Healing our Crohns / IBD

Our Daily Routine for Healing IBD ~ Crohns

Current Daily routine:

Ø Morning – in bed when alarm goes off – take ¼ cup or so of Georges “Always Active” 100% Aloe Vera”. Allow 20 mins or so before breakfast.

o Then, with breakfast – 2 Lialda pills (prescribed by Dr.)

Ø After School / just before dinner - at least 1 cup of fresh juice as described below – it always includes red (purple) cabbage. We’ve added fresh turmeric lately – about a “finger tip” or so to each batch of juice. (Whole foods sells this)

o We use the Slowstar juicer – made by Tribest. http://www.tribestlife.com (over $350 cost – worth every penny).

o Use organic veggies as often as possible.

o Serve juice 1 – 2 x / day containing red cabbage + carrots + cucumber, apples, sometimes Kale, etc.

o Also added Mangosteen Juice to regimen When just starting regimen, serve 1/3 cup 2-3 x / day Mangosteen juice from the Vitamin Shoppe

§ Mangosteen juice – “maintenance” = about ¼ cup at any point between breakfast & dinner. We reduced to this amount after about 4 months – after seeing calprotectin tests get to <160.

o We have a few tricks to save lots of time with juicing – serve same day for best results early on in the routine, but now we serve it up to 1 or 2 days after juicing it.

o We use Stevia in the Raw instead of sugar or aspartame to sweeten his juice since cabbage doesn’t taste good. (1 or 2 packets in a measured cup).

Ø With dinner or just after:

o Nordic Naturals Arctic Cod Liver Oil (2-3 tablet, each tablet is 1000mg) (Vitamin Shoppe or Amazon)

o Source Naturals Co-enzyme Q10 (1 tablet, 100 mg) (we usually go every other day on this, in place of the 3^rd cod liver oil tablet) (Vitamin Shoppe or Amazon)

o Carlson Laboratories Vitamin D3 (1 tablet, 2000 IU) (Amazon) for a total of 3600 IU daily.

o Two Forvia multivitamin tablets.

Ø Bedtime / 2 hours after eating anything (so we have to time dessert and snacks to end around 7:30)

o One tablet of Natren’s “Healthy Trinity” probiotic (have to work up to this – it’s powerful stuff – see notes on yogurt and other Natren products below)

§ I recommend you buy this AT THE STORE from Vitamin Shoppe – it has to be refrigerated at all times, so mail order is not a good idea.

Ø Occasionally I mix in some Udo’s Oil 3-6-9 – in banana smoothies (Available at Whole Foods) Udo’s Oil includes flax seed oil.

General notes:

· Diet has been somewhat close to the low residue diet.

· Crackers, vanilla wafers, toast, palm oil (butter substitute), water, almond Milk, no beef. Eats mostly turkey, chicken and cheese. White bread, Peanut Butter & Jelly, white tortilla wraps, etc.

o We avoid High Fructose Corn syrup and try to reduce sugar amount

o We stay away from small seeds (strawberries, nuts etc.)

Usng probiotics best to build up to the full dose: In order to build up to the Natren Healthy Trinity, we made homemade yogurt with Natren Yogurt starter - Lactobacillus Bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus. www.natren.com

· Also added extra 2000 mg of Vitamin D3 with Dr’s ok

· Gave up all dairy milk – even Lactaid – using Almond Milk instead. Also, holding off on all beef for now.

· Most Hard cheeses seem fine: mostly cheddar and Monterey jack

(MJ slices are a nice replacement for American cheese for grilled cheese etc.)

Books, web, etc: