Another in the “Roadmap to Recovery” series comes with a focus on Nutrition! While it was made explicitly clear to me in hospital that Ulcerative Colitis had not started because of a poor diet and wouldn’t be made any worse by a poor diet, it was also made clear to me that there would be some foods that my body would now find difficult to process. From this we decided to look for a Nutritionist who had experience in treating Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
We picked a nutritionist from Norwich called The Family Nutrition Expert. Catherine has had loads of experience in working with people who have Bowel problems and she has been able to guide me. We paid for a number of sessions where initially she assessed my current diet and then looked for changes that I would be able to make.
What became clear was that I was eating nowhere near enough protein. Protein is really important for the gut microbiome (apparently) and therefore eating a good amount of protein will help the overall symptoms. Also, protein helps to stabilise blood sugar levels which in turn helps with eating as you are less tempted to eat complete rubbish as you stay fuller for longer.
I was also eating way too much sugar and this is also not helpful for a person with a bowel condition. Eating sugar and sugary foods causes the sugar levels in your blood to spike, as most people will know, this can then cause a crash as well. While the crash has a well known negative impact on motivation levels, there is something that I find interesting that happens as well. When your blood sugars drop from the spike it sends your body into a ‘stressful’ situation. Your body kind of panics that you are going to end up with blood sugar levels that are too low and floods your system with cortisol (the stress hormone). As I have already spoken about, there is a lot of research that links stress with flare ups of Ulcerative Colitis symptoms. This stress is not just a psychological level of stress but also a physical level of stress. It then prompts your brain to eat more and the cycle continues. So if you are able to stabilise your blood sugar levels then in theory, you should find things like weight loss a lot easier as well as the symptoms of Ulcerative Colitis being reduced.
I worked really hard after all of this feedback to put changes into my diet. I ate more protein rich foods, worked to cut out the large amount of sugar that I was eating, cut down on fizzy drinks and looked to eat foods that were easy to digest.
Mainly, it worked. The theory is not foolproof. At the end of the day my bowel is inflamed and it isnt processing things as it should be however I did find that when i starting eating better, I felt a lot better as well.
As many people will know, keeping up with nutrition changes are one of the hardest things so we will see how it pans out and whether I manage to keep it up. Here’s to hoping.
I massively recommend the Family Nutrition Expert for anyone that needs help with any sort of nutrition issues. She is an expert in her field but understands that you arent perfect and life happens sometimes! Take a look, she is on facebook and has a website as well!