MICROSCOPIC COLITIS SUPPORT

I really doubt that you have any bleeding, but it's always best to be safe than sorry. You can easily do a test at home, yourself. Here's a test that you can order from Amazon, for example, and I would assume that it's available at many other places.

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Discovery- ... B015RJXQMW

Walgreens has one:

https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/ez-de ... 12-product

Walmart has the same test, but they're out of stock online. Your local store might have it in stock though (or your local pharmacy).

Tex

Thank you. I hope I don’t have that. Walgreens is sold out to but I ordered it from amazon. The thought of going back to the GI doesn’t thrill me. I don’t feel bad at all. Hopefully that means something.

So I tested myself and you were right, I am not bleeding. Thankfully. But i had to make sure. But then what's going on. The WD is gone - which is great but the coffee grounds continue. About 6-7 times a day. Am I missing something in my diet which would help firm things up? Lack of fat in my diet? I'm eating only broth, cornish hen and jasmine rice. Keeping on going with pepto bismol, allegra, patch vitamins and Remag lotion. I'm jumping thru all the hoops. Can you think of anything else ? Time? The thought of eating some soluble fiber frightens me. But then the thought of eating anything fills me with anxiety at this point. I don't want the WD back.
Any thoughts would be welcome.

That's good that you eliminated that worry. If you no longer have WD, you're making good progress. You probably just need more time for your intestines to heal. We're all different. Some members need 6 months to a year (or more) to get to remission. We've had a few members who finished the 8 weeks of Pepto without reaching remission, but sticking to their diet, they eventually were successful.

Tex

Does everyone hear the choir of angels? The brass band? 5 days ago Norman came to stay with me!! I am beyond happy. After 11 months and 2 weeks - I am normal again! Words cannot express my sincere gratitude to everyone.
I've been adding GF and DF foods back into my diet slowly. Every 2-3 days I add something. The only food I know for sure that got me was dairy. But I am suspicious of EVERYTHING.
Maybe now I can begin to put some weight back on. At 5'6" - 100 pounds is not good.
Is there anything else I should be doing or not doing at this point to be sure my good fortune continues?
I can't mess this up now!

My GI doc said I should get another colonoscopy in 5 years. Since that colonoscopy really made my LC way way worse I have absolutely NO intention of ever having another. Am I wrong to feel that way? It took me a year to recover. I'm not giving another year of my life away.

I tell everyone who will listen how I have been helped by this forum and your book. So again, THANK YOU!

It's the sweetest music on earth, isn't it? MC patients are probably the only creatures on earth who can recognize beauty in a toilet bowl. :LOL:

It's natural to want to expand our diet, but please don't try to add too much too soon. Early on, it's easy to fall back out of remission. It's best to continue to heal for a while. Believe it or not, it takes 3–5 years for the gut to completely recover from the damage done by gluten. After we're stable for a while (a few months), the body (and the immune system) is much more forgiving if we make a mistake.

I don't remember whether or not you're taking budesonide, but be especially careful about adding foods if you are. It can mask symptoms, so that if you add a forbidden food now, when you end the budesonide treatment you'll fall out of remission.

I'm with you on the repeat colonoscopies. Those cleanout solutions are so caustic that some of them have been known to actually cause microscopic colitis for individuals who never had it before. Screening for cancer can be done by a simple stool test that looks for occult blood in the stool [(fecal occult blood test (FOBT)]. You can even order the test yourself (as you know, since you've already done that). Not all cancers and polyps bleed, but most of them do.

Tex

I had my last colonoscopy in 2015 which is the one that gave me the MC diagnosis. That was my 3rd one. My GI doctor told me I didn't need to do it again for another 10 years, but I told him I'd be back in 5 years (next summer 2020).......I just have to for my own peace of mind. My uncle (mom's side) died from colon cancer and both of my parents had it (they got it in time). We still believe that it's possible that's what my mom died from also but we didn't do an autopsy to find out for sure. She had similar complaints. Anyway, I'm not thrilled that it's almost already that time again, but I just feel like I need to do it!

Hi all,
I am wending my way thru this mystery which is MC. I try to make each day better. If it's not, I backtrack til it is. So far, so good. Slow but steady.
I was wondering - do we know what it is in bone broth which is helpful to healing the gut?

Thanks,
C

Properly made, it's loaded with minerals and other nutrients that help to heal the gut and provide energy.

Tex

Gzus
Now that I am really trying to eat well, I have exactly the same issues that you describe. Before I got rid of a lot of stress and bad foods I had D throughout the day n constant body aches. Every couple of months I had “the stomach virus” n was very sick. I really feel like now I’m on a good path. I have tried to cut out gluten, w a couple of set backs, and seen a huge difference in how I feel. It sounds like we are at similar place and Id like to keep up w your progress.
Angie

Hi Gzus,
I am new like you and very similar with bathroom habits. But what I also found was that I can be very susceptible to bad flares from things that would not affect a normal person as badly. For instance, I spent time in Mexico and came back with a bacterial infection which normally clears on its own in a few days. For me it turned into 20 trips per day to the bathroom and I couldn’t get it back to my normal without antibiotics after almost a month of trying to tough it out.
So what be mild now can morph into something more serious. Having an hour or two in the bathroom each morning is definitely manageable but really not ideal. You are lucky to be looking into things while you are still quite healthy.
I went gf,df,ef right after I got my diagnosis of LC, and then I did the EnteroLab testing. Imagine my surprise when I found out that rice, which I had been eating every day, was not so good for me right now! Going off gluten is a huge help, I do feel that intestinally for sure, and as much as it pains me to say, the next logical one is dairy. That one is challenging if you enjoy cheese and butter as much as I did, but I think it plays really big in the picture.
I would say, give up that kefir, I used to drink a lot of that too at one time. Anything fermenting in our intestines right now, is probably not our friend.
I never could take Imodium either, for the same reasons as you.
Good luck with all of this. This site has a lot of great information and tips!

Hi Everyone,
I hope everyone is managing to stay healthy thru this Covid-19 insanity.
I have been doing fairly well in for the last 6 months. I am still only eating plain meats, olive oil, salt and jasmine rice. Also I eat gf crackers and bread along with nut butters and jelly. Fiber is my mortal enemy I have found. I avoid it as much as possible. I am in the bathroom 1x per day occasionally 2x. Stool is not formed much of the time, but it is not WD either. Compared to a year ago, I'm WAY better. I have also gained 6# in 6 months.
My question is - Am I expecting too much when I expect the stool to be formed all the time? Sometimes I eat the exact same thing as the previous day - and the stool has no form when the previous day it was! I know it takes 3-5 years to heal, but how much inconsistency is okay? Am I doing something wrong?
Once again I hope everyone is well and avoiding this nasty virus!!
Thanks,
Colleen

Hi Colleen,

Whatever your bowel movements were like before you developed MC should be approximately how they end up after you are in complete remission. That said, diet definitely has a huge influence on stool texture, so they often won't be an exact match (due to the diet changes).

Commercial GF bread often contains one or more ingredients that cause many of us to react, especially before we completely heal. Check the ingredients on the crackers, also.

Not knowing your exact diet, I'm just guessing, but if you're eating a variety of meats, one of them might be causing digestive issues. In general, the safest meats are lamb, turkey, and any wild-type meats such as rabbit, duck, goose, pheasant, quail. venison, etc. It sounds as though you're making good progress, you might just need to fine-tune parts of your diet to track down a minor problem.

I hope this helps.

Tex

Thank you for your reply Tex. Something has sent me into a flare for the first time in over 6 months. I have started back on the 8 pepto for 8 weeks to stop it. My diet is pretty simple. Tilapia, beef, pork, Turkey, or cornish hen for meat. Jasmine rice olive oil, sea salt, Udi's white bread, sunflower butter limited jelly. Mustard. Rice crackers which have 3 ingredients. Rice flour, canola oil, sea salt.
Each time I try a food, I test it in my mouth to see if my pulse increases. Anything that drives it up, I spit out.
I have tried soy milk and almond milk. Neither of these things make my pulse rise. I did have soy milk 2 days ago. 1/2 cup.
I tested an egg 2 days ago as well since I want to make my own bread and need to know if I can use eggs. Neither the egg nor the milk seemed to raise my pulse, tho I am afraid of eggs still. So I did not eat it. My dog got the egg!

I have been eating mostly beef, cornish hens and tilapia along with udis bread and sunbutter and jelly almost everyday for 6 months with no adverse effects.
Main questions are this:
If a leaky gut has given me all these allergies to foods, then why am I not allergic to EVERYTHING I've eaten since all the peptides get thru the leaky gut?

I'm going to do the testing now to see what I'm allergic to. I've seen the newest one called Everlywell. Seems somehow not right. Is it ok or bogus??

One more thing that has me baffled. I tried Fritos. Ingredients listed as corn, oil and salt. When I put a Frito in my mouth, my pulse goes up like it's on a ladder! It's amazing! But if I try a tortilla chip, which lists the same ingredients, theres no reaction. I'm at a loss to explain this. I don't eat those foods but corn alone seems ok. Do you have any insights?
I truly appreciate any thoughts you can send my way.
Stay well
Colleen

Unless you've had the EnteroLab stool tests, and the results showed that beef and pork were safe for you, you might be reacting to beef or pork. Many of us react to one or both of them. The Udi's bread and the mustard might also be a problem.

The reason why you don't react to everything is because only certain peptides are capable of getting through the tight junctions when a leaky gut is present, and those are the proteins that you react to.

I've never heard of an Everlywell test. That doesn't mean that it's no good — it simply means that I've never heard of it.

The most accurate and reliable tests for food sensitivities that any of us have ever tried are the stool tests offered by EnteroLab.

Tortilla chips are made from masa (flour made from corn cooked in lye to break down and remove most of the pericarp). The pericarp is the indigestible outer shell. Fritos are made by extruding whole corn through a die using extreme pressure which creates enough instantaneous heat to cook the chip as it is extruded. Therefore the primary differences between tortilla chips and Fritos are the pericarp (which is high fiber and cannot be digested) and the corn oil content (Fritos retain all of the corn oil, tortilla chips do not). I can't tolerate Fritos either. They taste great, and they go down well, but then I get a belly ache a few hours later.

Tex