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Oh, the BRAT diet.

The post What you need to know about BRAT diet for diarrhea in IBD, IBS and Celiac disease appeared first on Know Your Gut.

The following is a comment left by one of my readers, Lisa. As she says, she decided to publish her comment with a hope that her husband’s experience with Flare Stopper Book can help others. Lisa’s comment is being presented in full and without any changes (except adding color).

“I’m not one to leave review but If this review can help someone in my husband’s position we will be happy.

Here’s his background:
He was diagnosed at age 19 and is 48 now. Everything was well managed with medication until about 8 months ago when he went from being in full remission with no sign of disease to full pancolitis in what seemed like no time at all. He went from being very active, to his life revolving around his disease. In November he developed an abscess which became a fistula, and they have been unable to repair it to date.

He was hospitalized for 8 days in January and since then has continued to be on a high dose of steroids, and they have have continued to increase in medications. Despite all of this he was still using the bathroom 15-20 times per day many days.

We had purchased the book but it wasn’t until the doctor’s office called last week and recommended hospitalization with potential surgery that he decided he must try the Flare Stopper Diet.

The post Discover the Best Ulcerative Colitis Diet appeared first on Know Your Gut.

The post New Hope for Crohn’s Disease & Ulcerative Colitis Patients appeared first on Know Your Gut.

When you are in a flare, or just experience chronic diarrhea, you are losing life sustaining electrolytes at alarming rate. That is why doctors offer commercial electrolyte drinks, such as Gatorade for adults or Pedialyte for children, to prevent dehydration and life–threatening electrolyte dis-balance. On the surface, it sounds good and should resolve the problem. Right?

Well, may be for some, but NOT for people with IBD (Colitis and Crohn’s)
So, what is a problem? Actually, the problem is 2-fold:

#1 Harmful ingredients:

Excessive amount of refined sugars (mostly GMO) added in the form of dextrose and sucrose syrup, artificial colors, artificial sweeteners and preservatives (citric acid, mostly GMO derived) . All these ingredients are known to irritate sensitive gut. Do you need more irritation during your flare? I don’t think so.

See for yourself the list of ingredients for Gatorade and Pedialyte.
Gatorade Ingredients: Water, Sucrose Syrup, Glucose-Fructose Syrup, Citric Acid, Natural Grape Flavor, Salt, Sodium Citrate, Monopotassium Phosphate, Red 40, Blue 1.
Pedialyte Ingredients: Water, Dextrose. Less than 2% of: Citric Acid, Potassium Citrate, Salt, Sodium Citrate, Natural Flavor, Sucralose, Acesulfame Potassium, Zinc Gluconate, Red 40, and Blue 1.

#2 Not Enough Electrolytes

People with Inflammatory Bowel Disease need much more electrolytes than average person simply because they lose more. Commercial electrolyte drinks simply don’t have enough electrolytes to satisfy increased needs of IBD patients during a flare. This conclusion has been confirmed by researchers from University of Michigan IBD Team. (1)

But there is a solution! I present to you Galina’s Electrolyte Drink. Its full of life supporting minerals, free of harmful additives and super affordable.

Galina’s Electrolyte Drink was created out of necessity.

Many years ago, during my flares, I tried drinking both Gatorade and Pedialyte. However, I’ve noticed that I feel worse after drinking them. Then, I took my time to study the reasons why. Just short analysis of the ingredients revealed the problem. It became clear to me that commercial electrolyte/sport drinks have way too much sugar and chemicals that increased my gut inflammation.

So, I had a problem on my hands. The desperate need for electrolyte supplementation did not go away with my realization, but rather made my problem more difficult.

I could not find any commercial electrolyte replacement drink with enough electrolytes and without added refined sugar, chemicals and preservatives. So, I had to create my own. That’s how Galina’s Electrolyte Drink was born.

This healing re-hydration drink is easy to make. It takes less than 5 minutes, and has only 6 ingredients you might already have at home.

Here is the recipe.

Galina’s Electrolyte Drink
Ingredients:
1 liter of water (about 32 ounces or 4 cups)
½ teaspoon of Himalayan salt (sodium chloride)
½ teaspoon of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
Juice of 1 organic lemon (has potassium and folate)
1 teaspoon of Organic Unsulfured Blackstrap Molasses
1/4 teaspoon of KCl (potassium chloride)

How to Make:
1. Heat ½ cup of pure water in a pot until hot.
2. Add salt, baking soda and molasses; stir well until fully dissolved.
3. Add 3.5 cups of water to the mixture of salt, baking soda and molasses. Then add lemon juice. Mix well. Drink at room temperature 1 cup every 1-2 hours during diarrhea.
4. Store in Mason jars or glass bottles.

The amount of sodium chloride and potassium chloride in this drink was modeled after oral rehydration solution used by World Health Organization to replace lost electrolytes in people with infectous diarrheal diseases. (2)

I used molasses in this drink because natural cane sugar in molasses increases the absorption of sodium and potassium in this drink. Also, molasses have lower glycemic load than sugar (65 for sugar; 55 for molasses), and unlike refined, white table sugar, molasses contain high levels of easy to absorb iron, potassium, selenium, magnesium, calcium and vitamin B6, which are much needed for IBD patients during their flare.

What are electrolytes and why we need them “An electrolyte is a substance that produces an electrically conducting solution when dissolved in water. Electrolytes carry a charge and are essential for life. All higher forms of life need electrolytes to survive.
In our bodies, electrolytes include sodium (Na+), potassium (K+), calcium (Ca2+), bicarbonate (HCO3-), magnesium (Mg2+), chloride (C1-), and hydrogen phosphate (HPO42-).”
Sodium: when you combine sodium with chloride you get salt. With chronic diarrhea during colitis and Crohn’s flare, you can experience hyponatremia (low blood sodium) that can cause fatigue, muscle cramps, nausea and vomiting.
Potassium is vital for normal function of nerve and muscle cells. Running to the bathroom multiple times a day can trigger hypokalemia (low blood potassium). Symptoms of hypokalemia: heart palpitations, muscle spasms or damage and numbness. If you have severe hypokalemia you must be hospitalized and given potassium intravenously.
Bicarbonate What is bicarbonate or baking soda? It is a combination of sodium ions (Na) and bicarbonate ions (HCO3). It’s formula is NaHCO3, and it’s sold as white fine powder. Bicarbonate is the base that neutralizes acids in the blood. Severe diarrhea can cause metabolic acidosis, which is acid-base disorder and when untreated can be life threatening. That is why we should add some pure baking soda to our electrolyte drink because soda is a highly alkaline compound.

Reference # 1: University of Michigan IBD Team Facebook post. Trying to rehydrate with Gatorade? January 18, 2016. 

Reference #2: http://www.rehydrate.org/ors/expert-consultation.html

The post The Best Electrolyte Drink During a Flare appeared first on Know Your Gut.

A Holiday Treat for People with Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s disease

This recipe is gut-friendly dessert created for people with Colitis and Crohn’s. Please understand: you cannot eat ANY desserts while you are in active flare! My patients can eat this type of a cookie while on Phase 3 of my program called Colitis & Crohn’s Healing System. It means they are in full remission. And no intestinal inflammation is present. So, at this point, they can tolerate gut-friendly desserts occasionally.

These shortbread cookies are so easy to make. Just mix all the ingredients; freeze for 1 hour, and then bake. These incredible buttery cookies just melt-in-your-mouth, and I bet, that you won’t stop until you’ll eat at least 3 cookies. Some people are saying that these cookies almost as good as sex.

These cookies taste heavenly! You will never tell that this is a gluten free cookie that has very little sugar. If you are on SCD or GAPS diet you can use honey instead of sugar. However, I do like to use a little bit of organic brown sugar in my cookies occasionally for extra flavor. Each cookies has only 1.2 grams of organic sugar.

I make them for the Holidays and Birthday parties. Because these cookies do not contain eggs, they are suitable for people with egg allergies. If you don’t have walnuts on hand, you can you pecans instead.

This cookie dough freezes quite well, so you can bake a fresh batch on a short notice. So, get started with treating your loved ones’ including yourself with this fantastic dessert!

Shortbread Cookies, Gluten-Free
Serves: 44 cookies

Ingredients:

2.5 cups blanched almond flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda + 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped into large chunks
1/4 cup of organic brown sugar
250 grams sweet organic butter, softened
3/4 cup organic tapioca flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

How to Make:

1. In a large bowl combine almond flour, salt and tapioca flour.
2. In a medium bowl whip butter with an electric mixer until fluffy. Then add sugar and vanilla and beat on low for one minute.
3. Mix wet ingredients into dry by using an electric mixer on low.
4. Mix baking soda with baking power. Then add lemon juice; let it fizzle for a minute.
5. Add to dough and mix well. Let dough sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.
6. Place dough in center of a piece of parchment paper.
7. Form into rectangular log with straight sides. Width of the log is about 3 inches, height is about 1.5 inches
8. Place log in freezer for one hour or until firm.
9. Then unwrap the log and cut into 1/8 inch thick slices!
10. Place slices on a parchment lined baking sheet!
11. Bake at 325°F for about 12-15 minutes or until lightly golden.
12. Cool for 1 hour. Dust with organic sugar powder. Decorate. Enjoy!!

Copyright © 2015 by Galina Kotlyar, MS RD LDN

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This story was written by Jane W(a loving wife of UC patient), and published on website www.ihaveuc.com on January 23, 2017.

This man is not my patient, and I do not know him personally. He just used ONE remedy published on my blog.

Meet Jane:
I”m Jane, loving wife of Greg who is an avid outdoor man. He has just turned 58, but still likes to act 21, which means he breaks things- ribs, calf muscles etc. He is a farmer; in the flower/ flowering plant industry, and is a real handy-man who can fix anything, and it is very hard to slow him down! UC managed to do that though- when he had to be within running distance of the loo, and had no spare energy.
We have 4 adult children, 3 are married, and 3 wonderful little grand-kids, who love their “Pa” and did a great job of cheering him up when he needed a laugh or a hug.

Some more about them:
We live south of Brisbane, Australia, and love to camp in the bush or at the beach, but over the past few years our holidays have been spent in the Solomon Islands doing charity work with the lovely village people who have so little but are so happy. UC put a temporary halt to that.

Her Husband’s Colitis Symptoms:
His current symptoms are GONE, just a little trouble with heartburn, only mild, and only after lunch, no matter what he eats and which we haven’t found a solution for yet.

Good News – From a Wife of a UC’er
Greg has moderate UC pancolitis diagnosed just last June. It is now 1 year since his symptoms started, after a VERY stressful time at work. We tried to do the natural healing way, but made some mistakes, and he lost a lot of weight- it was a too steep learning curve. He ended up in hospital with sepsis and a bad flare, so they put him on antibiotics, Prednizone for 6 weeks and also Mezavant. We got off that as soon as his symptoms were normal, and started back searching for a natural way. He was taking l-glutamine, and lots of other herbs, and a eating a very simple, natural, dairy free and GF mostly vegan vegetarian diet, but after 3 weeks off the meds his bleeding, pains and 5-6 bm a day started again.

We then went to a Naturopath and started on Metagenics probiotics and various herbs. She went searching for other foods that he was reacting to but couldn’t find any. He didn’t get any worse but didn’t get much better either. Then I came across the ‘Know Your Gut” website and found a recipe for a tea made from organic flaxseed and liquid chlorophyll. He drank it 3 times a day 1/2 hr before meals and also did small enema’s (120 mls) with it at night. The very next day he said he felt better (less “raw” in the rectum) and his bleeding and BM slowed down over the next 2 weeks. After 2 1/2 weeks (Christmas Day- what an awesome Christmas present!! Praise God!!) his bleeding stopped and he has been having 2 or sometimes 3 normal BM each day since then. His pains/cramping have also gone now.

We plan to keep up the cloroflax drink for a while. Greg says that he is happy to do it forever, he says it is not that bad (it’s flavoured with spearmint). Hopefully that won’t be necessary! We are still doing the supplements and diet, and are working on getting his digestion improved with herbs. Also working on the stress levels. He is de-stressing by early morning sun-bathing reading a good book!

Here is the link to my original blogpost which describes this recipe:

“Sore anus? Bleeding hemorrhoids? Try Flaxseed tea and Chlorophyll
https://knowyourgut.com/sore-anus-bleeding-hemorrhoids-try-flaxseed-tea-and-chlorophyll/

Galina’s Comments: this is just one recipe from my IBD Recovery Program called Crohn’s and Colitis the Flare Stopper System. Although, I do not usually recommend my patients to rely on just ONE remedy to stop a flare, this man’s recovery on a single remedy was pretty remarkable. Hope you or somebody in need will try this recipe and share the results with me and others. Stay tuned for future posts on simple and super effective tips on how to stop a flare in Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s disease.

The post Inspirational Story on How a Simple Remedy Helped One Man to Stop his Ulcerative Colitis Flare appeared first on Know Your Gut.

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When it comes to food we all want the best, the safest and most nutritious food on our table, especially for our children. So, for many of us look for “Organic” on our food labels.
However, some big corporate producers are choosing to compromise even the sacred “Organic” label for higher profits.

A Shocking Truth about “Industrial-Scale” Egg Production

I came across a very interesting article the other day and I just had to share it with you.
The story is about Organic eggs.
Although marked “Organic”, how can we actually be sure we are buying eggs from healthy and happy free roaming chickens?  The short answer is: we can’t ! Not just by looking at the “Organic” label, anyway.
Here is why: most of the large corporate egg producers utilize so called “industrial-scale egg production method”.

And here is the shocker: this “industrial-scale” method does not require providing hens with access to outside pasture, or any kind of vegetated open space whatsoever.
Moreover, these so called “organic aviaries” are allowed to cram hundreds of thousands of chickens into small buildings, up to 150,000 hens to be exact. So, these chickens never even get to see the light of day.
Do you think those poor, stressed out birds can produce truly healthy and vibrant organic eggs we seek for our families? I don’t think so.

Experience Superior Taste and Quality of Eggs from Small, Organic Producers

There are some smaller organic egg producers that utilize perfectly healthy, humane and truly organic methodologies, including so called “Pasture-based organic” method where “birds are allowed to roam freely. In these situations, chickens can exhibit their natural behaviors, foraging, scratching, and flapping their wings. Additionally, on such pasture hens receive a percentage of their natural diet from fresh grass, earthworms, seeds, and insects.

But the trouble is that the large corporate egg operations now control over 80% of the organic egg market.
However, not to panic!

Organic Egg Scorecard Can Help You to Buy Truly Healthy, Organic Eggs

There is a good news: Cornucopia Institute concluded a two year study and issued a report containing an “Organic Egg Scorecard”.
This extremely useful scorecard allows you check for the safest brands, companies and farmers.
Now, you can pick those that use truly humane, natural and healthy methodologies, and, YES, those do exist ! Also, you will be amazed by what you thought were high quality organic egg producers.

Check out the scorecard and watch the interesting video. Let’s start supporting the true organic producers and farmers.
https://www.cornucopia.org/scrambled-eggs-separating-factory-farm-egg-production-from-authentic-organic-agriculture/

The post The Truth About Organic Eggs appeared first on Know Your Gut.

Heavenly Chia Seed Pudding

When I don’t have time to prepare breakfast in the morning, this quick and super delicious pudding provides enough protein, fiber and healthy omega-3 fatty acids to keep me working and running until early lunch.

I like to prepare this chia seed pudding at night, so I have it all ready for my breakfast in the morning. I call chia seeds – am amazing superfood because one ounce (2 tablespoons) of chia seeds contain 4 grams of protein, 9 grams of fat (omega-3s), 11 grams of fiber, calcium (18% of RDA), magnesium (30%) and good amount of zinc, Vitamin B3 (niacin), Vitamin B1 (thiamine), Vitamin B2 & Potassium.
For people with Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn’s disease, IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), Celiac disease, Gastritis this pudding is especially beneficial because it has tapioca-like gel consistency which is very soothing for a sensitive gut. Another  benefit: this recipe provides more calcium than 1 cup of milk. I recommend this recipe in IBD (Colitis and Crohn’s) Healing System and IBS Healing Systems in Phase II and III.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup organic chia seeds
1 cup organic unsweetened soy milk
1/2 cup coconut milk
pinch of organic stevia (to taste for Phase II) or
1 teaspoon of organic liquid honey (for Phase III)
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup organic blueberries
Handful of chopped almonds

How to Make:
1. Place all the ingredients above in a blender. Blend on high speed for 30 seconds or until it becomes thickened and very smooth. Pour mixture into a Mason jar or any glass container with a lid.
2. Refrigerate overnight. The pudding should be thick. Top with blueberries and chopped almonds. Enjoy!

The post One Minute Tasty Breakfast Recipe for People with Colitis, Crohn’s, Celiac and Gastritis appeared first on Know Your Gut.