Please help! Diagnosed with diverticulitis - Page 2

[danipoppins]

Originally Posted by sahmmie

I'm really scared now. I'm having a second attack of diverticulitis. Intense pain and fever were the telltale signs. The only differences in my diet in the days preceding the attack were, cucumbers (I love them but haven't had them since last summer), grape nuts cereal, and an increase in my coffee drinking from 1 cup a day to 3-4 cups a day.


Any advice or wisdom? Especially about natural/dietary help for this condition.

Anyone else here struggling with this?

My knee jerk thought is that your struggling with some underlying food intolerance that has caused your intestinal tract to be inflamed. If I were in your shoes, I would ask for a celiac panel at the docs (simple blood test) and then take all traces of gluten out of your diet. I'd probably take out dairy too for good measure. Get the test BEFORE you take gluten completely out of your diet though because you need to be eating gluten for the blood test to be accurate.

Even if the tests don't come back positive, you will likely feel better without gluten in your diet. It could be some other major food group causing you trouble (dairy, soy, etc) but my first suspect when I hear irritable bowel syndrome, colitis or diverticulitis is always gluten.

Hope you're feeling better soon!

[sahmmie]

Originally Posted by momofmine

Because I think that surgery and pharmaceutical meds are the only tools in their toolbox. That's just the conventional medical model right now. I wish it wasn't that way, but it seems to be the way it is for now.

If I were you, I would start the intro diet to SCD today. I just saw your above post about losing weight on it. Do you need to lose weight or are you saying you fear you would lose weight? It has been my experience with people that I have talked to that their weight normalizes, depending on whether they need to gain or lose. My son and I were eating the exact same diet, and he GAINED weight (which he really needed to do) and I LOST weight (which although I was not obese, I needed to lose what I did).

There are several SCD and GAPS threads, a couple that are active right now, just do a search for them if you want to. There is also a great SCD support list. Good luck!

Thanks. Yes, I do need to lose weight. I should have mentioned that! I'll look for those threads.

[sahmmie]

Originally Posted by mbravebird

Just to add in that my mother, who has diverticu-something (not sure which one or both, just that she had really bad symptoms), is seeing very good results with the GAPS diet, which is very similar to SCD. (I think they allow a few different foods than SCD, like seaweed, and encourage bifido supplementation in addition).

I sort of went on the GAPS diet by accident -- I meant to try grain-free/paleo, and found a menu planner that was both GAPS and paleo. I couldn't keep it up, because I started the "healing crisis" and was detoxing into my breastmilk. But I was amazed at how much of an effect it had on me. I may try it again at some point.

My mother has been on basically the "intro diet", with just a few things added, for a couple of months now, and is finally having normal bowel function for the first time in years. Her psoriasis is also improving. She is also getting acupuncture, and feels like that is really helping, too.

Thank you. I will look into the GAPS diet too. I'm at such a loss right now as to what to eat. It's really scary. My bowels have been bugging me for years; mainly IBS type symptoms. I just figured it was hereditary since my mom has it. I had no idea how serious it could be.

[sahmmie]

Originally Posted by danipoppins

My knee jerk thought is that your struggling with some underlying food intolerance that has caused your intestinal tract to be inflamed. If I were in your shoes, I would ask for a celiac panel at the docs (simple blood test) and then take all traces of gluten out of your diet. I'd probably take out dairy too for good measure. Get the test BEFORE you take gluten completely out of your diet though because you need to be eating gluten for the blood test to be accurate.

Even if the tests don't come back positive, you will likely feel better without gluten in your diet. It could be some other major food group causing you trouble (dairy, soy, etc) but my first suspect when I hear irritable bowel syndrome, colitis or diverticulitis is always gluten.

Hope you're feeling better soon!

Well, I don't doubt that grains bother me. I never thought so until I started to really pay attention to what I ate and how it made me feel. I am eating very little grains at this point; just some white flour products from time to time, but very little. I'll probably cut that out completely. It's just hard to know what to eat. Once I get the books on SCD and GAPS I'll have a better handle on things.

Thanks ladies. If you have any more ideas or experience, please post them. Thank you!

[TawniAline]

that's so interesting! my DH had the exact same scenario- we had switched our whole family over to a vegan diet (after being pretty much a meat and potatoes kind of family) and we maintained it for almost 2 years- when we started to get a little less militant about it he had a major episode that got him diagnosed with diverticulitis (they actually thought he may have perforated at first- which thank god he hadn't) we too have sworn off dramatic diet changes now and i was just looking through and considering diatomaceous earth- but was concerned about whether it would be harmful to him or not since he has the pockets i was afraid it might be possible for it to lodge similar to seeds/nuts/etc- still searching for research :) but your post brought me here :) very interesting :))