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Hi all, I'm Marwa.

I'm new here, just wanted to share my story and get any support I can.
I'm 28 years old and I have a 15 month old girl. When I was 9 months pregnant It was suspected that I have crohns. I had an awful natural delivery because by the end of the 9th month I had no energy left in me. After a few months I finally got a colonoscopy and endoscopy and the doc confirmed that I have crohns. I also have iritis and got swelling on my right knee that walking wasn't an option anymore. I got desperate and agreed to take humira. I was also given budesonide (steroids) for 4 months to calm the inflammation. After a few months I forgot I was sick, apart from taking humira twice a month. Then my daughter got a cold, just a common cold, so I got I too and humira stopped working. My crohns flared up again and I was back on steroids and in pain. Now I'm not convinced in humira and I'm more aware of its side effects and I'd rather have crohns than risk getting the endless diseases out there.
Been reading a lot and I came across the gaps diet by dr, Natasha Campbell. It's the SCD diet but modified to add healing elements you must have daily with the hopes of restoring the intestinal lining and your gut flora.
I've been preparing to start it for more than 2 months, started with cutting white sugar from my diet (I eat a lot of sugar), and stopping sugar got me in bed shaking and sweating for a week. After that I was fine, stopped all grains and dairy next.
I wanted to know if any of you are on gaps and how you're managing your sypmtoms in natural ways. Also I wanted to know what symptom I can ignore and what would warrant a rush to the emergency room. I currently have loose stools, and blood in stool along with abdominal pain.

Thank you all for any help you can give me.
 
There is a section called Diet Nutrition and Supplements. You might want to ask about gaps over there. If it is a lot of blood you might want to go to the ER.
 
Hi Marwa,

Welcome to the sight. As mentioned above there is diet support group with followers of the SCD/GAPs/Paleo diet. Hope you find good help there.

I don't have much further to add, other than hope you feel better soon. My personal experience is that I was on a strict GAPs/Paleo diet for a good while. It helped but wasn't a cure for me. Now I'm on a modified version of those diets and today marks day 15 of being well to the stomach! Ya! Hardly enough time to get overly excited about but I'm over joyed this evening and am hoping for continued improved health.

I ended up having to tweak my diet, which seems to be common for those following the SCD/GAPS diets. What I did for me is with the paleo diet one of the main ideas is to eat wild or grass fed meats, and eggs. I was doing that but discovered a grass fed label or free range eggs doesn't always mean what I thought it did. So I began eating wild caught sea food, and with that change am having stomach success. I figure with eating wild caught sea food there is less chance of feed lot meal making its way into a fishes diet.
 

Lady Organic

Moderator
Staff member
Hi Marwa and welcome,

diets work for some patients, but not all.

Untreated crohn's can lead to serious complications and extra-intestinal manifestations. The longer you stay in a flare, the more you jeopardize your future health.
The risks of trouble with medication is much lower than the risks of trouble with untreated crohn's.

I encourage you to continue the diet, but I would definately give a call to the GI if symptoms persists on your current dose of steroids. Steroids are not meant to be used long term. but maybe you could discuss with your GI of your diet interest and time frame to test it under steroids.

You can also take a look at IBD-AID diet in my signature for other ideas.

good luck and let us know how it goes:ysmile:
 
I am going to take probiotics, it's part of the diet.
I don't know if this diet will work, but I've read a lot of success stories online. All medicine for Crohns are not a cure, they just stabilize your situation - if that. They don't work all the time and even though it worked well for me l, I'd rather quit it than have the medicine quit me. I feel empowered taking this decision.
More than anything, stopping meds and starting this diet gives me a sense of control and input in my health and gives me hope. I don't want to be sick forever. I want to get better and have more children.
 
Hi Marwa,

Welcome to the sight. As mentioned above there is diet support group with followers of the SCD/GAPs/Paleo diet. Hope you find good help there.

I don't have much further to add, other than hope you feel better soon. My personal experience is that I was on a strict GAPs/Paleo diet for a good while. It helped but wasn't a cure for me. Now I'm on a modified version of those diets and today marks day 15 of being well to the stomach! Ya! Hardly enough time to get overly excited about but I'm over joyed this evening and am hoping for continued improved health.

I ended up having to tweak my diet, which seems to be common for those following the SCD/GAPS diets. What I did for me is with the paleo diet one of the main ideas is to eat wild or grass fed meats, and eggs. I was doing that but discovered a grass fed label or free range eggs doesn't always mean what I thought it did. So I began eating wild caught sea food, and with that change am having stomach success. I figure with eating wild caught sea food there is less chance of feed lot meal making its way into a fishes diet.
I agree wild caught seafood is much cleaner, no matter what there will always be less human involvement with seafood. I'm going to try to have seafood 3 times a week to start. Thank you.
 
Hi Marwa and welcome,

diets work for some patients, but not all.

Untreated crohn's can lead to serious complications and extra-intestinal manifestations. The longer you stay in a flare, the more you jeopardize your future health.
The risks of trouble with medication is much lower than the risks of trouble with untreated crohn's.

I encourage you to continue the diet, but I would definately give a call to the GI if symptoms persists on your current dose of steroids. Steroids are not meant to be used long term. but maybe you could discuss with your GI of your diet interest and time frame to test it under steroids.

You can also take a look at IBD-AID diet in my signature for other ideas.

good luck and let us know how it goes:ysmile:
I agree streroids aren't meant for long term use, but out of the 9 months I've been sick, I've been taking steroids for 6 of them. I'm not sure if having active crohns and trying to treat it naturally is more risky than taking any immune system suppressant or "regulator". I believe our immune system is our biggest asset. If it's not functioning correctly, we should try to help it out, but never shut it down because we will never be able to do the complex and countless tasks it does for us on a daily basis .
 
I agree wild caught seafood is much cleaner, no matter what there will always be less human involvement with seafood. I'm going to try to have seafood 3 times a week to start. Thank you.
Thanks, and you are wonderful! I hope the GAPs/SCD diet works out and you can spend more important and pleasant time with your daughter. As you might have picked up the diet ideas sometimes work, sometimes partially work (which is what has happened with me. I'm hoping the latest diet tweak idea I'm working on gets me moving forward finally.) and sometimes the diet ideas makes ones IBD worse. I believe one of the founders of this sight followed the SCD diet for a long time and found it caused his Crohn's to deteriorate greatly. He became very ill on the diet. So don't be afraid to experiment with diet ideas. You have to find what works best for you, with diet and medicine ideas also.

If looking for a medicine idea that has few side effects you might take a look at low dose naltrexone (LDN). It's a little known by doctors generic medication used by some for IBD conditions. LDN is similar to the diet ideas in that sometimes it works brilliantly and other times does not help.

More about LDN can be learned in the treatment section, which can be seen here:

http://www.crohnsforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=32

Best of luck.
 
I am going to take probiotics, it's part of the diet.
I don't know if this diet will work, but I've read a lot of success stories online. All medicine for Crohns are not a cure, they just stabilize your situation - if that. They don't work all the time and even though it worked well for me l, I'd rather quit it than have the medicine quit me. I feel empowered taking this decision.
More than anything, stopping meds and starting this diet gives me a sense of control and input in my health and gives me hope. I don't want to be sick forever. I want to get better and have more children.
I would suggest doing the diet and the medicine jointly. Don't give up on medicine.
 
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