Other helpful information

On this page, I list various additional UC related information that might be helpful.

Water
Before I developed UC I always drank unfiltered tap water. I thought tap water was just fine and filtered or bottled water is just a money making scam. Well, ever since I was diagnosed with UC and I learned a lot about everything that enters my digestive system, I changed my opinion about this topic 180 degrees. I would now recommend anyone suffering from UC to switch to bottled or filtered water. Whatever works for you, as long as the water is now free of chlorine, chloramines and fluoride, as these chemicals damage the inner linings of your colon.

Psyllium Seed (Source: www.colitsfoundation.coml) - Resources/Forums/Colitis & Herbs
The combination of psyllium seed powder and psyllium husk seems to be promissing. Not everyone can stomach it, but it seems interesting enough to try it. I added it to my anti-fungal diet, and it actually improved the frequency and consistancy of my bowel movements. I take 2 teaspoons of psyllium seed powder and 2 teaspoons of psyllium husk powder in the morning and in the evening. Just remember to take it with plenty of water.

Here is the post from Don at www.colitisfoundations.com:
"It astonishes me that pyllium is not listed as a treatment for colitis, in the holistic medicine section of this web site. Psyllium seed powder (not to be confused with the much more common psyllium husks and powdered husks) was found to be as effective at keeping people in remission as mesalamine, in an article published in The American Journal of Gastroenterology (Vol. 94, No. 2, 1999). It has helped me more than any other (medical/prescription) treatment I've had for my colitis, in the last fifteen years.
I started using pysllium about eight months ago, after first researching it. At the time I was using whole psyllium husks (what you find commonly in pharmacies, markets, and vitamin stores). I immediately notice a huge difference in my stools (much more formed and not loose). Also the frequency of my bowel movements (when not in a flare up) went down from five or six times a day, to three or four, sometimes even one or two (unheard of for me, even before I had colitis).

Then I read the article in The American Journal of Gastroenterology and saw that they actually used powdered psyllium seeds, not whole psyllium husks. The husk is just fiber, whereas the plant matter in the seed is believed to ferment in the colon, raising butyrate levels. (It seems noteworthy that butyrate enemas are a prescription treatment for colitis.) So I shifted to psyllium seed powder. I found this also formed more solid, but less bulky stools.

In the end, a combination of psyllium seed powder and whole psyllium seed husks seems to work best for me. Again, this combination has given me more benefit than any prescription medication I've used in my fifteen years with the disease. Since I began using the psyllium I have not had a single flare up. Before that I was having two to three flare ups a year (which I was able to control with mesalamine enemas, but from which my regular dose of twelve asacol a day did not keep me in remission).

Psyllium seed powder turns out to be pretty hard to find (again don't confuse this with the common-place whole psyllium husks and powdered psyllium husks). The best most inexpensive sources I've found are:

http://starwest-botanicals.com/
http://www.shopnatural.com/ (Has organic psyllium.)

Also, please note that you have to build up to using psyllium slowly. At first it can cause a lot of bloating. I used only 5 grams a day (about one heaping teaspoon) for the first week. Then I added 5 grams a day each subsequent week, until I got up to 30 grams a day. (In the study I refer to above patients were given 20 grams a day of psyllium seed powder.) I'm currently taking about 20 grams per day psyllium seed powder and 10 grams whole psyllium husks. I take the seed powder and the husks, mixed together in large pint glass of water, three times a day (a heaping teaspoon of seed powder and a less heaping teaspoon of whole husks, each time).

I also eat a lot of beans every day, several cups. I definitely have better formed stools the days I eat beans compared to the days that I don't. I'm guess that the very large amount of fiber in beans (like the fiber in the psyllium) helps.

I hope this information is helpful to some people. I'm sure the same solutions don't work for every person. But I would just like to emphasize again that psyllium (especially the seed powder) has made more of a difference to my digestion and so far kept me in remission longer than and medical treatment I tried in fifteen years. It's amazing to me that I learned about all this from a mainstream gastroenterology journal (and an article orginally published eight years ago). It amazes me that none of the gastroenterologist I've seen over the years knew anything about this. Don't they read the journals in their own field? Anyway, psyllium is so innocuous it's hard for me to see the harm in trying it.

Good luck to everyone."