What Can I Do to Feel Better If I Have Ulcerative Colitis? (1:07)
If you have ulcerative colitis, it's key to focus on diet and remove anything that can trigger symptoms. Watch integrative gastroenterologist Robynne Chutkan, MD, explain how food journaling and lightening up your diet can make you feel better.
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If you have ulcerative colitis it's important to take a careful look at your diet to see if there may be things in there that are making you feel worse. Some of the common things that can trigger symptoms for people would be things like highly processed foods, fried foods, foods that are high in sugar and for some people eating large amounts of vegetables.
Of raw vegetables can also trigger symptoms but, every patient with ulcerative colitis is different. I recommend doing a food journal with what you're eating on one citing symptoms on the other and over the period of a few weeks you can usually figure out if there's a dietary component to your symptoms, so taking a careful look at your diet is an important part of it when you're having a flair up of symptoms, that may be the time to eat a little less.
In general when the colon is inflamed, the less food that's going through, the better it will feel so sometimes we put patients in the hospital for complete bowel rest and we feed them intravenously, what you can do at home might just be to lighten up your diet to do a day or two of for smoothies and blended soups and things like that but are a little bit easier for your colon to digest.
Ulcerative colitis, along with the better-known Crohn's disease, is a type of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Experts discuss what ulcerative colitis is and how to keep your colon healthy.
