Based on your experience, when can I expect...?

[sharonbelterday]

Healing to progress so that I am getting normans instead of D in the mornings (ballpark ranges depending on your experiences only)

Currently I am eating ONLY:

Meats on rotation: beef, chicken, pork, lamb, turkey. (Each assigned for a whole day)
Steamed veggies: carrots, summer and winter squashes with seeds removed. Sauteed mushrooms & onions.
Fruits: bananas, applesauce, avocados
Nuts on rotation: nut crackers made with ground nuts, coconut oil, 1 T. honey.
Occasionally: Lucy's Kitchen SBD Italian sauce.

NONE, ZIP, ZILCH, NADA of the following:

Gluten, grains, dairy, soy, eggs, salt water fish, shellfish, potatoes, raw veggies, raw fruits (except banana & avocado).

The reason I am asking is that I don't know if you have to wait for healing on a limited diet like this, or if I'm not seeing immediate results, if there could be something on my "ONLY" list that is still causing a problem.

Thanks for your words of experience and wisdom!

[tex]

Hi Sharon,

If you are taking budesonide, you should see noticeable improvement within a month, usually within a week or 2, because budesonide works relatively quickly.

If you are not taking budesonide, it's difficult to predict a time since we are all so different in our healing times, but a typical time before seeing marked improvement would be in the 4 to 6 month range. Note however that it takes many of us a year or longer to see remission. For some of us, improvement will be so gradual that we won't even notice, unless we compare our current situation with the way we felt a month ago, for example. For some people, there will be no obvious improvement for months, and then one morning — voilà. Remission has arrived!

It's not that budesonide helps us to heal faster, because it doesn't — corticosteroids actually retard healing. But budesonide can mask the symptoms to make us feel as though we are in remission while the diet is working to stop the inflammation from being regenerated.

FWIW, it took me a year and a half, but that was because I continued to experiment with various foods, mistakenly thinking that gluten was the only food that I would need to avoid (I wasn't aware of EntgeroLab back in those days). After I finally realized that I needed to just eliminate everything that seemed suspicious, I had already been on the GF diet for a year and a half, (so my gut had apparently done some healing) and when I started eating a very restricted diet, within 2 weeks I was in remission.

Tex

[sharonbelterday]

Thanks, Tex!

I am NOT taking any medications, except an SCD Freeda multivitamin and my daily dose of Thyroid.

It looks as though from your experience, my improvement will not be thwarted completely if one of the things on my list of things I DO eat is causing problems, as long as I avoid ALL gluten, dairy, eggs, soy and 3+ intolerances, rotate the rest, as per my current plan above.

I was worried that as long as one problem food remained in my system, my healing process would not begin.

Your experience reassures me a great deal.



BTW, the only things I miss are: A nice glass of Zin and a super sized crispy salad with dinner, scrambled eggs with my breakfast meat, the one egg usually required in a gillion recipes, and tortillas chips (which I will take over a bowl of ice cream any day!).

[tex]

I agree with your assessment. IMO the damage from gluten is by far the most serious, and takes much, much longer to heal than any damage caused by other food sensitivities. As long as we remain 100 % gluten-free, any issues due to other food sensitivities should be correctable in a matter of just a few days. This correlates with the fact that the half-life of anti-gliadin antibodies is 120 days, whereas the half-life of antibodies to most other food sensitivities is only about 5 to 6 days.

The long-term prospects of enjoying eggs and corn again remain to be seen, but at the very least, after your digestive system has healed, you should be able to enjoy wine and salad again, though you may have to go very slowly at first, when you reintroduce them.

Tex

[carolm]

Sharon,
Like Tex said it also took me 18 months to feel like I was really getting in remission. Two years to be even stronger. But getting to the 18 month mark was filled with 2 steps forward, 1 back, even when I was eating my most severely restricted diet. Fatigue, stress, seasonal allergies, getting a virus... just about anything could set me back but it would smooth out as long as I stuck to my plan. This week I'm doing so well in spite of eating some chocolate and caramel that contained milk, that I'm wondering what's going on. No reaction and I'm feeling good. It's a strange condition that makes me wonder what is going on because I'm feeling so good.

Stay the course. It sounds like you are off to a great start. The natural course is 2 steps forward, 1 back, then forward again.

Carol

[MBombardier]

Hi Sharon!

Totally random, but I hadn't noticed before that you are in Vancouver, the same place I live. So cool! There was another gal from Vancouver, but I don't think she hangs out here any more. And one or two (or more) from Portland.