Except I was wiped out by the food animal exam and then grocery shopping turned into less of an outing and more of an endurance test than I had expected. Instead of going to the Great Big Grocery Store of Limitless Choices, I ended up at the local pricey-elitist food store instead. I put up with it because 1) they have some of the obscure food items I am now looking for, and 2) it's all of a quarter mile away. Which when the snow arrives is pretty handy. But it's still pricey. And I had been looking forward to seeing what Limitless Choices might have had. They might have had kefir! They might have had sugar-free-but-not-plain kefir! I really truly needed to go grocery shopping, though, because I have begun to run out food I can eat.
Background: my last little run-in with Crohn's made me realize I haven't been exploring all the options for treatment. If the medicine was working, I would be getting better, not going to the hospital the night before finals week. I rather foolishly assumed that my doctors knew what they were talking about when they said diet doesn't affect it. I now realize that this is a bit of a blind spot for Medicine. For some unfathomable reason, Medicine doesn't like the idea of diet having anything to do with health, except in a general "eat your vegetables" sort of way. I was told to go onto a low residue diet like a good little patient, whereupon I said, "but that's like what my boyfriend eats."
(My boyfriend, by choice, eats white bread, pasta with no sauce, and blueberry yogurt. Fortunately he does like quality beef, lamb, and zucchini brownies, so we still get along.)
The desperate search for dietary advice (is oatmeal okay? Blueberries? Ice cream?) led me over into the realm of macrobiotic diets (thank you, Google Books!). And while a little more research reveals a certain delusional quality that attends alternative diets (if you're supposed to eat seasonally and locally, and you happen to live in the middle of a continental landmass, explain to me again how Japanese seaweed is local?), there was also a hint of reason. Goodness knows refined sugar isn't natural in the quantities I enjoy it. It took me all of two days on liquid diet to get over the initial brooding about a life without cookies, and all of half a day on solid foods for me to discover a way to make cookies entirely with honey (it's not refined sucrose! Close enough!).
I got into a huff at my GI because she thought I was going to go holistic and quit my medications on her, just because I asked if she knew any nutritionists.
So, goals:
1. Find a dietitian who can tell me whether I'm allowed to eat oatmeal.
2. Find studies showing the effect of diet on Crohn's disease.
3. If there are no studies...well, I may have to reconsider my stance on not wanting to do research. I'm a vet student, not a med student, which decreases my ability to say "Time for a human study!" But there's so many people about my age with Crohn's, I can't believe there's NOT a way to gather some scientifically useful information about how diet affects it. New facebook group, anyone?
4. Cut refined sugar from my own diet, to start with.
Other possible foods to get the axe: dairy, wheat, possibly specific carbohydrates (but that's starting to get pretty extreme, when you cut rice--and chocolate!). I get the sense there's a true correlation between Crohn's and sugar, though. Funnily enough, it's one of the macrobiotic books claims that sugar acidifies the intestines that tipped the balance for me. I don't buy the pseudoscience, but there's sometimes deeper truths that Medicine hasn't gotten around to looking at because it *ahem* has its head up its bum.
The funny thing is that I had a professor last year whose ongoing research is the connection between Johne's and Crohn's. I'm trying to figure out a good way to ask him about his research. It just seems awkward to send him a random e-mail, though, saying, "So, after you gave that lecture about mycobacterium last year, it occurred to me I ought to check out my disturbingly recognizable symptoms, and heeey, guess what disease I am now becoming an expert in?"
Oh, but hey, I'm supposed to be taking a massive scary exam in ophthalmology tomorrow. My perspective is so skewed these days...even as I'm finding more and more compelling reasons to learn medicine really well, the relative value of grades becomes very distant and abstract. I shall study a bit, though, and hopefully I'll finish out the semester with passing grades even with all the road bumps along the way.
3 comments:
So I'm sitting here reading the comments on my own page (wondering if Mona would kill me if she found out I was giving out bellydance lessons online), when I see Ceres. Hey! I've never seen that person before. I should see if they have a blog. Ooh! They do! Wait... cows... sheep... vet exams... crazy grocery stores...
Oh my gosh it all fits now! It's Drew!
:P Just kidding. I can't follow your site, but I have it bookmarked so I can bug you. And I've been wondering why I haven't seen you at practices! Are you okay!? More importantly, have you found good stuff to eat? Because I had to eat nothing but mush when my wisdom teeth got ripped out and that was hell. So I assume that intestinal tracts needing to be taken care of are even more demanding.
Babbling aside, I hope your exams are going good. And that you're healthier! :)
Happy Winter Solstice!
I ate macrobiotically for about a year, in college -- I've never had any serious health issues, I just wanted to be healthiER. I have never, in my life as far back as I can remember, felt as good as I did on that diet. The problem is that I LOVE "bad" foods too much to give them up completely, and I can't seem to control my intake -- I can either avoid them completely, or chow down. Moderation, what? :) But I had more energy, MUCH better focus and alertness, needed less sleep, wasn't as thirsty, etc. It was a really remarkable difference.
I don't know if you've ever been tested for gluten intolerance, but if you haven't then I would make cutting out gluten (wheat, barley, rye) and dairy a top priority along with sugar. Those three categories seem to be problematic in way more people than have ever been formally diagnosed with an intolerance or disease. And you can always just do it for 8 weeks and then add one back and see what happens, right?
I think it's insane that your doctors don't think there's any dietary correlation here! Good for you for digging for your own answers, though -- I feel like the more I learn about veterinary medicine, the less confidence I have in my human doctors, but also (beneficially) the less likely I am to just accept what they say, and the more likely to call them on anything that doesn't make sense. I figure that by this point, if it really seems nonsensical to me, it's more likely to actually be nonsense than to just be my lack of understanding.
The finding of good stuff to eat has given me something to do in between exams. Variations on seaweed soup with rice seems to work well, and canned salmon is awesome stuff (crunchy little bones, num!). On the other hand, brown rice flour was a complete fail. I tried making cookies with it last night and after one taste could tell it is NOT a low residue ingredient.
Still, it's tricky looking at the different diets and realizing that I may end up cutting pretty much every comfort food out of my life (with the exception of applesauce. There will always be applesauce!).
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