🎙 Overview
...
Furthermore, the dietary habits of the general public promote foods that are triggering to IBD while nutrients that are much needed for a healthy gut environment are lacking. As IBD patients, it is important for you to mindfully navigate your dietary environment, carefully plan yourfood intake to help manage your condition, move forward and hopefully put yourselves into remission. Therefore, it is important to understand the relationship between nutrients and what you eat in your diet.
...
Water: IBD patients may eliminate consumption of non-nutritive beverages such as soda, sports drinks, beer, and fruit juice. Instead, one should rely on consuming pure water and beverages like tea or coffee if they can tolerate these foods. It is important to remember that food is also a substantial source of water.
Protein: One cannot store protein in their body. If too much protein is consumed, the excess protein will come out of the body via urine. If one consumes too little protein, they will end up sacrificing other parts of their body to meet their needs. It is important to ensure a sufficient intake of protein each day. Otherwise, it leads to weakness, sarcopenia, and other dysfunctions. For IBD patients, it protein is the most important macro-nutrient to focus on because the disease increases the protein requirement. Normally, people need about 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight to keep from getting sick. Dr. Arjomand suggests that IBD patients should aim for 1.2 ~ 1.4 grams per kilogram of body weight to suffice their daily protein intake (For example, if your weight is 120 lbs or 55 kg, you will need to consume 65 ~ 76 g protein per day). Most patients struggle to find sources of protein to be included in their diet. Here are some foods that are high in protein, listed from high to low:
Fat: One can store fat. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. Fat is essential for the healthy functioning of the human body as long as it comes from healthy sources. Fat is a great source of calories for problems like weight loss or growth faltering from IBD. However, one should take caution if they have gallbladder surgery (where ability to absorb fat is limited) or they have rapid diarrhea. Here are some example sources of fat:.
Carbohydrates: People’s ability to store carbohydrates is very limited and anything in excess is converted to fat. Technically, there is no dietary requirement for carbohydrate. Most people consume 100 to 400 grams of carbohydrates per day. Carbohydrates induce insulin release, which is important for anabolic growth(the process where your body uses nutrition and energy to build muscles). It may be hard to gain weight on low carbon due to low insulin induction. It is also important to select the right set of foods where IBD patients get carbohydrates. Refined carbs like bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, and sugar are a pretty large portion of people’s diet. However, these refined carbs can aggravate IBD symptoms. In some cases eliminating them altogether is super beneficial. Instead of depending on refined carbs for calories, one can instead add more whole grains to their diet. Calories are important to maintain your current weight. You can scan the following QR code for a calorie calculator to get a rough estimate of daily calories needed:
Fiber: Fiber doesn’t get absorbed into the bloodstream but it feeds the gut microbes. Most people don’t get the vegetables they need, meaning they don’t get the fiber they need in their body. Fiber is a key missing part of IBD patient intake. From Dr. Arjomand’s experience, he was told by every IBD doctor that he had to go on a low residue and low fiber diet. After 15 years, it took a heavy toll on his health. In his opinion, IBD patients should instead get as much fiber as they safely and quickly can. As IBD patients, depending on your disease, you may differ in how fast you can increase your fiber intake. You may be able to consume more fibers faster if you have ulcerative colitis and slower if you have Crohn’s Disease. It is also important to expand the diversity of fiber. To increase the diversity of fiber intake, you can try to increase the kinds of plants in your diet. You can start by eating five different kinds of plants in your diet and then gradually move on and increase this number to ten. When it comes to fiber, even spices count – you can sprinkle a little bit of cinnamon on your yogurt and that counts as one kind of fiber source.
...
| View file | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
The table lists foods by stages, from stage 1 to stage 4. Stage 1 contains the easiest and most basic foods many patients feel comfortable with. As the stage number goes up, the foods become more advanced, and might be harder to tolerate if you are in flare or your disease is in a bad place. But as you gradually advance to the next stages, you will be exposed to a much diverse diet and in turn, your gut ecology becomes more diverse and resilient. Once you are comfortable with foods in your current stage, introduce some foods from the next stage and make sure to prepare them in a way that is more tolerable to your gut. When you notice that a newly introduced food is triggering symptoms, you can dial back to foods from your last stage so that you know that your basic nutritional needs are always covered. Once your symptoms subside and you are comfortable with expanding your foods again, try to reintroduce them. Gradually you will have a large set of ingredients available to you that supports your gut health.
...
Q: Do you have any Insights on turmeric or ginger?
A: Turmeric is a spice from the root of the turmeric plant and has been proven to have real benefits. It’s an anti-inflammatory ingredient, which is important for IBD. Most of the supplements available try and get the turmeric in its pure form - curcumin capsules. DrDr. Arjomand advises against that because besides taking curcumin capsules (curcumin is the active compound , in turmeric) instead of turmeric the spice. Because a lot of these spices, including turmeric or ginger, contain fiber. By consuming things like curcumin capsules, you are missing an opportunity to introduce them as fiber sources into your diet.
Q: Do you have any insights on almond milk?
A: Almond milk is a great nutrient source for IBD patients. However, you need to be careful as store-bought almond milk or coconut milk typically contains an emulsifiercontain emulsifiers. Emulsifiers are used to help blend the fatty and watery components so that it does they do not separate in the store. You should avoid emulsifiers in your almond milk since there are evidences that emulsifiers promote intestinal inflammation. There are a couple of brands that are out there without emulsifiers such as “Malk“. They sell pure almond milk. Another option is to make almond milk yourself. This is an even better option because you are in charge of what goes into it.
Q: How important are probiotics in my diet?
A: It is important to add probiotics in your diet. Your gut ecology may have been stripped over the years because you have had antibiotics or eliminated fiber for a long time. The intake of probiotics will help you re-establish your gut ecology. Probiotics are living organisms in food. Anything fermented (for example - cheese, yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut and etc.) have has probiotics in them. To consume probiotics, you don’t necessarily need to buy their capsule form. A better way is to expand and introduce fermented foods into your diet. If you are not tolerating any of those foods, you can then revert choose to take probiotic capsules. This will help you get through a the tough spot where your gut environment is fragile and re-establish gut ecology. It is important to ensure the diversity of your gut ecology. So, if you are taking probiotic capsules, don’t stick with one brand for too long. You can buy two probiotics and every week switch between one and the other. You can also add more diverse sources of fiber into your diet to feed different strains of probiotics to add to the diversity in your gut ecology.
...