Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) Diet - Week 1 (Days 1-3)

"The Specific Carbohydrate Diet™ has proven to be highly successful for many who suffer from various bowel disorders as well as the many related problems which actually stem from imbalances in the intestinal tract" - http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/ So, time to give another thing a go....I've bought the book, looked up what is 'legal' to eat and am going to give it a go for a month...no harm in trying I say...so here goes.

Day 1 - Mon
Breakfast - 1x Danone Actimel*, Boiled Egg
Lunch - 2 x Boiled Egg, chicken, 3 slices Cheddar Cheese, Avocado with lemon juice & pepper, Lettuce**, Tomato
Dinner - Fish (sauce made with milk butter and honey dijon mustard***) , Cauliflower, Broccoli

Bowel Movements - 3 - Mucus(M),Blood(B) and a bit loose on the last one.

Meds - 4 x Salazopyrin, 20mg Prednisolne
Vitamins - Magnesium with Folic acid and Vit D (combo 1 tablet)

Weight - 64.2kgs (141.53lbs)
Other - No noticeable rumbles / gurgles in the stomach / intestine area after eating Dinner

Day 2 - Tue
Breakfast - 1x Danone Actimel*, Banana, 3 very small slices of Cheddar Cheese
Lunch - scrambled eggs (2 eggs, milk****, butter), chicken, 3 slices Cheddar Cheese, Avocado with lemon juice & pepper, tomato
Dinner - Mince burgers (mince, egg & onion), carrotts
Dessert - Fruit Salad - Pear, Melon, Kiwi fruit, Pineapple, Strawberries

Bowel Movements - 2 - M and a bit of more B than yesterday

Meds - 4 x Salazopyrin, 20mg Prednisolne

Vitamins - Magnesium with Folic acid and Vit D (combo 1 tablet)

Weight - 63.5kgs(139.99lbs)

Other - Woke up this morning to a few stomach pains...nothing too painful...could be part of the colon clean-out....but way too early to say for definite. Heard a few gurgles this morning in the intestine area, but only small and nothing like what I was hearing last week on a 'normal' diet. Went to BIO shop to look for Almond Flour, but no luck there. I have found out however that I should be able to get it in Avignon..so just an hours drive away. God, I miss bread...we have a visitor at present staying with us and he had toast this morning.... :( ... I love toast... :( ... A few gurgles after dinner... a few minor little pains on the left side of the intestine.

Day 3 - Wed
Breakfast - 1x Danone Actimel*, Banana
Lunch - scrambled eggs (2 eggs, milk****, butter), chicken, 3 slices Cheddar Cheese, Avocado with lemon juice & p boiled eggs, chicken, grated cheese, tomato
Dinner - Lamb kebabs cooked on the BBQ with pepper and onion, Broccoli, Cheese Bread(made as per the SCD recipe)
Dessert - Fruit Salad - Pear, Melon, Kiwi fruit, Pineapple, Strawberries

Bowel Movements - 1 - M and B, but of less amounts than yesterday

Meds - 4 x Salazopyrin, 20mg Prednisolne Vitamins - Magnesium with Folic acid and Vit D (combo 1 tablet)

Weight - 63.2kgs(139.33lbs)

Other - Again woke up this morning to a few stomach pains...nothing too painful. Gurgles are down today in the intestine area. Felt a bit sluggish in the morning, but after 1hr or so that went away

Couple of possible problems
*So I found out on Day 3 that Actimel is a big NO NO under the SCD diet, but I am going to continue to use it for another 2 weeks...
** I sprayed balsamic vinegar on the lettuce and don't know if this is an illegal item or not
*** Honey Dijon mustard - it is an illegal SCD item, it contains sugar...but as I boiled it in the milk, I'm hoping that some of the refined sugar was lost....
**** Milk is illegal, but it was heated..and it was only a little bit...say 30 - 40ml

Thoughts so far on SCD diet

• I'm eating pretty well so far
  
• I really wanted bread and potatoes on Day 1 & 2 - I didn't realise I would have withdraw symptoms
• Can't find Almond Flour in France, but will keep looking
• Missing chocolate and treats - I wonder how long that craving will last
• I wonder if this is similar to some detoxes

I'm going to document the next month on the SCD diet, with posts every few days, just so I can have a complete record of this trail.

Washing Powder - Spanish style - oh if only

On a recent holiday, I came across this washing powder...ahhhh, if only life was so simple and we could wash away the UC ...

In saying that though, I have started to make a change with my diet ...I'm going to attempt to do a full month on the SCD diet and see what happens. Now, this has actually taken me a whole year to reach this point as when I first bought the book entitled "Breaking the Vicious Cycle" I took one look at it at went..NO WAY! TOO HARD.

Basically it's a book that deals with what might cause us to have such a crappy disease - Intestinal Health through Diet - but with everything else not working, well what the hell says I....I can give it a months go and see what happens...it will only cost me time preparing stuff from scratch, but who is to know, this might finally sort me out. Some serious alarm bells went off in my head while reading this again and what we though was good for us, could actually be part of the problem...bang goes potatoes, bread, rice, ice-cream and chocolate(along with loads of other things...bugger and I love them....oh, but in comes dry wine and other things that I'm sure I can survive on. The down side is that if I do see results within the first month, then I really will have to commit to this diet for 2 years to get finally get rid of UC and off all the drugs. I'm still going to use the hypnotherapy as I do believe it has helped me in many way, but unfortunately for me, it couldn't make the UC go away.

3rd Anniversary

Little did I know how my life was going to change, but 3 years ago this month was when I saw the first drops of blood on the tissue roll.

When I look by back, I realise how scared and stupid I was. I didn't do anything about it for weeks. I didn't have any pain or bouts of running to the toilet. There was just the ominous presents of blood. If I had have went to the doctors as soon as I noticed it would it have made a difference? I doubt it.

I actually feel sad about the life I used to have. Maybe I would have become more stressed out anyway as the kids get older and different pressures appear in life. Who is to know.

So here I am, 3 years later..still ploughing on each day and wondering what will happen next.

How I wish for the days when you could plan 6 months ahead without having to worrying about bowel movements......aaaahhhhhh those were the days.

Delete...

It's so easy just to hit the delete button on my computer to make things nice and tidy. It's such a shame I can't get into my own body's system and hit delete on UC.

Then again, just because you've hit delete on your computer, it doesn't mean it's completely gone away...it's just hidden from view for now... the only way to get rid of something completely is to re-image it...mmmm...now if only I can figure out how can I do that for myself...but to begin with I have to have an image to be able to restore to...maybe that is what all the self help imagery is about...I'll have to think about that.

I think I got dumped by the Doc

Well, this has been an interesting week. I went to see my GI on Tuesday with a little bit of trepidation as I hadn't followed his instruction...(see previous blog)..little did I know how badly he was going to take this. Now the French can be highly strung and are quite likely to through a wobbler at you over something that wouldn't really bother me, but then again we're all different and react to things differently. Anyway, basically I told him that I hadn't done as instructed with the medicines, but had in fact finished with the predisolne and wasn't going back on them at least for the next couple of months. They are evil little tablets, but unfortunately for me, they are the only thing that works to bring the flare up under control. Now that I'm finished them though, I'm told that it could be up to 6 months before my own body is creating the correct levels of cortisone.

Also of note, is that the bleeding and mucus had actually subsided. There still is a bit of mucus, but the bleeding is now minimal and hopefully will become less and less.

So what did I do to get to here....well I moved away from mesalazine and back onto Sulfsalazine(both 5-ASA). For me mesalazine wasn't working..I have no idea if it ever worked neither as I was put on sulfsalazine first, but came of it when I got headaches. Anyway, I tried mesalazine for over a year and it didn't seem to make any difference..in fact I only got worse. I also am back on the wheat grass tables, Vitamin B (for stress), daily Probiotics via yogurt and have a Paul McKenna CD to try and change my life in 7 days.

I've not been very good though with the refined sugar over the past few days...those damn Easter Eggs :D

So back to my GI...well basically I wasn't asked to make a further follow up appointment. Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but surely (and as has been the pattern for the last 9 months) he would have wanted to check up on me in a months time....oh well, not this time by the looks of it.

Maybe this should be the catalyst for me to find a new GI :D

The state of affairs...

So, I'm done with the steroids...finished on Saturday...OMG..scary or what..but I intend to hang in there...unfortunately my resolve to stay away from refined sugar was a bit buggered by Easter, but I did last 1.5 weeks. Did it make a difference...honestly I think not, but I did have a go at least.

Good news is that my UC has gotten no worse and I've lost 1.5 kgs...excellent...and I'm still listening to Listen to Guy's hypnotherapy recording with Geoffrey and have also just got a book and CD from the Paul McKenna collection. Time will tell.

Back to the GI on Tuesday...oh lucky me .... NOT!

Oh and before I go .... a lesson I learnt last week, was not to surf the internet for information that I really do not need to know about right now as all it does is put scary pictures into your head for a procedure you don't yet need!!!

Life is short...time to sort it out

So I went to see my French GI doc on Tuesday and I was delivered bad news. "It's flaring worse than 4 weeks ago".....well I know that...so what to do...his response was to up the preds to 30mgs again and if that didn't work then in 2 weeks he was going to put me on a new medicine which will need weekly blood tests and can do something to your heart!

Yep, that scared the bejezzus out of me and after paying my 28 euros I left the surgery stunned and then started to cry. How the hell did I get myself into such a mess? It's not fear! Why me?

So for those with UC, well, you know the emotions we suffer. But (2 days later) now I'm pissed! So I decided a few things.....NO, I will not up the preds, in fact I dropped to 5mg today....and no I won't take any medicine that could affect my heart! I'm so pissed off that I'm cortisone dependant now that there is no way I'm going back up to 30mg. These are the reasons why:-

• Yep there is a bit of mucus and bleeding, but no I'm not running continually to the toilets.
• I've been stressed over my boys op and family stuff going up now for quite a while.
• I've been eating way too much sweet stuff and god knows what that's been doing to my insides.
• I've put on 4 kgs and that is just pissing me off now too
• I'm sick of living in France and want to go home..it's just too hard here
• My boy has been getting too many sore tummies lately and that's playing on my mind. I don't want him to have what I have.
  

So what am I going to do about it.

• Well, I'm still stuck here for another year for I can't move, but I can find another GI that speaks a bit more English
• Not increase the preds, instead I'm going to finish up on then in 7 days
• For at least the next 3 weeks I have stopped eating eating refined sugar...no chocolates, no sweeties, no ice-cream, no sugar in tea (and that should help reduce the weight)
• Do a bit more exercise..an extra 30 mins walking or some wii fit maybe.
• Listen to Guy's hypnotherapy recording with Geoffrey

All I know is that I need to get properly into remission and I have to get off the preds. So already I started reading Guy Cohen's book again and listening to Geoffrey's recording. I've cut out sugar and hopefully in a few weeks I've seen some decent signs of the UC going again.

In 2 weeks I go back to see my GI doctor and since I'm not following his instructions I'm really hoping for an improvement.