type of diet for crohn's disease

alright! this is john kohler with okraw.com,today we have another exciting episode for you, and this one’s going to be a fun onethat i haven’t done one of these in actually quite a while, but i know for some of youguys that maybe found this video, it’s going to definitely be able to help you guys out,so, you know, why i got into making dietary changes in my life is because i had a healthcondition, the primary health condition that

type of diet for crohn's disease, i had was called complement immune deficiency,which is basically a bad immune system that the doctors blamed on my genes, and i neededto find a way to get my genes working properly and build my immune system naturally, so thati would not end up in the hospital again, and potentially lose my life like i did wheni had spinal meningitis many years ago. i

found basically a plant-based fruit and vegetablebased diet, and i’ve been healthy ever since, and we have a guest, annette davidson on theshow today because she also had a health challenge, and i want her to share her story with youguys because i know many of you guys may also have the challenge she has or something similar,so you can learn what may be able to help you so, annette, what kind of health challengedid you have? well i had crohn’s disease, and had severeissues with digesting anything, and very big difficulties with constipation and inflammatoryintestines. cool, so crohn’s disease, is that similarto colitis or ibd, irritable bowel disease or are they all related or similar?yes they are related, and especially like

colitis and crohn’s, almost the same, it’sa little bit different, but mostly location in the gut, and it’s inflammatory boweldisease both of them. so that must be very uncomfortable becauseyou’re just constantly going to the bathroom all the time, or what happened to you?well i didn’t go to the bathroom at all was my issue, so i was really bloated andi woke up in the morning totally puffy in my face and i was really, really tired andoften shaky because i couldn’t eat and digest my food and i got really toxic and the phgets really acidic too in the body, so it’s, i was so, so tired all the time, and didn’thave energy to do anything, it was horrible. so how long did you have this condition?more than 23 years.

so you lived this with this for 23, you reallycouldn’t go to the bathroom, and didn’t have a lot of energy?yes, that’s how i was. so you must have went to the doctor right,didn’t they help you out and fix you up? no, in the beginning they didn’t say anythingat all, and they couldn’t find anything that was wrong with me, but i could feel thatsomething was really wrong, and i searched, you know everything like homeopathy, reflexology,acupuncture, i tried everything and all kinds of herbs, and everything, and nothing helped,and i was even hospitalized actually one time because my candida, i got so bad so i waslying in a single room at the hospital with a fan between my legs, it was really horrible.and still it didn’t do anything. and then

after a couple of years they actually foundout that it was crohn’s, that i was inflamed in my small intestine and also in the colon,and i decided to do surgery, so they did surgery and they said “now everything will be fine,”but still it wasn’t in the whole body, it’s not just in one spot so it didn’t help atall, it still continued, the same issue. wow, so you know i know some people out therewe can’t give medical advice here, but you went to the doctors again and they said “we’regoing to cut out part of you, and it’s going to help,” would you go into the surgeryagain? no, never. and i didn’t want to do it thattime either, but i couldn’t find any other solution, i tried everything as far as i knewat that point, and some people say “just

do it,” you know and then we can work onit after that. and i did it, but it didn’t help. they took this much out of my smallintestine and colon, and they put it together again.yeah i mean, for me personally, like i don’t want to ever go under any kind of electivesurgery unless it’s required of me if i’m in a car accident they definitely need todo something for me to save my life yes, but if i have an option, i’m never going tochoose a surgery because i have a really good friend that actually had a problem with hisback, he went in for back surgery, it was just supposed to be a minor thing, and nowhe’s paralyzed, confined to a wheelchair for life, i mean many things can happen inthe hospital, and not always the way that

it’s supposed to go. in annette’s case,[inaudible] supposed to fix her, and now she’s missing part of her colon and it didn’thelp the problem. so annette, so i mean you look great now, and it appears you’re allhealed up now, now what did you do to make a difference in your life to basically healyourself from this condition that doctors couldn’t even help?well, i was in denmark at that point, in copenhagen, and i was searching online for raw food andfor colitis and crohn’s and i found a book written by david klein, “self-feeding colitisand crohn’s,” and i read that book and i found out why i was sick in the first place.it’s not sickness it doesn’t just happen to you, it’s something that you—there’ssomething behind it, and i found out why,

and i read the book and i tried to implementthe things as good as i could, and slowly healed up.so wait a second, i want to stop you right there, so why were you sick in the first place?i know many people are wondering this also that may have the similar condition, why’dyou get sick? [inaudible] too much crappy foods.too much crappy food. i shouldn’t say i was worse than anyoneelse, and i was a vegetarian from when i was 15 years old, and a vegan after i was 27,but still it didn’t help, because there was some parts of my diet that still was disturbingmy gut and i had to remove all those parts of my diet and then after that it startedcleaning out, you know clearing out and i

got the toxins out, my body started recoveringfrom all this, and got stronger and stronger, and i can feel that’s nine years ago now,almost ten, yeah nine, ten years ago, and i can still feel improvement here and there,now it’s getting better again, even better, and i get more energy, it’s like, it’sreally cool. wow. yeah i mean, i want to encourage youguys out there to, if i asked ten people, “do you eat healthy?,” nine out of tenare probably going to say “yeah i eat healthy,” and everybody always thinks they eat healthy,but what is eating healthy, right? “oh yeah i eat red meat once a month, or once a week,”and “i eat at chipotle instead of mcdonald’s, and that’s healthier,” but you know inmy opinion, that’ still not healthy. i’m

on a fruit and vegetable based diet and that’swhat it took for me to heal, and that’s what it took for annette to heal as well becausewhether you’re on a vegan or vegetarian diet, those diets can be healthy, but in manycases when you’re still eating processed and junk foods and not whole foods, more thanlikely it’s really not that healthy in my opinion, so i want you guys to check yourself,and if you’re eating fruits and vegetables as much as you can, and excluding all theother stuff, because some people are so, i don’t know, messed up, you need to be moreextreme, that’s pretty much why i eat a fruit and vegetable based diet, because idon’t want to get sick again, i don’t want to be in a position where i’m in thehospital and the doctors tell me that i might

not make it out alive. so annette you wantto get further into, actually what specifically you did to heal your crohn’s up so thatyou’re, basically you’re symptom free and you go to the bathroom regularly now right?yeah i do. well, what i did, i had to go very, very deep in this, and i had to eat almostonly really water, which, fruit like water melon, melons is so, so good for me, i canfeel that it’s really good with it, so easy to digest, and i couldn’t eat much greenseither in the beginning, i had to juice them because it was too harsh for my body, couldn’thandle it at all. so a lot of juicy fruits, mangoes, papayas, and melons and all thosethings. i had grapes, i love grapes, it was really hard for me, but i had to spit outthe skins, i couldn’t handle the skins.

so i was chewing on them and spitting themout, and i did that with a lot of things, like if i had citrus, either i juiced it ori put it in my mouth, the piece i spit it out too, the fiber because i couldn’t handleit so, i had to go very, very basic, very juicy and high water content.wow so let’s talk about that, so you know, you talked about getting rid of the fiber,you think it would be good to juice and get rid of all the fiber and if you did juiceeverything, do you think it would not upset your system and it would be alright?yeah, it could be but of course we need fibers too, i mean we shouldn’t live on juice,that’s not the point, but in some cases where it’s really bad with those bowel diseasesyou have to in the beginning yes, to remove

as much as possible i didn’t juice the watermelon [inaudible]. yeah there’s not a whole lot [inaudible]that was fine you know, but some other things that was the best thing to do, yes.awesome. so for the people out there that have been living with some kind of crohn’s,colitis, or ibd, what would you say, if you were them, what would you do knowing whatyou know now, because you’ve gone through 20-odd years of living with this condition,and now you’ve been living healthfully for the last few years. if you knew now what youshould have known then, what would you have done differently immediately and started changing?yeah, i would have removed the meat, the dairy products, for me the dairy was the worst actuallyand all the grains. that’s the first part

of it, and then see, you know everybody hasto try out for themselves, what is good for you and what, some people are excellent onbananas, you can eat banana smoothies. for me that was not really that good, but forsome people it’s amazing and they can heal up. you have to try for yourself and see what’sgood, or talk to someone that knows about those things, can help you guide you throughit. excellent, so she’s given you some amazingtips to, you know like i always just recommend people reduce or eliminate completely theirconsumption of any animal product, whether that’s meat or in worse, i believe dairyis even more insidious than the meat is, and of course the grains in this day and age,it’s just not really natural for us to eat

grains, maybe for chickens, but i believepersonally we’re a fruitavore, [inaudible] eat mostly fruits, and some vegetables aswell. and i think these are great starting tips, but if somebody really wanted to takeit to the next level annette, i mean let’s talk about that book that helped you healyourself that you read that gave you the motivation, gave you the encouragement to heal yourself.yeah, i have it here. it’s this “self-healing colitis and crohn’s,” david klein. itdescribes in detail everything about digestion and what to do and it’s a part in here whereit describes exactly what to eat and what not to eat, and how to do this. it’s prettygood. yeah so i mean this literally looks like alittle manual, like man, whole lot of pages,

i don’t know two, three hundred pages ofrecommended reading, and how to basically, your guide book on how to heal yourself withthis condition, i know you guys may have tried different medical expert, doctors and allover and the top gastroenterologists in new york city i went to, and he couldn’t helpme, well i would encourage for this book it’s about 20 dollars, but more, you know i wouldencourage you guys to try new things, right? if you never try this book, if you never buythis book, then you may never get better, but if you try this, right, and it works,that’s great. and if you try and it doesn’t work, well then you know that that doesn’twork right? but i mean here annette tried it, and it totally works. annette any lastthings you’d like to say about the book

or anything else?i just want to say that, i mean a lot of people don’t have to go that deep as i did, theycan heal up much faster and much easier than i did. i think that because i was so constipatedand had it for so many years that it took so long, i had to go down to melons, you know?and many people, they can heal up if they have a cooked meal for dinner, and, i meancooked meal, not any cooked meal, but you know some steamed vegetables and things andthey define. but i couldn’t. right, yeah. you know i always want to encourageyou guys to eat a plant-based, plant-strong diet, rich in as many fruits and vegetablesas you can, i don’t like wasting time with other things besides fruits and vegetablesmyself, so i eat predominantly fruits and

vegetables, which is my diet. so to get thisbook, you can go to the website colitis-crohn’s.com, and the book by “self-healing colitis andcrohn’s,” by david klein. any last words that you’d like to say to the viewers outthere annette in passing? i just want to say that there’s anotherway to go than the medical way, and you can be healed from this. it’s so good, it’sfantastic. yeah i mean i’ve met so many people thatget onto a plant-based fruit and vegetable-based diet, and many diseases, or what is thoughtof as diseases literally disappear, i mean not because fruits and vegetables are magicor some kind of thing, it’s basically when we eat the proper diet that we’re meantto eat right, our body can heal itself like

it’s designed and supposed to, i mean youcut your finger right, you don’t need to go to the doctor to get your finger fixedup, your body will basically scab over and heal itself, and that’s what will happenon the insides of us if we provide the right nutrition and the right food. i really hopethis helps you guys out there, if you do have colitis, crohn’s, irritable bowel, or anyother similar kind of discomfort and disease in your body. you want to make sure you guyscheck out this book, and once again my name is john kohler with okraw.com, we’ll seeyou next time and until then remember, keep eating your fresh fruits and vegetables, they’realways the best.