My Story
This is my story ..........
There are several reasons for sharing the personal content below. The journey through Crohn’s disease can be extremely painful and full of despair when symptoms flare up despite your best endeavours. Resolving those symptoms can require more than just tinkering with diet and so it proved on my journey. I want to reach out to anyone struggling out there and offer a little help in the form of books, articles and other sources of information my journey has led me to that have enabled me to understand how I can support my body to heal itself. There are several other reasons;
- I have undergone bowel surgery for Crohn’s disease twice. If you have undergone that same surgery the impact on your lives and the mental scars are well known to you. If the information on this site means just one person avoids undergoing that same surgery then all the effort putting it together will have been worthwhile.
- I am sometimes asked about Crohn’s by worried parents whose children are suffering from the disease. This breaks my heart. When I was going through the symptoms and underwent surgery I was in my 30s & 40s and it was a frightening experience. I cannot imagine what it is like for a child and the worry it must cause their parents. I hope the information is of some help to children and parents alike.
- There is a certain healing that takes place in the psyche when an experience is processed and the important life lessons learned. Crohn’s disease has taught me much, perhaps most fundamentally of the importance in living a natural life and developing humility for my body and its needs. Sharing this is part of my healing journey.
Early Days
Crohn’s disease can remain undiagnosed for years while the sufferer endures episodes of ‘irritable bowel’, bleeding, inguinal hernia, bowel spasms & cramping, iritis, fissures and exhaustion to name but a few. Invasive tests are sometimes performed such as an endoscopy or colonoscopy and puzzled doctors often prescribe medications in an attempt to ease the symptoms.
In 2003 after years of these symptoms my body began refusing food after a jacket potato. Rushed into hospital a ‘grumbling appendix’ was diagnosed with surgery scheduled several weeks later. The picture opposite was exactly what I saw waking up from that surgery – a row of worried looking doctors and nurses advising me I had Crohn’s disease and had undergone emergency bowel resection surgery.
I was advised by all the medical people to follow a ‘normal balanced diet’ and ‘live a normal life’. It was a number of years before I learned that my consumption choices and lifestyle (along with a number of other factors) were actually instrumental in causing the disease.
Deja-Vu
Unfortunately I didn’t learn enough from the initial surgery so in 2012 another bowel resection was required. What I did learn was that a ‘normal balanced diet’ and living a ‘normal life’ simply don’t cut it when it comes to understanding Crohn’s disease. I also learnt stress can be an enormous factor when the disease flares up and I simply hadn’t listened when my body warned me my life style was unsustainable.
So after 3 weeks of indescribable pain I was discharged from Carmarthen hospital in Wales with a new scar to add to my growing collection and returned home having been advised to eat a ‘normal balanced diet’.
Experimenting with foods began shortly after returning home by removing wheat from my diet. I still remember what I ate that first night – it was a ‘healthy wheat free’ rice and corn pasta. Doubled up in pain the following day I rang my then partner who said ‘doesn’t rice have lot of starch? Like potato?’ BOOM – I remembered the jacket potato dinner that preceded the previous surgery. A very simple internet search ‘Crohn’s disease & starch’ returned 100’s of results………….. My journey had begun.
Over the ensuing months, humility to my body’s needs was perhaps the single most important step I took, as it dawned on me that my small bowel was rapidly disappearing. Dragging my body through life and ignoring symptoms lead to very serious surgery and could have had long term implications. I was lucky, both resections were dealt with my bowel being re-joined, but not everyone is so fortunate. I made a conscious choice to take responsibility for my own healing and placed the health and well-being of my body at the top of my daily ‘To-do’ list. Only then was I really ready to start the journey back to health and return to a natural state of being.
I had been blind to something really obvious – my body is a self-healing organism. Cut my finger and my body will heal. Indeed it had just healed (again) from the most extreme surgery. So instead of asking ‘Why won’t my body heal from Crohn’s disease?’ I decided instead to ask ‘What am I doing that is preventing my body from self-healing naturally?’
My life since then has been to understand the many answers to that question.
Tentative steps
After much studying I saw my GP. I declined steroids due to the side effects and explained I wanted to heal naturally. He was totally supportive insisting that I undergo 3-monthly blood tests and so the food experiment began.
Two early books I read were ‘Self Healing Colitis & Crohn’s’ (Klein) and ‘Breaking The Vicious Cycle’ (Gottschall). These were excellent for explaining how the bowel worked, and suggested foods likely to cause inflammation but neither diet protocol completely resolved my symptoms as blood tests revealed my markers continued to fluctuate.
Starches were removed, then meats. I tried the ‘Crohn’s carnivore diet’, switched to eating mainly fruit and removed chocolate, sugar and alcohol but over the course of around 2 years the ESR marker continued north. It reached 13 (0-15 was normal range then) and my GP became concerned as various other symptoms were also present. Then I took a holiday and packed 2 books that turned things around……
‘Grain Brain’ by David Perlmutter is an essential read. It covers many conditions but notably inflammatory conditions and how grains inflame the bowel. I read it 6 times in 2 weeks, closely followed by Norman Robillard’s excellent book Fast Tract Digestion IBS.
I cut carbohydrates from my diet. Cold turkey. Ate mainly ketogenic and my body detoxified. For 9 days I was housebound but once the acidic poison was flushed from my body I felt better. And I lost weight. Lots of weight. My next set of bloods revealed ESR had dropped to 8 and around a year later to 4. I had found the first part of my answer.
Journey To A Natural Life
I’d overcome a huge issue but there were still challenges ahead on the path to health. My remaining symptoms told me that. Over ensuing years I learnt much:
- Water: Do you know we are 60-70% water and need a constant high quality source? I used a water distiller to purify my body of the acidic toxins and then began adding electrolytes.
- Exercise: Oxygenated blood is essential for cellular health and carrying nutrients around our bodies. I studied Tai Chi then martial arts for breathing and fitness.
- Mercury: A blood test diagnosed ‘industrial levels of mercury poisoning’ according to my GP. Mercury fillings were replaced with composites by a knowledgeable dentist and I gently detoxified my body from this dangerous substance over a period of about 2 years evidenced by blood tests. ‘It’s All In Your Head’ by Dr. Hal A Huggins explains how mercury can cause inflammatory autoimmune conditions.
- Parasites: Disturbingly I discovered a parasitic infection occurs with Crohn’s disease. I spoke with the professor who discovered this – Prof John Hermon-Taylor, sadly now deceased. He explained about MAP (Mycobacterium Avium Subspecies Paratuberculosis) and ‘Yes’ it is part of the TB family perhaps explaining why Crohn’s disease is so difficult to remove from our bodies. It also occurs in farm animals under the name Johne’s disease. Anti-biotics are available but I chose The Beck’s Protocol and later used Chlorine Dioxide Solution (CDS) to cleanse myself of MAP & other parasitic infections generally. Please see the Parasite blog for more details on this.
And now……
There are indeed many things to figure out on our journey through life. But for Crohn’s specifically, what are the key things I have learned to do every day to try and keep the symptoms away and my body healthy and free of parasites?
Firstly and of fundamental importance: My diet has evolved & I now pay very careful attention to the acid-alkaline balance of my food & fluid intake. I eat pure, natural foods, nothing processed. I avoid most grains but oats are included as they leave an alkaline residue in the bowel. I take small amounts of meat and fish, and choose those that are least acidic. Fluids supplemented with electrolytes are consumed to improve alkalinity & I avoid acidic drinks.
I cannot over-emphasize the importance of understanding our bodies are electro-chemical in nature and bodily processes require adequate electrolytes to work optimally. Essential reading on this subject is provided in Resources.
Limiting man-made electromagnetic radiations rank equally important in my recovery. Our bodies are electro-chemical in nature but bombarded with EMF radiations daily. I encourage you to investigate the effect these frequencies have on our bodies. A close encounter with a cell tower requiring a 3-week recovery in October 2022 cured my ignorance along with a good quality EMF meter. Essential reading is: ‘The Invisible Rainbow’ by Arthur Firstenberg.
As you no doubt realise, the journey towards a natural life-style doesn’t end. I’m still learning about my wonderful body and how to have humility to its needs to this very day. If you too are trying to understand Crohn’s and help your body recover then you have already shown amazing courage to take self-responsibility. I applaud you for that. You’ll have successes – celebrate those, and you’ll make mistakes – be gentle with yourself when you do. Your body will have its own unique needs. Listen to those.
That’s about all I can tell you. The journey involves much study and learning and it is my sincerest hope that I’ve given you plenty of relevant and practical information that will help you find your way through Crohn’s disease to the other side. You can do this.
