Ulcerative Colitis Dietary Therapy
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Introduction
Please refer to the essay on Ulcerative Colitis for more complete information about this disorder. You should understand that all treatment, including diet therapy for ulcerative colitis, must start with a solid partnership with your physician. This information will supplement your knowledge of dietary factors that may influence your disease.Evidence based care is something we in medicine always seek. It means that each treatment we select is carefully measured with evidence to be sure that it is helpful. With medications, in particular, we insist that the benefit strongly outweighs the risk. However, there are many areas of medicine where the final data is just not there, so physicians do the best they can, using the available research as a guide and always assessing any downside risk to a particular treatment.
Diet for ulcerative colitis falls into this uncertain area because the disorder is an inflammatory one of the colon. This is where the fiber and food residue we eat ends up. Is it not possible that the foods we eat or don’t eat may be part of the problem? Studying this is difficult because animal and plant foods contain hundreds, no, thousands of different chemicals. When these multiple natural substances interact in our intestines with the over 1,000 different types of bacteria in the colon with a total bacteria count of many trillions, some very strange things may occur, both good and bad.
I present two sections. One is the standard dietary recommendations that are found in gastroenterology textbooks and on the web site of prestigious organizations such as Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation and The Mayo Clinic.
The second section, Additional Views on Dietary Therapy for Ulcerative Colitis, is a learned look at newer things that are happening in the ulcerative colitis dietary field. Some of it is close to being evidence based. All of it has some science behind it. Very little or none of it has much risk. I view ulcerative colitis care as a partnership between the physician and the patient. The physician brings the best science and medication to the table. Patients learn and then make the necessary changes in their diet.
