• Welcome to Crohn's Forum, a support group for people with all forms of IBD. While this community is not a substitute for doctor's advice and we cannot treat or diagnose, we find being able to communicate with others who have IBD is invaluable as we navigate our struggles and celebrate our successes. We invite you to join us.

Struggling with juicing

After all the posts on here about juicing, I have managed to get my hands on a second hand juicer, for the price of a new plug (bargain or what?). So yesterday I juiced 2 carrots (thought I'd start slow) and had it mid afternoon on an empty stomach. In the evening I felt a little off, but I also had pizza for tea at my sister in laws, and thought maybe it was that.

So today I tried a glass of red pepper and carrot juice (just one of each), went out to walk the dog and felt like I might have diarrhoea at any minute. So I come back (carefully), I never did get diarrhoea but my stomach is quite uncomfortable and I have produced some cracking farts.

The only thing that has changed is the juice. Any suggestions on what to try next?
 

rygon

Moderator
Is it an actual juicer, rather than a blender. I know the tesco juicers are in fact just pretty blenders. I know my mums juicer would remove all pulp (which would come out dry) giving you pure juice. Im thinking maybe if it still has pulp still in it, that might be causing you pain.

The only other thing i could recommend is trying different fruit/veg and seeing which, if any, agree with you
 
It does remove the pulp, as far as I can tell. it's a Moulinex centrifugal one, it's old but never used (hence why I got it for free). I still keep burping peppers, even after 6 hours, a snack, dinner, pudding, a litre of water, and a dose of Gaviscon (which I took because I suddenly got a load of acid in my mouth). I think maybe the pepper disagrees with me.
 
I've read before (not quite sure where) that peppers are not good eaten raw as they can cause indigestion. Could be that even if it's juiced? I find myself a bit burpy after eating red peppers even if they're cooked but don't have any other side effects from them.
 
I'm guessing it may be the pepper too. I've found carrots to actually have a solidifying effect on my D. Maybe you could back off for a couple of days then just do watered down carrot? Celery is very mild also if you want to mix that with a carrot and water it down.

Or maybe have it with food instead of an empty stomach.

I'm no expert though.

Congrats on your juicer. Good deal. :D

Edited to say I occasionally get indigestion from pizza (the sauce) yet on other occasions can eat it so maybe that was it the first day. ?
 
Last edited:
The price was right on that juicer that's impressive.

Sounds like you have a little gas. Likely undigested matter in the gut.

I haven't had a lot of pepper juice but I know cabbage does that to some people depending on the state of your gut. If there's a lot of undigested matter in the gut it can start to break it down and cause gas.

In any event good for you, keep at it. If you think peppers give you gas stay away, but keep checking back in on them from time to time.

I had carrot cucumber and parsley the other night, it actually tasted like watermelon.

Have fun with fruit juices too. Be careful drinking them with food but honestly if you're going to be eating pudding and pizza, you won't do any worse with some fruit juice.

You will find combinations of juices have different effects. The one sort of general purpose / multi purpose good for a whole range of things including IBD is a combination of carrot, celery, parsley and spinach. Try it with or without tomato and cucumber and see how you feel with those. With the tomato and that combination you'll get a fresh V8 tasting juice. Go easy on the spinach to start, the leafy greens can taste a little strong.

Again good news on the juicer and enjoy! Health wise you really can't do anything wrong with what you put in it so have fun and know (even with gas) your body is thanking you.
 
I've read before (not quite sure where) that peppers are not good eaten raw as they can cause indigestion. Could be that even if it's juiced? I find myself a bit burpy after eating red peppers even if they're cooked but don't have any other side effects from them.
Yep if a carrot will give you good eyesight when you eat it, it will do the same thing when you juice it. So if a pepper will give you gas when you eat it, the same thing will happen when you juice it. What you've done in juicing is make it immediately available to your body.
 
End, I added a cucumber to my juice a couple of weeks ago and it was delish. I love them anyway. It made it very refreshing.
Cucumber is awesome for your skin hair and nails and teeth. I really like the taste of it with other vegetables. It's one of the things taste wise I find I can add to just about anything.
 
The only thing that has changed is the juice. Any suggestions on what to try next?
Seems like you have 2 suggestions of at least carrot and celery in combination...I do find celery is all around amazing.

Celery is actually an herb like parsley and a really powerful healing one at that.
 
Just one problem... I cannot stand celery! Will try carrot on its own again, see if I get symptoms from that. Gas on its own wouldn't bother me, but the acid and stomach pains do somewhat.
 
Just one problem... I cannot stand celery! Will try carrot on its own again, see if I get symptoms from that. Gas on its own wouldn't bother me, but the acid and stomach pains do somewhat.
I suggest you learn to like celery, it's one of the most healing, healthful things you can consume, especially for gut issues.

If you mix it with carrot, add some cucumber and an apple and some parsley you probably won't even know there's celery in it.

Celery is also alkalinizing - it will balance your body towards a more natural less acidic state, as required by your body. It contains the nutrients that your body can use to regulate that on its on. Most people, not just people with IBD, have an acidic condition due to the modern diet, but that's not the body's natural state.

Glad to see someone trying it, keep at it and let us know...
 
Just one problem... I cannot stand celery! Will try carrot on its own again, see if I get symptoms from that. Gas on its own wouldn't bother me, but the acid and stomach pains do somewhat.
I hope it works out for you and it was just the pizza. There are a lot of things you can juice if you absolutely can't stand celery. Or you can sneak a bit in with a lot of other stuff depending on how icky it is for you.

Also, I don't really like celery eaten but love it juiced so it may surprise you.

I don't know where cucumbers rate on the great-for-you scale but they're really good juiced too.
 
Endibd- to me celery tastes like nail varnish remover. I detest it so much, I once (pre IBD) had a pizza with chicken and vegetables on it. I couldn't eat it because I could taste celery, yet there wasn't any on the pizza to pick off. I checked the ingredients, and the seasoning on the chicken pieces contained celery (amongst other things). That tiny amount was enough to overpower the whole flavour of the pizza. I really can't see myself learning to like it, even mixed with something!

Cucumber however is lovely :)

Had parsnip today, I preferred carrot but I think the parsnip would be OK mixed with something.
 
Endibd- to me celery tastes like nail varnish remover. I detest it so much, I once (pre IBD) had a pizza with chicken and vegetables on it. I couldn't eat it because I could taste celery, yet there wasn't any on the pizza to pick off. I checked the ingredients, and the seasoning on the chicken pieces contained celery (amongst other things). That tiny amount was enough to overpower the whole flavour of the pizza. I really can't see myself learning to like it, even mixed with something!

Cucumber however is lovely :)

Had parsnip today, I preferred carrot but I think the parsnip would be OK mixed with something.
That's a shame it's one of the best healing juices.

Personally I would look at the chemicals I had to down in the form of medications, their cost and side effect and a dependence on them, and look at the threat of facing somone cutting me open at some point potentially, and look at a vegetable I don't like the taste of as the lesser of 2 evils ... but I guess what one person would consider bad isn't considered bad by another.

What about parsley how do you feel about that one?

I've never considered juicig parsnips. I could see how it would taste kind of like carrot. Keep experimenting and having fun with it. You'll find what you like and what you don't and what you can tolerate taste wise.

I suggest taking a look online at some of the healing properties of various fruits and vegetables and experiment based off of that too.
 
Last edited:
I think I could manage parsley mixed in.

Thought this was interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylthiocarbamide
Here's what I found with that chemical in relation to Crohn's in a study:

Study name: Identification of bitter ligands that specifically activate human T2R receptors and related assays for identifying human bitter taste modulators

An excerpt from the abstract of the paper:

T2R ligands may be used as therapeutics to treat and modulate T2R associated gastrointestinal and metabolic functions as well as treat gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases such as eating disorders, food sensing, food absorption, obesity, diabetes, Crohn's disease, celiac disease, et al.

------

So.. I still stand by my initial claim that is has healing properties and you might want to learn to like it... the health benifits are enormous especially for the gut. Unfortunately for you the taste you can't stand is of a chemical, and of a class of chemicals, that is immensely benificial to bowel disease. You should flip it around you have an easy time identifying what is good for you, it's a gift.

And here's my beef with these studies. They try to isolate 1 chemical at a time, one human receptor at a time. Bottom line, natural food is full of all kinds of healing compounds, you can spend the next billion years finding all the compounds and variants, never mind studying them all.

Celery has been found, through observation, to have healing properties and be great for the gut. Researchers are trying to isolate the chemicals to make a pill out of it that they can sell and patent and make profit off of sick people from.
 
Well, luckily for me, there are other bitter tasting foods (like coffee!) which I can stand (which should theoretically activate the same T2R receptors). I think I'll stick to those.
 
Well, luckily for me, there are other bitter tasting foods (like coffee!) which I can stand (which should theoretically activate the same T2R receptors). I think I'll stick to those.
Um yeah not sure it works quite like that but do let me know how the coffee thing works out ;-)

Coffee we consume isn't natural, it's not raw, it's modified by heat and not at all like its natural state, which is the problem with most foods in the first place.
 
Hmm, parsnips sound interesting. I'll have to try some. They aren't nearly as common as carrots but I'm having so much fun having veggies in my diet I'm all gung-ho about everything. :)
 
I'm giving up on this juicing for now. I tried carrot a few more times, each time I had stomach pains not long after. Today I tried apple, I even filtered it through filter paper to make sure there was absolutely no pulp, and that gave me stomach ache too.

Maybe I'll try again in a couple of months.
 
I'm sorry to hear that. Thankfully you didn't invest a lot of $$.

Since I started juicing again I'm getting a niggling bit of pain that's concerning me. I can't figure out why it'd be the juice though and was going to try filtering it like you did in case of fiber and am going to try different combinations. I hope it's just coincidence.
 
Yeah, I can't figure it out either. I mean, it's not horrendous pain, it's only a 3-4 for 30 mins to an hour, but that's with only juicing one thing (as in one carrot or one apple- not even half a glass of juice), and I can't help but feel that my body is warning me for some reason. I mean, if it was junk food and I felt like that, I wouldn't eat it! So why try to force my body to accept something just because it's labelled as 'healthy'!

But definately try the filtering, there was an obvious difference in the juice before and after.
 
That pretty much describes mine although it's constant. But still very mild. But we all know what "mild" can turn into, which is why I'm on high alert.

The only thing I've done differently this go-round with juicing is not included apples so I'll try adding that back in. Scratching my head here though.

That's good to know about the filtering making a difference. I would have never guessed but was going to try it just in case.
 

ameslouise

Moderator
Rebecca85, if it has such good effects, you could plug your nose and pretend the celery juice was a shot of medicine.
That is exactly what I used to do when I was juicing wheat grass! I realized the smell was what was making me nauseaous. So I started shoving cotton balls up my nose while juicing it and drinking it. It helped. But to this day, I can't drive past a freshly mown field without gagging.

I know it's supposed to be the best for you, but that wheat grass shiz is hard core.

- Amy
 
I know it's supposed to be the best for you, but that wheat grass shiz is hard core.
But not as hard core as steroids/injections/resections right?

In my son's case I got a different perspective because he had to swallow liquid forms of medicines because he was a little too young to take pills. He wasn't thrilled about choking down medicines three times a day either, but after a while he's gotten used to it.

(I'm hoping we can switch to a pill soon for his 5-ASA because the liquid form is administered with sulfa drugs--antiobiotics--and we have to work even harder to try and build up healthy gut flora)
 
Rebecca

What sort of juicer did you buy? As that may have a lot to do with it?

Also, what is your general diet like?

Sometimes when you start something super healthy like juicing, you may experience detox symptoms. These can include but not limited to: headache, nausea, flu and feeling a little off. Just drink plenty of filtered water to flush out the toxins and this will pass within a few days.

I would stay away from red pepper juice, for the first few months anyway.

Start off gently and experiment more as you get more comfortable.

Try this mild juice that helps to soothe the walls of your intestinal and helps to stop diarrhea: juice two ribs of celery, two stalks of spinach with one carrot.

Even if you hate to eat celery, you won't taste it in the juice mix. Remember you are juicing to help a serious health condition, not for pleasure on a casual basis. So you need to choose vegetables that will be healing for you. I use to hate carrot juice but I kept drinking it because it helped my bowels so much. And now it has grown on me and I love it.

Apart from water, fresh juice does not mix well with anything else, so always drink juice on an empty stomach.

In the first few weeks you could always mix a little water into the juice if you feel its too strong - don't do this forever though.

In the first few weeks, wait an hour before and after before you eat or drink anything else. As mixing juice with things like cheesy pizza, will cause bad food combining and that will produce lots of farts and burps.
 
Miss spencer- it is a centrifugal juicer that was given to me, but I filtered the juice through filtering paper to remove any residual pulp.

General diet- for the most part I cook from scratch, fresh meat with homemade sauce and potatoes or rice, might have the occasional piece of 'junk'- like yesterday I had a pot of bought chocolate mousse.

I now drink 2 litres of water every day, I do have coffee in the mornings but then switch to water for the rest of the day.

I drink the juice as a midafternoon snack- 2 hours after lunch and 2 hours before dinner.

My main problem with the juice is stomach pain- a mild version of the pain that landed me in hospital- not any of the detox symptoms you talk about. I have been sticking to juicing one carrot at a time (or I tried an apple in case there was something specific with the carrot) and I can't even tolerate that so I doubt your recipe will sit right! And yes I will taste the celery in the mix! Though I would be willing to try plugging my nose.
 
My main problem with the juice is stomach pain- a mild version of the pain that landed me in hospital
You know your body best, so you need to do whats best for you.

Maybe you should stop for now and try again later. Hopefully you will have the good fortune to have the same results I did.

Juicing is the single best thing I have ever done for Ulcerative Colitis. A complete life saver. I thank heavens every day that I discovered it.

Interestingly, most of things you mentioned on your general diet, give me the most terrible pain and flares.
 
Top