QuestionI have had crohn's for more than 10 years now. I went on a low residue diet and started taking medication at the tender age of 20. I had flare up over and over again. My doctor tried me on several medications and finally came to the conclusion that surgery was the only option. I had surgery removing part of my colon. After that surgery I was again put through a long course of medications. Nothing worked. I have had five surgeries since and it only seems to get worse the more medications I take. It has gotten to the point where I am putting more chemicals (prescribed medications) then I am eating food. I am no longer looking for traditional ways to treat this. I've been thinking of doing the master cleanse to clean all the toxins from my system. Do you have any recommendations of things I could try?
Thank you very much for your time
AnswerDear Stacy,
I have been walking around with your question for a couple of days now, because I got a good vibe from it, but it is not so easy to give advice owing to the pervasive nature of your pathology.
The Ancient Chinese were among the first to purport that the seat of good health lay in the belly, and current day nutritional science is once again underpinning this truth, relating many ailments and even fatal illnesses to poor or wrong diet. So I am wholly convinced that choosing an energising diet will help you alleviate your symptoms and prevent the worst episodes. Obviously your Crohn抯 has already caused you irreversable damage and I assume your gastro-intestinal tract is rather scarred and its functioning may be fairly, chronically, impaired. However, Crohn抯 patients can be relatively problem free for many years in a row with a diet adapted to their digestive ability. The clue lies in life-force and mental attitude.
It is often claimed that you may well be struggling to find sufficient calories and nutrients in a diet that tries to spare your intestines, but it is of greater importance to focus on simulating the digestive PROCESSES, and the interconnective organs (rather than getting stuck on quantities and nutritional particles). By understanding nutrition and metabolism both in terms of process you can learn to rebalance your top and bottom half, inner and outer worlds, body and soul. Eventhough we cannot extirpate the root to cure the illness, the root cause of the imbalance is still the clue as to how to treat the condition.
The intestines belong to the lower pole of man, the metabolic system entire. The metabolic-limb system forms a whole, which relate most to the human quality of Will. (The head to thinking, and the heart region to feeling, to put it ultra succinctly.) This Will is not just about what you want or not want, but has just as much to do with objective understanding as gained through sense perception and meaningful perseverance. This Will colours your actions (as executed notably by the steps you take and gestures you make in life). Free choice inspires it. Healthy mental occupation and meditation, as well as body work (meaningful exercise and manual therapies) is therefore also an integral aspect of your treatment. There are lots of options out there to help support digestive disorders. But this is a separate or secondary topic.
Stress, overemphasis of reason and matter, trauma, repression or any other mental disquiet all stem from the upper region which has a tendency to predominate the rest of the body. If you do not have a super healthy diet to tide you over during short bouts of such inevitable predominance in your lifetime, your digestive system will become taxed, and eventually malfunctions will arise. Poor diet in childhood can ruin you for the rest of your life. Eventhough, the actual etiology of Crohn抯 is still a mystery to science, unmistakeably diet can have a negative impact on one predisposed to weaknesses in the lower region. Aspects of diet better considered by alternative medicine and health-food nutritonists are ever more being reckonned with by conventional science. So, your intitiative to be more proactive towards your illness in a non-invasive medical manner, to my mind seems fairly intelligent, outside the pretty blank wall you are now facing with little else left to turn to.
The lower region is meant to be a dark cavern full of warmth like the gently simmering pot over a tempered hearth. Yes, the human organism is an alchemical laboratory! Here foreign substance is brewed/transformed into the magic potion of blood full of building blocks (human proteins). The point of life is to learn all about the art and colour of light and darkness, so that man can become a co-creator. Eating is a spiritual exercise in disguise. If the fire is too hot (putrefaction), or is doused by cold (plastic) food, the soup with all its elusive essence that builds up our blood, that builds up our organs, that is still a mystery in parts to science, will be spoiled.
Irritations and inflammations are the result of energies transplaced from the upper pole into the lower pole in combination with a weak lower pole ?grown lazy from bad diet, or poisoned by modern methods of production and preparation. To correct this, we have to strengthen the headpole and the lower pole both, while in the meantime detoxing. This approach means excluding all products from your diet which do not contribute solar energy or earth power to your organism.
This also means: go organic to avoid pesticides; go fresh to avoid chemical additatives and preservatives; go seasonal and local to ensure you receive maximum energy from ripe and ready produce suited to your environmental demands; go slow: in that you prepare from scratch, use the right cooking methods/utensils even, suited to each food, eat fresh (avoid frozen wherever possible); but no less vital: take the time to eat. Not only is chewing the starting point of all good digestion (also stimulates the main metabolic organ, the liver), peace and quiet let your body work harmoniously (keep the head out of it!). Dine rather than eat. Never snack on the go: if food is to enhance the quality of your life, by improving your health, you have to treat it like a religion to a certain (reasonable!) degree. Never discuss business or problems whilst eating, try table music, and lighting a candle in gratitude for your blessings.
Remember: we eat to learn how to create this light and warmth for ourselves. This is what makes us loving and wise. Feeling good monitors our progress in this department. Good health, but also bad health are our report cards: working through issues can tax the body, a small price to pay in some cases of spiritual advancement.
Only naturally energized foods can manage to sustain our spiritual development. It is never about amounts or particles (calories etc) Vitamins as found in natural foods are stellar/cosmic forces become substance. Only food that has ripened in the sun has cosmic force. Other food is an amalgamation of chemical components, which our body can become, but is not originally so.
Here now, follows some information to set you on the road to making healthy choices.
You do not mention a celiac intolerance or other food allergy, so I am going to advise a vegetarian diet with an emphasis on grains, fruit and flowers (herbal teas). Vegetables are your best friends (to be) full of minerals and vitamins and contain low levels of natural salts and sugars. Chamomile and limeblossom tea make soothing digestive drinks. Lavender, hop, lemonbalm, rosepetal relax you in general. A cup of nettle a day helps detox and activates the iron-building process. Yarrow uncramps the lower region.
Raw food activates our bowels, but it can be very heavy going on a poor(unaccustomed) gut. It is an imperative part of our daily diet, to maintain a resilient gut, but it may take time before you can handle it well, so go easy on the most fibrous stuff. Avoid cabbage for example, only use sauerkraut (preprocessed by the fermentation) If you note the going is tough then use plenty of herbs to help you digest. For cabbage or heavier fare, incl cucumber: aniseed, dill, carraway, fennel, cumin, corriander, parsley, celery leaf, lovage. For cooler, watery veg (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, but also potato) go Mediterranean with the warming herbs of oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, savory. Preferably do not eat these type of vegetables uncooked. Salads (all sorts of young leaves) in comination with radish or grated carrot, with vinagrette dressing, some nuts or seeds, are light and stimulating. Don抰 forget sea-vegetables, seaweed and samphire.
Unprocessed (by heat/cooking) raw produce needs to be fully ripened by the sun. Bananas - picked unripe even more so ?e.g. will cool your system down too much and cause mucous formation. Only by frying them (platains) do we manage to lend them some warmth. (People in the tropics, obviously fare well on a few bananas to prevent overheating.) Glass houses can be evil places if we consider some of the supermarket produce available.... Be wary of soy, added to absolutely everything. Be moderate with pulses in general, anyway, they are taxing on the tender intestines.
Grains, providing you have no outspoken sensitivity to them, will be your red thread to health. Especially 搑aw?as in muesli. Soak overnight (in the yoghurt, or best in some water). Eat with yoghurt for breakfast. No sugar! Grate an apple or add dried fruit. Oats and barley top of the list. Grits and porridge, or oat/rice drinks can be a good start. (Nut drinks too). Millet is easiest to digest and very good for your blood and skin formation. Go easy on rice (MUST be brown/parboiled) but preferable to potatoes. Rye may be too heavy for you. Buckwheat (not really a grain, though) is light and spelt a lighter variety of wheat. Kamut, quinoa, amaranth are all high in easily accessible protein. All 揼rains?are great mediators between heaven and earth, rebalancing, inspiring and rooting therefore.
Excellent are root vegetables (carrot, beet, parsnip, Jerusalem Artichoke). Include plenty of steamed/boiled carrots in your diet , or a glass of juice a day. Best to prepare 搒offrito?fried in a little oil before letting simmer in water, because the very beneficial vit A in carrots is only fat-soluable. Use high quality vegetable oil (sunflower or virgin olive) or the best butter you can find. No margarine or other hydrogenated oils. Otherwise combine with a nutpaste, sesameseed oil or curd dressing.
Low protein intake is advisable: ready-made (animal) proteins aggrevate inflammation. Pork and red-meat, futhermore, contain highly individualised animal properties, which are not helpful to keeping the blood alkaline. Eggs in moderation, but both eggs and milk help ground and nurture your soul. Poor digestion (especially if prone to diahoerrea) is often the result of incarnation problems (not extremely willing to be earth-bound on all levels) and a nervous disposition will not make it very easy to solve this quickly. Fish - white deep sea fish, like cod, bass, sole, St. Peter抯, hake - can provide you with ready protein from time to time. Shell fish is less advisable.
Eat fruit daily but not in combination with vegetables or in milk/yoghurt shakes (apple least problematic). Consider stewing fruit if it causes you cramps. Stewed apples and elderberries are indeed curatative: full of tannines and minerals which will support the digestive processes. Pears, quince (juice), strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries should be easy to digest. and grapes, dried apricots, prunes, figs, dates add treats and valuable nutrients. Mind though, that smoothies and juices tend to unbalance your sugar household (big hit in one go) and make life a little too easy on the intestine, so don't overdo it there. Fruit is where cosmic force and earth energy come together in all their fragrant and juicy glory. Stone fruit requires a more robust system than pip fruits. Seabuckthorn, sloeberry, red currant, blueberry, blackcurrant all make valuable elixers (with different properties), of which in turn, a glass a day can sustain your rebuilding programme. An aloe-vera (leaf only! No additatives) cure can soothe the digestive tract. Birchleaf elixer is great for a 3 week spring detox. You may find you have symptoms that ask you to support either/or/and the kidney and liver, which may have suffered from less than perfect metabolic conditions. There are horsetail elixers (kidney) or dandelion or artichoke elixers (liver) to help with this.
Avoid hot spices and stick to herbs. Horseraddish, mustard, gardencress, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, onion and garlic however, can help digest by introducing a failry 揷onsolidated? fiery element.
I hope it is superflous to add: no refined flour, white sugar, deep fried products; minimise salt intake, and steer clear of artificial flavourings and additatives: they really deplete you of your energy and rob you of minerals/vitamins.
This then concludes a general introduction to help you in your contemplations to tackle your Crohn抯 with a vitalising diet. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you want more specifics on anything I could, here, only brush upon.
I wish you much strength and loads of joy on your path to improved health. May your meals be delicious and your body resonate to the blessings our Earth and Mother Nature bring forth.
Evelyn.
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