Newly Diagnosed Holistic Vegan

[Graceful585]

Hi! Great information I'm reading, thank you for letting me come on board!! :)

I was diagnosed a few days ago with MC after dealing with the “Big-D” for about the past few months. Mine wasn’t as severe as I’ve read but still none-the-less not fun! My sense is that it was due to the three different antibiotics I was on for a bad tooth infection over the past six months as right after finishing the last dose is when I started the “Big-D”. That’s when I was referred to the GI doc and had my first colonoscopy. He took the biopsies suspecting that I probably had MC and confirmed that Monday. He called in a prescription for steroids and from everything I’ve read thus far steroids work while you're on them and then once you come off, you're back on them.

That’s when I contacted my Primary who is Doctor of Osteopathic medicine and asked her if she’d have recommendation for me to try holistically first. I’m Vegan so getting protein was her number one concern with knowing that eating fresh fruits and veggies is not optimal at this stage for my issue with them being hard to digest and taxing on the GI track. She has suggested that to help alleviate the inflammation in my colon and to get it to settle down that I eat softened, even pureed veggies and cut out all grains, beans and gluten. Also, she gave me the name of a Pharmaceutical grade Pea Protein Powder and told me that I should have two shakes a day. This protein powder has 21 grams of protein per serving and is expensive at $70 for 15 servings per container, which will get me through one week. OUCH! I have a gastro follow up appointment in two weeks so I will do this for two weeks and see where I am. She has said that if I still am having the “Big D” then I should do both the Steroid and the protein powder and pureed soft veggies together. I’m praying that this will settle everything down to where I don’t have the “Big D” and can slowly add more veggies back but time will tell. Has anyone tried this approach, to heal holistically, thoughts, insights, suggestions are most welcomed.

Any good recommendation for Vegan/Gluten-free info?

All pretty daunting, starting over…I became Vegan a little over a year ago and that was hard enough reconfiguring my thinking to a new way of eating and now I have to add more restrictions!

[tex]

Hi Grace,

Welcome to our Internet family. This is a tough disease for vegans, not only because of the fiber issue, but also because it takes a significant amount of protein to heal the damage done to the intestines by the inflammation. Be sure to peel all vegetables, because most of the fiber is in the peel. I'm not sure that pureeing them is an advantage, but overcooking them definitely helps to make them more digestible. Avoid all raw vegetables, especially iceberg lettuce. Iceberg lettuce is probably the most irritating vegetable we could find, when our gut is hyper-inflamed by MC.

Here's the really bad news: Approximately 60–70 % of us are sensitive to soy, including most or all of it's relatives in the legume family. That makes getting enough protein in one's diet extremely difficult. There is a reliable set of test panels available that many of us use to help us figure out a safe diet, and even a vegetarian option is offered. You might want to consider these tests, in order to remove any questions about whether or not you are actually sensitive to certain foods. Here's a link if you want to consider them:

https://www.enterolab.com/StaticPages/T ... #PanelB2C2

These are stool tests, and they are much, much more sensitive and reliable than any of the blood tests offered for this purpose. I'm not sure how many members have ordered these vegetarian tests (probably not many, because most of us can't handle many vegetables while we are recovering), but many hundreds of us have ordered the regular (A1 and C1) panels, and they have been extremely helpful for helping us to get our life back.

Again, welcome aboard, and please feel free to ask anything.

Tex

[Graceful585]

Thank you for the warm welcome Tex and the link and suggestion on the stool tests. I'm wondering if it were the antibiotics, then will this potentially go away once the inflammation goes away...naive, aren't I??

Love your quote!!!

[Lilja]

Hi Grace,
You are lucky to have found this board so early. You're in good hands :-)

I have tried socalled holistic treatment; they put me on the right track when they told me to go gluten and casein free and keep fibers and fruit sugar to a minimum, but other than that they just kept ordering expensive blood tests that lead me nowhere and kept me like a "financial milk cow". But, that's my experience.

Here is a poll as to what members think caused their MC:

http://www.perskyfarms.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20515

... and I think that too much antibiotics caused mine.

Lilia

[ldubois7]

Grace,

This disease doesn't go away because you get the antibiotics out of your system.....I wish it were that simple.

We have found that the best way start on the road to recovery is by eliminating foods that your body is making antibodies to, so your gut can start to heal. You could try an elimination diet or Enterolab.

Start with your diet. We can help guide you, too!

[tex]

Grace,

Unfortunately, Linda is quite correct. Drug induced MC is common, and in a few cases (especially those diagnosed and treated early), just stopping the use of the medication that caused the inflammation, and avoiding any medications in that specific class, will sometimes bring lasting remission. However, I'm guessing that you stopped using the antibiotic several months ago, so the symptoms (diarrhea, etc.) should have stopped within a week or so of the day you stopped using it, if discontinuing the use of the medication was going to resolve your MC symptoms.

IOW, the inflammation should have promptly resolved when the antibiotic treatment ended (if it was going to). Since it didn't, that suggests that when the genes that predispose to MC were triggered, the genes that predispose to gluten sensitivity were also triggered. Because gluten sensitivity causes increased intestinal permeability, that opens the door to the development of additional food sensitivities as the immune system senses the peptides from those foods in the blood stream. Obviously they shouldn't be there, and the immune system knows that.

You're very welcome,
Tex

[Graceful585]

Lilia, thank you for the poll, quite interesting to see how high on the list antibiotics are! My DO doctor is moving out of state :( and there is no one in this area that did the type of osteopathic medicine as she...I can still consult with her which I probably will but I'm thinking of going to a nutritionist as well due to the whole protein thing of being Vegan and just wanting to make sure I am eating what I need to for a healthy lifestyle and to not upset my colon in the process.

Linda, I've started the elimination diet a bit...I see they offer chicken as the protein and recommend applesauce for veggi/vegans which I'm not certain how you get protein out of applesauce. I had some non-chicken sliders without the bread last night and everything worked fine this morning...nice solid poop! I'm thinking I'll either use tofu or tempe and see what happens. Thank you for the suggestion.

[tex]

but I'm thinking of going to a nutritionist as well due to the who protein thing of being Vegan and just wanting to make sure I am eating what I need to for a healthy lifestyle and to not upset my colon in the process

Please be aware that you will not find a nutritionist who knows knows how to treat someone who has MC. Some of them have minimal training on Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, but most of them don't have the foggiest idea how to treat MC. They will tell you that they can help you, but what they recommend for Chron's disease and UC simply does not work for MC. If you read the posts on this board by members why have tried to work with a nutritionist you will see that most members considered that experience a waste of money.

That said, if the nutritionist is willing to work with you, and is willing to accept that you understand the disease better than they do, and they will incorporate your knowledge (about which types of foods you have to avoid, especially fiber) into their diet recommendations, then their suggestions might be beneficial.

Linda, I've started the elimination diet a bit...I see they offer chicken as the protein and recommend applesauce for veggi/vegans which I'm not certain how you get protein out of applesauce.

An elimination diet was never intended to be a balanced diet. An elimination diet is designed to stop the MC reaction and allow the gut to heal. Please bear in mind that we usually have to forget about trying to eat a balanced diet while we are in recovery. A balanced diet is a moot point while MC is active, because we can't absorb but a fraction of the nutrients in our food anyway, until our gut is able to do a significant amount of healing of the damage caused by the inflammation. After healing is well underway, then we need to gradually bring our diet into a new balance.

Also, please be aware that some of us react to chicken. Virtually no one reacts to turkey or lamb though, so if you should find yourself in the
position of needing to consider the addition of an animal-based protein to your diet in order to get enough safe protein, please keep this in mind (as a last resort option).

We are all different, so it is certainly possible that you may not be sensitive to soy (and legumes), and if that's the case, then you should be able to continue with a vegan lifestyle, as long as you make prudent diet choices.

Tex

[Graceful585]

Thank you Tex! I have been told that finding a good nutritionist is like trying to pan for gold... Thank you for your wise input with regards to them not always being as knowledgeable as one might hope they would be for their profession...a bit discouraging to say the least!

My diet is consisting of Two pea protein shakes a day and I'm going to be adding in a banana, soy yogurt, throw in a few Romaine lettuce leaves for additional protein and maybe a little oatmeal to bulk up my calories. Right now I'm down about five pounds since Monday. It's also been suggested that I try a gluten free pasta with pureed sweet potatoes over top to help with additional calories...all provided my stomach can handle it. Hopefully, I won't need to consider turkey...although I always loved turkey when I was a meat eater but Lamb definitely not...too cute to eat! Could never eat it when I was a carnivore. Thank you for the suggestions and input!!!

[tex]

It's not the nutritionists' fault that they are not trained to understand MC. It's the entire medical education system. The medical community as a whole simply doesn't understand the disease very well at all, and you can't teach what you don't understand.

Please be aware that most of us here are sensitive to oats. The storage protein in oats (avenin) is very similar (molecularly) to the gluten in wheat. IOW, if something goes wrong, be suspicious of the oats. Also, most oats is cross-contaminated with gluten during growing, handling, and processing, so be sure that the oatmeal is labeled as gluten-free.

I certainly don't claim to be a nutritionist, but I once was part of a cattle feedlot operation on our farm, and when feeding livestock for optimal gains, one quickly learns that it's essential to make sure that protein and fat levels are adequate for good health. But it's the carbs from grain that put on the weight. Your weight loss is almost surely due to cutting out grain. Most members here have a problem maintaining their weight if they choose to follow a grain-free diet. It's a healthy diet, and it's doable, but while you are recovering (since you almost surely have a malabsorption problem of some degree), you may have to add some calories from a safe grain such as rice, in order to keep from losing too much weight. Most of us can also tolerate corn, but rice is the safest common commercial grain, by far. And it's also the least likely to be cross-contaminated with wheat gluten. Foods such as avocado and coconut oil are safe, healthy, sources of fat (but that doesn't mean that they will make someone fat).

Tex

[Graceful585]

Love coconut oil...and avocado's are a huge part of my diet normally! TY!! I put oats in my shake this morning and I'm going to go without them for my second one today and none tomorrow to see if I see a change in the way my stomach feels...hard to tell if I'm hungry or if it's just not feeling great!