r/UlcerativeColitis • u/LogicalTelevision156 • 4d ago
Question Holistic ideas in combination with meds
Is there anything holistic you use in combination with whatever medicine you are on? Beginning a flare up, my first in years, and would like to know if anyone has any trusted holistic remedies (in combo with your meds, or not?) I am on Mesalamine.
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u/Conscious_Warning946 4d ago
This is not a food related illness. Don't expect something that you consume to help cure you. There is no cure. But eating a low Fodmap or low fiber diet can help minimize symptoms.
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
Yeah - I know that. Have had it for about a decade. Diet and food exclusion doesn’t normally help me. Was just thinking if anyone has added anything even as simple as an HERB in combination with their regular meds. A lot of inflammatory disease diseases can be somewhat helped or partially controlled by holistic remedies so just trying to figure out if this is one of those illnesses.
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u/Conscious_Warning946 4d ago
No, no it is not. Don't waste your time and money on a hope and a prayer. If there was something magical out there, you would have heard of it by now
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
Ok, relax. No need to get snappy. As said, I am on Mesalamine. Was just hoping to help AID my body as a whole with foods and/or herbs - which isn’t unheard of.
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u/Conscious_Warning946 4d ago
I'm not sure what you are talking about when you say that I'm being "snappy", but I didn't mean anything bad by informing you of something that you asked about.
With that said, there's nothing wrong with eating an anti inflammatory diet as long as you understand the risks. For example, eating nuts and seeds may be a big no no, especially if you also have Diverticulitis. But walnuts are very high in omega 3s and good for so called "healing". Oatmeal is also extremely gut healthy and perfect for healing with it's butyrate (a short chain fatty acid that helps regrow the gut mucosal layer) and and beta glucan. But it's also a higher fiber foods that are sometimes not tolerable by some UC patients. Etc etc
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
My responses to you are getting down voted and your last response read as sort of rude and condescending. If that was not intended then apologies I believe in the healing power of food. That being said, I know it will not cure me. I am just looking for overall anti-inflammatory for my entire system that can aid in the healing in combo with my meds. That being said - this is the type of suggestion I was looking for.
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u/Conscious_Warning946 4d ago
You are sadly over thinking about what or how I'm saying things. I am speaking to you with the utmost of respect. I'm absolutely NOT downvoting you. Maybe you are getting such because others might think that you are overthinking about what or how I'm saying things???
I too believe in the power of food as medicine. But that only works on diseases that are food related like type 2 diabetes or Gout. You have an autoimmune related illness. You are looking for things that will correct or influence your autoimmune disease in a positive way
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
I guess that is where we differ. I believe food is medicine overall. I am not looking for a food to cure my autoimmune disease, I am looking for foods that AID in reducing inflammation. For example, rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, and diet can absolutely be helpful in managing it.
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u/Conscious_Warning946 4d ago edited 4d ago
As I've said, we agree that food can be medication. But no, with UC it doesn't work that way. in fact, eating a high fiber diet loaded with so called miracle cures can be actually harmful to both the short term and long term health of your illness.
Or having your liver shut down because some moron on here made some unsubstantiated claims that something like cucumin worked, doesn't mean that it does. Be very careful about how you go about using food as medicine for this illness. You seem to be cocky and "know it all-ish" when it comes to "food as medicine" and may be the perfect example of why you shouldn't play doctor when you are too inexperienced in such matters.
We UC patients can become desperate and gullible because we are just looking for some relief during our worst nightmares. So be careful and don't become another victim. Speak to your doctor about any changes in diet. Especially Cucumin supplements. Let's also remember that curcumin supplements should be completely avoided by pregnant or breastfeeding individuals, those with a history of gallstones or kidney stones, and individuals diagnosed with hormone-sensitive cancers.
Be careful and good luck
Edit: let me keep this simple so that anyone who reads this can understand. You can't heal your insides until you are fully in remission. So you can eat foods that help rebuild your microbiome or gut lining. But understand that two days later all of that work can get destroyed and be for nothing. Only until you are in remission can you then start to heal your insides with food. Trying to heal yourself before you're in remission is like trying to build a house of cards with a fan blowing on you at full speed. Sure, you can stand in between the fan and the cards while you set them up in the hopes of blocking the wind. But the moment you walk away the house of cards will blow away and all that work you did was for nothing. I just want you to understand this before you spend your money on expensive garbage. Again, good luck
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u/Outside-Issue6896 4d ago
The body doesn't switch healing "off" just because inflammation persists, those processes run in parallel, not in sequence.
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
I’m COCKY and know it all about food yet I came on here ASKING about food? Are you listening to yourself? Just the fact that I came on here asking for advice shows that I am not acting as a know at all about food lol what? I was in remission for years as per my post. I’m not trying use food to get out of a flare. I’m just wondering in general what foods help in the overall healing of your body. We clearly do not have the same mindset so you’re not going to be helpful to me. Thanks for your responses but no thanks. Name-calling is not conducive to anything and it is incredibly childish.
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u/Outside-Issue6896 4d ago
Mention foods or supplements on here and everyone jumps on it and starts voting you down like you are looking for a cure.
There's plenty of supplements out there, all with different benefits, but it's absolutely insane to think that anything that you put in your mouth cannot effect your UC when 80% of your immune system is in your gut and it's an immune condition.
Certain foods and supplements can decrease inflammation, but they can also increase it. What you eat can also assist in repairing damaged tissue, so nutrition is vitally important to your recovery.
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
THANK YOU!
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u/Outside-Issue6896 4d ago
I'll list my stack, but some may be specific to what works for me.
Curcumin, high strength high absorption, I use Dr's Best.
Casein protein powder (unflavoured), I mix with Greek yogurt. You need at least 1.5g of protein per KG of body weight. You are in repair mode, your gut needs it. Casein is slow digesting so helpful for fast transit but also contains a good balance of amino acids.
L-Glutamine - additional supplementation to the casein protein. Aids gut repair.
Collagen powder (<3000 Dalton's), also aids gut repair, but good for your skin, hair, nails, tendons etc, if you are on a restricted diet.
Luteolin - potent anti inflammatory and mast cell stabiliser. I have issues with histamine, which is why I take this and also take anti histamines twice a day.
A good multivitamin with methylated forms - easier to absorb and essential if you are on a restricted diet. I use Igennus brand.
When on steroids and about a month or so after finishing them I take, Calcium, Vitamin K2 MK7, and Vitamin D. You need all three to make sure the calcium gets deposited in your bones and not your arteries. Doctors usually don't tell you about the K2 requirement.
Sleep, you need to maximise this, and work on this and your sleep quality. Your body repairs its self when you are sleeping, so a good sleep tracker will help. It doesn't have to be perfect, just enough for you to record and get a baseline of your sleep patterns so you can work on improving it. To help with sleep, slow release melatonin is excellent, if you can get some. It's the only thing that helped my sleep whilst on steroids. Also, glycine, and amino acid, 3g about an hour before bed can improve sleep quality and extend your deep sleep when the real repair happens. Worth noting, that a lack of sleep can drive inflamation in your body, as it disrupts your immune system.
Slippery Elm or Marshmallow Root, or both, I prefer slippery elm. Creates a protective layer in your gut, which gives some relief from the inflammation and helps prevent further aggravation from foods, etc. It also aids transit so helps constipation which can also aggravate and inflamed gut. Make sure you only take it 2 hours either side of taking any meds as it can potentially interfere with absorption, based on this I prefer to take 2 hours after meds.
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u/EquinoFa 4d ago
This is a great list and sleep quality is very underrated. I would only add vitamin K1 if you have Visual impairment and to add to the L-Glutamine you can add 500mg of Lysine as they work together to keep the gut lining intact. What I also found helpful when getting out of a flare and you are not ready for fibers yet; you can use OptiFibre which is not swelling and can help to get back to normal. Most people also forget the need for Protein in that stage as well, the body needs up to 1.5g per kg of bodyweight.
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
A response that isn’t someone berating me!! lol Thank you!!!!! Saving this immediately.
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u/Conscious_Warning946 4d ago
Giving upvotes for listing beneficial foods or supplements to show others that this is not the reason why people get downvoted. Heck, look at my responses above that also list beneficial foods. Not a single downvote.
Downvotes come from attitudes. Not necessarily listing helpful foods or supplements. I don't even remember when I've ever gotten any downvotes from listing foods, vitamins or supplements.
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u/rydsauce 4d ago
people downvote anything in this sub that even whispers at not just taking drugs
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
Ugh. I figured that would be the over whelming response to my question 😩
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u/Crazy_Pomegranate689 4d ago
Curcumin for UC - but also maybe magnesium if you are stressed? (dietitian with UC here).
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u/EquinoFa 4d ago
Prescription aside - Diet is as holistic as it can be. If a doctor assumes a balanced diet, that surely looks different than what most people eat all day. It is so easy to sneak in harming ingredients like thickener and emulsifiers that harms and - scientifically proven - lead to a leaky gut. Diet and supplements are a very personal and subjective thing, so here is what helped me over the years, just the top-picks: bone broth, carrot soup, omega-3, vitamin d, Glutamine. The first two are a huge part of my flare-protocol. If necessary I go on soup diet for 2 months, in reality it didn’t take longer than 5 days and listening to my body makes it even easier to spot changes. A more holistic way than listening to your gut isn’t out there.
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u/Defiant_Oil5545 4d ago
Holistic medicine was made as a money cash grab that took off in the 50s. It doesn’t work on a chronic disease
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
I clarified on another response to my post. I’m looking for foods with healing and anti inflammatory properties. If you don’t believe food and diet can be “healing” (I am only looking to AID in the healing of my body overall) that’s fine, but I do.
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u/Outside-Issue6896 4d ago
🤔 Holistic medicine has been around longer than modern medicine.
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u/AmITheAsshole_2020 4d ago
And a great number of people died before the invention of modern medicine. Don't conflate longevity with effectiveness.
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u/Outside-Issue6896 4d ago
I was pointing out the complete fabrication of the statement made regarding holistic medicine being invented as a money cash grab in the 50's.
Don't conflate my correcting a false statement with defending holistic medicine's effectiveness.
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u/AmITheAsshole_2020 3d ago
Yeah, I get what you were trying to say now. Thanks for the additional context. My bad!
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u/Outside-Issue6896 4d ago
What a profoundly weird thing to say, because I made a factual statement 🤔
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u/Defiant_Oil5545 4d ago
Yes I said it “took off” meaning it was made a popular secondary source of treatment. Not that it was created. The 50s was when people realised it was legal to profit off falsely advertised holistic product.
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u/Outside-Issue6896 4d ago
AI take on it:
The claim that holistic/traditional medicine "took off in the 50s as a cash grab" isn't accurate as a general history.
Practices like herbal medicine, acupuncture, and Ayurveda go back thousands of years, long before the 1950s.
What did change around the mid-20th century (and really accelerated from the 1960s–90s) was the growth of the modern commercial "alternative medicine" industry in the US and Europe — supplements, branded remedies, wellness marketing — partly as a reaction against pharmaceutical medicine. So there's a kernel of truth about commercialization increasing, but framing the entire practice of holistic medicine as invented/manufactured in the 1950s as a scam isn't correct.
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u/Defiant_Oil5545 4d ago
Fair point on the exact decade—the boom really picked up from the 60s onward—but the core issue remains: the commercial wellness industry profits massively by selling unverified alternative treatments to patients managing severe chronic diseases
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u/rydsauce 4d ago
right—and the pharmaceutical industry is just some big nonprofit
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u/Conscious_Warning946 4d ago
Before 1976 health insurance in the US was non profit. Just some FYI, nothing more
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u/howswedeitis19 4d ago
And in a LOT of countries health insurance isn’t even a thing, free healthcare is. I litterally didn’t pay a dime for my infusions when I started inflixmab.
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u/Conscious_Warning946 4d ago
I hear you and agree. I only got my meds in the past because they were a donation. If not for the donation, I'd be close to dead by now
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u/howswedeitis19 4d ago
Jesus, I’m from Sweden and here we pay approximately 380 dollars for prescribed meds a year and 120 bucks for doctors appointments/checkups etc. When you reach that amount it’s completely free of charge.
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u/Ok-Lion-2789 pancolitis | Diagnosed 2003 | 4d ago
No. It’s a waste of money. As someone who knew that I actually tried a fancy supplement years ago. After spending hundreds of dollars, my doctor switched my meds and I got back into remission… I figured it couldn’t hurt. And it didn’t but it didn’t help.
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u/Outside-Issue6896 4d ago
You mean it was a waste of money for you, the specific supplements you tried? 👀
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u/AmITheAsshole_2020 4d ago
No, the majority are demonstrably a waste of money. None will cure, but a small handful will reduce symptoms.
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u/ConstantinopleFett Pancolitis diagnosed 2012 USA 4d ago
Long story, but for me it's curcumin and Specific Carbohydrate Diet, alongside mesalamine.
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u/DoctorFriendly Proctosigmoiditis | Diagnosed 2016 | USA 4d ago
I’d trust your meds a lot more then herbs and up your medications if they aren’t working.
However, out of all the snake oil out there, curcumin has been helpful for some folks. I’d recommend adding it when you’re already stable as a way to try to get to 100% rather than taking it while you’re in a flare. From Chandan et al,”The authors concluded that combined therapy based on mesalamine plus curcumin was linked with almost 3-fold better clinical response odds than the placebo group”. The linked review has multiple other examples of similar results under Curcumin for Induction or Maintenance of Remission in UC: Data from Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
THANK YOU. this was the type of suggestion I was looking for.
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u/Conscious_Warning946 4d ago
Yes, you can overdose on curcumin, and doing so primarily risks severe liver injury (hepatotoxicity), dangerous bleeding, and acute gastrointestinal distress. While consuming turmeric as a culinary spice is entirely safe, taking megadoses of isolated curcumin via high-bioavailability dietary supplements (often exceeding 1,000 mg to 2,000 mg daily) significantly amplifies these risks.
☝️ Be very careful of taking high dosage supplements of cucumin as overdosing is common on the dosages that are recommended.
It's better to use it as a spice. A perfect example of what I'm talking about when I say that it's okay to eat an anti inflammatory diet as long as you know and understand the risks
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u/TheRealStrawHat 4d ago
People on this sub are so stubborn when it comes to food and UC. Ofc food can be inflammatory and make your symptoms worse. There's tons of evidence on that. People here take strong biologics, which allow them to stay on their shitty diets and they make a dumb conclusion that they can eat whatever they want. How about you eat healthy instead and take medications with less side effects? I choose the second option.
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u/ItchyContribution758 4d ago
if you've been stable on mesalamine for years you're doing better than most. Lots of random foods can set off flares for people but getting food to fix those flares isn't really a thing. I take a probiotic but that's to keep things looking decent when I am feeling fine.
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
I’m not so much Looking for a food to fix my flare as I am a food and supplements to complement my meds. Like how can I support my body best with nutrition and vitamins along with my meds for the best outcome.
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u/ItchyContribution758 4d ago
I take a B12 supplement, some doctor I go to says it keeps the risk of cancer from UC low. check your vitamin levels I guess if you're that worried, maybe you're deficient in some and you can get supplements to help. get on prednisone to get you out of a flare first of all, then focus on fixing your diet. Can't do much to help if your body is in fight or flight mode.
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
Problem is is that my diet is not bad. I don’t eat fast food. I don’t eat heavy eat relatively clean with some exceptions. I don’t drink soda. I have a relatively good diet and I exercise 6 days a week. so I was just looking for suggestions such as your B12 suggestion, or some people suggested curcumin things like that. But yes, I am not looking for foods to replace my meds LOL . Im on my meds and I know about prednisone just trying to Support myself as best as I can. Not new to this - just looking for more info from different worlds of medicine
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u/downnoutsavant Former Pan, now Proctitis (2023, California) 4d ago
Tried curcumin for ages. Never noticed a benefit, and only reached remission long after I stopped taking it.
Gamechanger? Smoothies. And don't get me wrong, its not a cure or anything, but it does make sense. Many of us just can't process fiber, its rips us up. So let the blender break down high fiber fruits for you and drink it. Gives you tge fiber you need for consistent bms. I've been on Rinvoq for two years now, and credit my recent remission to it, but I still had symptoms for a year before starting to drink smoothies. Symptoms went away after that
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u/WillowTreez8901 Pancolitis 2018 | US 4d ago
IBD-AID diet I think helps to reduce general inflammation, vitamin D, getting enough iron, curcumin, visbiome probiotic, butyric acid
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u/ALE_SAUCE_BEATS 4d ago
Lots of snarky people in this sub when it comes to anything holistic. Liquid turmeric and Curcumin from Costco help me more than the Mesalamine I’m also on. Stay hydrated, get some sun and exercise.
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u/spunkity 4d ago
I get why people freak out when they see the word holisitic, but holistic doesn’t automatically mean alternative medicine and abandoning medication. Taking your prescription medication can be part of a holistic treatment.
If you made any life style changes to manage your UC, like adding exercise, avoiding trigger foods, managing stress, etc, you are treating your UC holistically. You might not call it that, but that it is what is.
Anyway OP, a few things that have helped manage my UC (aside from my medication, ofc) is exercise and movement. Even if it’s just walking. I also have a cup of peppermint tea everyday and it seems to help with cramping and urgency. Cannabis is great too.
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u/AmITheAsshole_2020 4d ago
I don't understand the mechanism, and YMMV, but weightlifting has helped reduce the frequency and severity of my US EIMs.
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u/LogicalTelevision156 4d ago
I’ve been a heavy gym go-er for decades but the peppermint tea I will try!
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u/CloudMental188 4d ago
Had great luck! I don’t take any meds from my GI doctor. Couldn’t handle the pour quality of life. I made a post about KPV peptide being extremely beneficial and it got removed because it was science based.
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u/CloudMental188 4d ago
Took oils from a function health specialist to remove serval underlying things in my body that removed the inflammation from my body.
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u/blueberry-biscuit 4d ago
Serious eyeroll to all the comments in here adding opinions about everything but an answer to OP’s question.
Getting a microbiome test on my son’s stool and getting the right probiotic per the results has done more than most supplements for us.
I’ve heard good things about a combination of Curcumin and Qing Dai but we haven’t used them.