For those of you who don’t know what it is I’ll explain briefly. I had ulcerative colitis in 2002 – 2003. It’s an autoimmune  disease of the colon, it’s twice as common as Crohn’s disease which seems to be more in the pubic domain, I often wonder if this is because it’s easier to pronounce. Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis are often referred to as inflammatory bowel disease or IBD not to be confused with irritable bowel syndrome IBS, which is much less serious but none the less horrid to have.

I had to have my colon removed to literally save my life, my immune system had attacked it to the point where it was about to perforate. I had a bag for a while (ileostomy – not colostomy!) I now have a W pouch, which is where they made a pouch out of my remaining small intestine. This means I don’t have a bag any more but some fancy scars I’m very proud of. It means I go to the loo a bit more and have to make sure I’m not low on electrolytes and some vitamins as they go through a bit quicker than some one with a colon.

We pouchies can sometimes get a condition called pouchitis, it’s really just inflammation of the pouch, and the symptoms can be mild to severe. Treatment is usually antibiotics, which in fact the medical profession have no idea how or why they work on pouchitis. I try and avoid them unless it gets really bad.

After a really stressful time and I mean not normal everyday stress but the type you don’t come across very often, I started to suffer a new bout in late April – early May 2014. It gets painful and becomes diarrhoea (sorry a little too much info for some). If you have no colon this can be dangerous – you’re loosing electrolytes easily anyway and is only made worse if you loosing more fluids than normal.

I found the following helped and so I’m hoping it might help others to:

• Coconut cream –  a bit fattening but seems to really sooth the angry pouch.
• Aloe Vera drink – taste awful but helps a lot
• Chamomile tea – when using herbal teas get the organic ones they contain more of the herb without any additives
• Liquorice Tea
• Goat’s yogurt
• Cutting out:
  • Cow’s dairy
  • Beef
  • Goat’s milk
  • High fibre food, keep fibre to a low! – ignore the blanket health advice you hear in the media!
• High protein food
• Keeping sugar low or not added.
• Organic food
• Home made foods from as many organic ingredients as possible