On the subject of diet - I'd be really interested to hear any thoughts on why "healthy eating" may not always help us and may be part of the story for those, when you see the long threads about
, what was happening in your life when you got colitis, there are always some people who say that they flared after first adopting a healthy lifestyle.
I have been researching foods, drinks and vitamins that lower or raise cortisol because I am someone whose flares respond well to pred, even after nearly 30 yrs. I thought I had stopped responding to pred over the past few years but finally I have established that I had some sort of low level c diff that evaded stool tests but on scope was seen as pseudomembraneous and therefore infectious. Thus I needed to clear the infection first with flagyl before the pred could kick in as taking pred when you have c diff will likely create better conditions for c diff to thrive.
Given that raised cortisol helps fight inflammation, I thought that perhaps it would be good to naturally raise my cortisol a bit. Even when in remission I have low cortisol levels according to saliva tests (not sure how sensitive these are) and just from my mood and body shape you can tell that I am a low cortisol type of person (for instance night owl, don't hold fat in stomach area, skin and hair consistent with low cortisol).
Anyway - here is a list of things I have found so far that suppress cortisol, this is via net articles so I have tried to only put substances where I have found scientific research studies behind them
What are some of the common dampeners of cortisol?
Tea (including green due to theanine, theanine higher in milky tea - so black tea less "healthy in this context than white), Vitamin C (i.e. fresh produce), Zinc, dark chocolate (rather than cheaper chocolate), omega 3s (fish)
Now for me, when I have a flare start coming on, I tend to think, must get healthy, and include more of above. Meanwhile, I cut out that "unhealthy" stuff that I think maybe is making me ill. From what I can find, some important raisers of cortisol are Cholesterol (especially through transfats and animal fat), Salt, Sugar, alcohol
So I am thinking, actually, if there is inflammation just starting up in the body for some reason and it is immediately at that point that I move onto a diet that lowers my cortisol, if only subtly, it might be a contributor. When I think of those who first got UC when they started on that wholefood diet and gave up smoking (smoking raises cortisol), they might have been giving their gut a hard time with all the new fibre and if they had a genetic tendency to low cortisol response to inflammation, their body suddenly had less tools to fight this new inflammation.
I don't think this would be relevant to everyone with UC at all, only to those people who respond well to pred - and when I say well, I mean in calming the inflammation, I don't respond "well" in other ways as I go very high mentally and get high blood sugar.
Would actually be good to hear arguments against this, but please let me down gently, I am on Pred so quite given to flights of fancy and roid rage
Post Edited (London Lurker) : 3/30/2014 3:54:54 PM (GMT-6)