My situation: I was diagnosed when I was 17 (I'm 36 now). Had a VERY rough time with it. Eventually, medication started to respond to mask the symptoms and I was able to live a normal(ish) life. This went on for years. I had a few flare ups from time to time, it would settle, and go back into remission. Then, around 2012 I started looking at how food affected the body in a big way.
I was fed up of medication masking my symptoms, and instead wanted to fix root cause. It started with me researching heavily - and before you knew it I had beaten it. Since end of 2012 I’ve not had any symptoms, any medication, blood tests are normal, and now I can eat what I want without feeling rough after it.
The thing is, with crohns (or any other disease) you need nutrients to heal it. Your body is a very powerful thing and know how to heal if it’s given the right nutrients. Problem is, most western food these days not only don’t contain sufficient nutrition, they contain chemical irritants that are increasingly being related to the cause of many health issues.
When Crohn’s is active, it can be sometimes hard to get the correct nutrients from whole natural foods because of the fibre content can irritate crohn’s further - kinda like rubbing sandpaper on a wound. Enter juicing. Juicing (not blending, there is a difference) removes the insoluble fibre from foods that contain powerful healing nutrients like carrots and greens, and leaves you with a glass of easy to digest, enzyme packed, nutrient dense liquid. You are quite literally giving your body good fuel to repair. You wouldn’t put dirty petrol into your car, right? So why do we as westerners constantly eat shit? Why do we eat dirty fuel? It’s not doing us any good.
For me, I watched a documentary on Netflix called ‘Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead’ - watch that. Also watch Hungry For Change. The FS&ND is a morbid title, but don’t let that put you off. Watch it. It changed my life. It changed my life, and for two years I travelled the country giving talks on how to heal the body with nutrients.
Long story short, this ended up in me actually meeting the guy from that documentary and I make a small appearance talking about my situation in the sequel, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead 2. You can also see that on Netflix.
So with Crohns, you have to also be careful of sugar intake and gut bacteria. People with crohns have an overgrowth of bad bacteria which causes flare ups and symptoms. Sugar, feeds this bacteria. Watch out for it. Also, to phase out sugar stop eating it. Refined sugar (the type we typically put in our cups of tea) is a multi-chain sugar on a molecular level, so it stays in the gut longer during digestion. Instead, when phasing out sugar try and use single cell sugars (monosaccharides) like honey or fruit.
Get a HIGH QUALITY pro-biotic. I cannot fucking state this enough. I’m not talking about shop bought actimel or whatever - I’m talking something like this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Garden-Life-Whole-Probiotic-Supplement/dp/B000GWG8FS/ref=sr_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1516460764&sr=8-1&keywords=primal+defence+ultra
Mate, I know that may appear expensive but trust me. Get her that and take two before bed every single day. What will happen, is that she may see some symptoms for 24 to 72 hours but keep doing it and she’ll start seeing improvements after that. The good bacteria will start populating, and the bad bacteria will have to pass out through her stool (hence the 24 to 72 hours). This can cause a bit of bloating, but for this you have to go through this in order to get better.
Other thing to avoid (or reduce if you can’t avoid) during the healing process is milk/cheese/wheat/processed foods/alcohol/excess sugar.
Do this. Watch the documentaries. Buy the probiotic. Come back to me and report in.