Monthly Archives: June 2011

5 Nutritious Add-ins For Your Crohns Recipes

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5 Nutritious Add-ins For Your Crohns Recipes

Crohns recipes can play an important role in preventing Crohn’s symptoms or flare ups, regardless if a person suffers from Crohn’s ileitis or another form. It is no secret that the food a person ingests can have positive or negative affects on their digestive system and gastrointestinal tract.

However, just because a person with Crohn’s has to watch what they eat, and omit various food products from their diet, doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy the foods they eat. The following are five foods that are generally considered safe for a Crohns recipes diet and can provide extra nutrition and/or flavour.

1. Honey – Honey is a natural sweetener that has healing properties. It is a good source of antioxidants and is ideal for treating diarrhea, as it encourages rehydration in the body and soothes the stomach. In addition, honey has free sugar molecules which actually improves brain function and reduces fatigue.

It is imperative that you purchase local raw honey to ensure you are receiving all of its nutrients and enzymes in your crohns recipes. The best place to look for this honey is in health stores.

Recipe tips – Honey is perfect for sweetening your tea and other beverages. Also consider using honey as spread for your bread, and as an alternative to sugar required in certain recipes.

2. Coconut oil – Coconut oil contains a significant amount of lauric acid. This acid is easy to digest, and also works to strengthen the immune system, allowing protection against bacterial, viral and fungal infections.

In addition, Coconut oil detoxifies the liver, and aids in building fats, lipoproteins, bile and hormones which are needed for digestion; thus creating a healthy digestive tract. Coconut oil encourages the absorption of food nutrients, and speeds up metabolism.

Recipe tips: Use coconut oil for cooking. Use coconut oil as the substitute in crohns recipes that call for margarine, butter or other unhealthy oils. In addition, when left in room temperature, virgin coconut oil solidifies and can be used as a spread for bread in place of butter or margarine.

3. Soy Products – Soy products such as soy milk, soy burgers, soy meats, and soy cheese, tempeh and tofu, are excellent sources of protein and are ideal replacements for dairy. Some believe soy helps to reduce bowel inflammation associated with Crohn’s disease.

Recipe tips: Soy products come in many forms such as meats, burgers, cheese and milk. By substituting regular meat and dairy products for soy, and including dark leafy green vegetables, you can enjoy the meals you’ve always liked, and still obtain the nutrients you need. Try adding soy milk or soy vanilla milk to cereal, in tea or fruit smoothies, and top off your salad with soy cheese.

4. Extra Virgin Olive Oil – Extra virgin olive oil is vegetable based and an excellent addition to crohns recipes. This oil helps to protect your intestines as it contains potent antioxidants. Olive oil also increases the body’s absorption of a number of vitamins including A, D, E, and K. Furthermore, it encourages faster healing and increases metabolism.

Recipe tips: Olive oil is a flavor enhancer and is a fantastic alternative to margarine or butter for recipes and as condiment. For instance, you can use it as a salad dressing.

5. Essential Fatty Acid Foods – Be sure to spice up your recipes with foods that are high in essential fatty acids, as they are known to prevent inflammation within the bowel. Good sources of such foods include dark green leafy vegetables, rapeseed, walnuts and flaxseed.

Recipe tips: Introduce salad to your diet, and don’t be afraid to add nuts and seeds to recipes. For instance, if you have a cookie recipe you love, add some walnuts.

Remember, not everyone’s Crohn’s symptoms are triggered by the same foods. Therefore, make sure you find out what foods aggravate your condition, so you can avoid them. If you are having a difficult time finding crohns recipes that work for you, it’s a good idea to take your concerns and questions to a qualified dietitian who can help you find answers, and start you on a diet that works for you.

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acupuncture and crohns, crohns herbal

Diet For Crohn's Disease: A Treatment Choice

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Diet For Crohn’s Disease: A Treatment Choice

When you are afflicted with inflammatory bowel syndrome, one of the healthiest options to turn to would be a diet for Crohn’s disease. Many health practitioners consider diet as one of the most helpful factors which can eliminate the possibility of disease reoccurrence. While diet may be a very important factor in the treatment process, we all need to remember that medications and other therapeutic recommendations should be taken into account. They should all work hand in hand to fully eliminate the chances of another Crohn’s outbreak.

Diet for Crohn’s Disease: Watching Your Fluid Intake

Perhaps the best diet for Crohn’s disease is increasing your fluid intake. Although this may sound very simple, it helps a lot during the treatment process. We all know that Crohn’s disease causes water elimination form the body which can result to dehydration. So to avoid such an event from occurring, we need to maintain a water intake that can compensate for the water lost during the disease attack. The diet for crohn’s disease through water therapy is one of the proven ways which help alleviate the patient’s condition.

Diet for Crohn’s Disease: Foods to Eat

In a diet for crohn’s disease, there are certain foods to eat which can help cure the suffering intestinal walls. A balanced nutritional intake of protein and carbohydrate is very essential. However, you have to lessen your fat intake to a minimum as fat is a known trigger factor to Crohn’s disease. You are also advised to eat foods which are healthy and which are enriched with all the essential food supplements.

Fruits and vegetables can cover well to the supplements needed by the body. However, you need to be careful with them especially if the person is in the flare up stage of the disease. Fruits and vegetables can turn into culprits if taken during the attack phase.

Diet For Crohn’s Disease: Foods to Avoid

A diet for Crohn’s disease would also tell us which foods to avoid; this is because there are some foods or food products which can cause the return of the disease. For example, gas forming foods such as cucumber and popcorn distends the stomach and allows for more air to enter causing pain and discomfort. Other harmful foods during the disease’s acute phase would be spicy foods and foods which are high in fat content. They should be avoided because they are not tolerated by the body whenever a person is in the acute stage. Fiber foods are also considered to cause more discomfort during the flare up stage. Thus, avoidance of such would be greatly necessary in the treatment plan.

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chrons disease, diet, disease, health, treatment

Remicade for Crohns Disease

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Remicade for Crohns Disease

In today’s date, Remicade is a proven treatment for Crohn’s disease, which is a long term debilitating disorder of the intestinal tract and has a great impact over the life of a patient. It can suffer the quality of a sufferer’s life. Remicade for this disease can really prove beneficial for these patients.

Earlier Remicade was known as ‘Avakine’. This belongs to the first class of agents due to which activities of tumour necrosis factor alpha are obstructed, which is a prominent biologic response mediator.

Remicade is considered effective in minimizing intestinal inflammation in people suffering from Crohn’s disease. It is done by diffusing TNF-alpha on the cell membrane and in the blood and eliminating TNF-alpha producing cells. In this way it becomes very clear how this product for Crohns disease provides a patient with a rapid and substantial benefit.

This is believed to be effective as a treatment for moderate to severe form of Crohn’s disease to reduce the signs and symptoms of the disease. It is considered best for those patients who did not have positive results from conventional therapy. Including this, it is also referred as a treatment of fistulizing Crohn’s disease to reduce the number of draining enterocutaneous fistulas.  

This can help a patient to a great extent by controlling flare-ups. However, the affect of the product may be different in different cases. If a person is suffering from moderate to severe form of the disease and all other therapies has proved ineffective so far, then he/she should ask his/her gastroenterologist if you can take Remicade or not. In certain case, patients have attained positive responses within a time of two periods.

The product can also prove helpful to you in reducing or completely avoiding the use of steroids. Since this product is not a steroid, so it does not possess any side effects of steroids like moon facies, acne and osteoporosis. But still it is gastroenterologist of a patient that can determine if reducing or stopping the use of steroids is right for him/her or not.

It must be kept in mind that this product is effective but it is definitely not for everyone. One must go through all the safety information before taking it and must be taken only on the recommendation of a gastroenterologist. It is very important because the safety and effectiveness of Remicade for Crohns disease has not yet been established beyond the suggested duration of treatment.   

Though it has not yet been proved that nutritional factor has anything to do with the occurrence of the disease, but the food that one eats does affect the symptoms .

Symptoms vary from patient to patient and also it may affect different part of the digestive tract, a specific diet can not be claimed to work for everyone.
Instead of this, it is an experimental process in which the sufferer on his own decides the diet for himself. It is done by supervising which is food works good for the body and which not. At the same time it is essential to make certain adjustments in Crohns disease diet due to flare-ups.  

Some people may have Carbohydrate diet that curbs carbohydrates hard to digest. One may receive from certain symptoms of the disease; however it is yet to be supported by clinical evidence.    

The best disease diet must be balanced one with all the food groups like fruits, vegetables, whole grain, fats, meat and protein in appropriate proportion. Also, the food that is most likely to cause flare-ups must be cut out from the diet or reduced at least.  

The utmost concern of the patient with it is the possibility of suffering from malnutrition as small intestines is not able to digest or absorb nutrients from the food eaten. Considering this fact, even a balanced Crohns disease diet may not fulfill the deficiency of the nutrients needed by a sufferer. Other than this, the body requires enough of energy to combat with the disease and it may result into health complications in future.

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remicade, crohns disease

Crohns Disease Diet ? It Is Quite Essential!

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Crohns Disease Diet ? It Is Quite Essential!

Crohn’s disease (CD) in children may lead to stunted growth and usually grow short. Due to inflammation of the digestive tract, the lower part of the small intestine that is ileum gets affected. This ileum is highly responsible for absorption of vitamins in our body. When ileum is attacked, there is hardly any Vitamin B12 absorbed from the food consumed. As a result children suffer from anemia and lower blood count. This disease is seen across all ages but studies have shown that it is more common in people of the age group 20 to 30 years. The distribution of the disease is in the lesions. Endoscopy shows ulcers in patchy areas. Crohn’s disease inflammation is deep into the tissue. The cause of this disease is not known clearly, however, it has been related to problems with the body’s immune system response. It is possible that the body may be overreacting to normal bacteria in the intestines.

CD affects the gastrointestinal tract and any region right from mouth to anus. The inflammation of digestive tract results in abdominal pain, fever, rectal bleeding, weight loss, arthritis, skin problems, inflammation in the eyes/mouth, gallstones, kidney stones and diarrhea. Diseases of the liver and biliary system are also common in those suffering from CD. Such problematic symptoms reduce when the digestive system problems are resolved.

One has to address the nutritional complications which are common. Lack of proteins, vitamins and calories are quite evident. This might be due to insufficient dietary consumption, poor absorption of vitamins and minerals, intestinal loss of protein. A proper diet which is rich in proteins, vitamins and minerals should be consumed. One must cultivate the habit of eating small frequent meal rather than less frequent big meals. Your body needs to digest this food, it is better when it is small.

General physician may suggest food rich in protein and vitamin b16 or other nutritional supplements for children whose growth has been stunted. You can also consume high-calorie liquid formulas as a supplement. Some times, a small tube is inserted into the vein of the arm and the patient is fed intravenously. This is helpful for those patients whose intestines cannot absorb enough nutrition from food and their intestines need to rest. They can’t consume any solid food. This way one is fed with extra nutrition temporarily. Care should be taken not to consume hot spices, bulky grains, alcohol or other milk products. This leads to diarrhea and abdominal cramping.

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healthy bacteria, probiotics benefits, crohns disease diet, culturelle probiotic, crohns disease, beneficial bacteria, diarrhoea, holiday health, bloating, constipation, chronic constipation

Crohn's Disease Diet – Is Eating Wheat an Issue for Crohn's Disease?

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Crohn’s Disease Diet – Is Eating Wheat an Issue for Crohn’s Disease?

Many people around the world do have trouble with digesting wheat and other grains that have high levels of gluten.

A reason people can have issues with gluten and other high gluten grains is that they are not part of our ideal diet your body is designed to digest. There are many people without Crohn’s that can eat gluten or wheat with no obvious issues, but it can rob them of their true energy and vitality as their body works to make sure all the gluten/grains are removed before any damage is caused to the body.

Having a diet that is high in glutinous grains can be an issue when you have Crohn’s, especially if you have a bad allergy to gluten. When you have Crohn’s Disease there can be a problem with digesting gluten containing grains. Having a blood test to see if you have a gluten allergy can tell you if wheat is an issue for you.

I used to eat wheat and other high gluten products for a long time as part of my Crohn’s Disease diet before I knew they were a problem for me and that I had an allergy to them, using Prednisone for many years didn’t help either. Prednisone can be a large factor when food allergies are concerned especially when taken over a long period of time.

Foods that you eat a lot of or consume them often can be a candidate for food allergies when long term Prednisone is involved. I did find out eventually it would be good for me to remove wheat and gluten from my diet as it was a factor that was stopping me regaining my health. I was reacting to wheat and some other grains which were making my Crohn’s Disease symptoms worse.

Is Wheat and High Gluten Grains Part of the Natural Human Diet?

Modern humans or Homo sapiens have been roaming about for around 100,000 years and our digestive systems are the same today as they were back then. Grains were not part of our ancestor’s diet because grains require processing so they can be eaten and our early ancestors didn’t have the technology to do that.

The new types of grains are not good for digestion because they have been cross breed to make the gluten levels higher, so bread makers can make bread that is more soft and fluffy than bread that was made with the older breeds of grain.

Old varieties of grain with lower gluten levels are far easier to digest than the new cross breed grains that have much higher gluten levels. This is one possible reason for more cases of gluten and grain intolerance in recent times, as the grains that are being used today contain so much more gluten than in the past.

If you have Crohn’s Disease eliminating grains from your diet can be beneficial, but there is still choice if you want to have grains in your diet even if you are sensitive to gluten. If you have a very bad allergy to gluten then these grains may be no good for you, seek the appropriate health professional who helps you with diet before adding them to avoid adverse reactions.

Some options may include in your Crohn’s Disease diet are grains like rice, millet, quinoa, oats, and barley to name a few. These grains still can have some gluten in them so be smart and check with your health professional or doctor to see if they will be good for you. Having a blood test to see if you are sensitive to gluten, wheat and other grains is a good way to eliminate which ones will be an issue for you.

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crohns disease diet is eating wheat an issue for crohns disease