoms were improving and I was able to eat more – lots of home made vegetable soup with steamed chicken and white rice seemed to be best. Little did I know at the time it would be over 2 months more before I was well enough to return to work. So my first flare up of Colitis took about five months to recover from.

When I was in Hospital with my first big Ulcerative Colitis Flare up. One Sunday I was lying in the hospital bed when one of the junior doctors came in to see me with some sheets of paper. She seemed a bit excited and asked how I was, and then she told me that she was checking my blood test results and that there had been a big & sudden  drop in my C-Reactive Protein Levels, more so than they would have expected so quickly. She explained that this was a very good sign, as they measure levels of CRP to evaluate the amount of inflammation in the body, but seemed at a loss to explain why the sudden drop ! Colitis is inflammation of the colon and so a drop in a marker for inflammation is very good news. I had been starting to feel better and so I was pleased to hear that the blood tests backed up how I felt. I got the impression from the doctor that they would have expected a more gradual decline in the CRP levels as I recovered from Ulcerative Colitis and this got me thinking as to what may have caused them to fall faster than expected. Was it the cyclosporine that I had been having intravenously for a while now or was it something   else ? Well the drop in the CRP levels was preceded by a couple of other treatments I had been trying apart from the medical drugs, the first was the use of creative visualisation for self healing and binaural beats music, and the other was the commencement of Homeopathic treatment. So what was it that was working – the drugs the self healing or the homeopathy ? Well there’s no way I can really prove what it was but my own personal feeling is that the Homeopathy and the Binaural Beats Music    were what triggered the sudden improvement, as well as my newfound determination to recover.

Colitis Breakthrough

When I was in Hospital during my first UC Flare Up – It was a big one! -my wife spoke to a friend of a friend who had ulcerative colitis, in a quest to find out what was happening to me. He had ended up having the operation to remove part of the colon, he said to her that the one thing he wished he had tried before having the op was Homeopathy, because other people had told him that it worked well for colitis, I had also heard similar things from others. So I got my Mum to find a suitable Homeopath and once she had found someone I had a telephone consultation with my newly found Homeopath from my hospital bed. The initial call was over an hour long and she asked me all sorts of questions about myself and my symptoms, in some ways it almost felt a bit like an interview  and was very in depth, more so than I had expected. She then arranged for some Homeopathic remedies to be sent to me in Hospital and enclosed instructions of what to take when. I began taking the remedies as instructed and also kept the Homeopath informed of my day to day progress via email, and by phone every few days. The results were very good. And things finally started improving. The first remedy I took was Arsenicum, which helped the bowel movements slow down a bit, and the one of the others was China which really helped me get an appetite back and I started to eat much more. The remedies are specific to each person and their symptoms so I if you want to try homeopathy I would recommend finding a local homeopath and talking to them first. (If you want the number of the one I used email me) I was really impressed with the results, and the beauty of the homeopathy is that it in no way interferes with any other medical treatment you are undergoing. It’s well worth a try.

I discovered the Chapel in the Hospital whilst I was there and found myself visiting it and praying for recovery from Ulcerative Colitis on a regular basis. I have always been brought up as a Christian but never before had I really done much praying, but the way things were I found that going to the chapel and praying for help from God made me feel better. I didn’t really expect much to come of it but all I can say is that I am now better and maybe it was that my prayers were indeed answered.

Whilst lying about in hospital I realized that even though I wasn’t doing anything I still wasn’t particularly relaxed, and that being relaxed would be helpful to me in my recovery. I already had  an audio recording of the sounds of gentle waves, which combines these relaxing sounds with something called binaural beats, this is basically where the sound you here in one ear is at a slightly different frequency to the sound you hear in the other, you brain realizes this and the result is that it can put you in to a very very deep state of relaxation, which is good for helping your  body’s natural healing process to work more efficiently. I found this incredibly useful in hospital as I could use it to make myself rest at any time of day or night – not always easy when nurses keep disturbing you every 2 hours ! You can find out more about this amazingly relaxing product here. It comes on a CD but I managed to put it onto a little mp3 three player like this and it still worked fine as I used the highest quality audio setting.