“Hey guys, I’m really sick of not eating many foods. I think I’m improving but confused if I should add in more foods. I don’t want to go back to 8 diarrhea movements a day. But the diarrhea isn’t totally gone yet either. What do I do?”

The above email is probably the most common type of email we’ve received over the last four years.

The issue with introducing new foods into your diet is that everyone has an opinion on how to do it and when you listen to all of them your brain gets confused.

Which is interesting, because I think it’s a black and white problem.

In today’s information age, there’s a million experts you can read, email, listen to, and watch. And the normal human behavior is to try to understand all the angles and create the best advice for your situation…

Which typically ends up with your thoughts in a tangled mess since you’re reinventing the wheel… again.

My suggestion is that you leave the wheel alone and follow along. Because I’m going to show you how to cut out the frustration of knowing when, or if, or how to try new foods. That way you don’t get stuck eating the same 3 meals each day afraid to move on.

Let’s start with some reasons to introduce some new foods.

How to Tell When It’s Time to Introduce More Foods

Over the last four years one of the most common questions we are asked is “When can I introduce new foods?”

And the funny thing is, if you’re at a place where you’re pondering this question… the answer is likely “Right Now.”

After talking with well over 5,000 people via email, comments, Facebook and private 1-on-1 consults, we’re evolving our point of view about introducing new food to make sure you get the best results as fast as possible.

Here’s some common signs it’s time to introduce new foods:

• You’ve been on the intro diet for 4 days or longer
• You’ve been on the intro diet for 4 days or longer and diarrhea isn’t completely stopped
• You’ve been eating the same 7 foods for over a month
• You’ve started SCD but your symptoms aren’t completely gone yet
• You’ve started SCD and your symptoms are getting better
• You’re wondering, “Should I introduce another food…”

As you can see, it’s usually a good idea to introduce another food regardless of what your symptoms are doing. I’ll explain more in a bit, but eating more diverse foods provides better nutrition and is good for the mind, gut flora and social life.

But Sometimes Introducing New Foods Is a Bad Idea

Now I’m contradicting myself… well not really. With everything in health, there is always a caveat.

See, there are a few times in which it’s a bad idea to push yourself and expanding your diet would be the wrong choice.

If you’re having a flare up, or your diarrhea, constipation, or other GI symptoms are still very bad, we need to step back and first make sure you’re not eating some common trigger foods that easily could be making things worse.

There are 4 very specific food groups that we’ve identified not only in the scientific research but through the 1000’s of people we’ve talked to and we’ve called them the 4 Horsemen of SCD. Eliminating these 4 trigger food groups is where you should start and see if your symptoms improve:

• Dairy
• Egg
• Nuts
• No more than 3 servings of fruit + honey a day

In other words, if your symptoms are not improving and you’re still eating the 4 Horsemen, remove those first before introducing new foods into your diet. If after removal, your symptoms are not improving then proceed to adding new foods.

The reason for this is our 1st goal for you is to get you symptom-free, and some can do this through a custom diet alone. And many will have to remove the foods above to achieve the symptom remission. But not all will see results by just doing that, so if your symptoms are not great yet and you’re not eating the above foods it’s time to move on.

The reason being is there are many other reasons why you might still be reacting to the foods you’re eating even when following the strictest diets. The three most common are GI infections, a supplementation issue, or a hormone imbalance. And until you get more testing or help in these areas it’s best that you add foods to your diet.

3 Reasons We React to Foods

Reacting to foods not only sucks but it’s confusing. It should be simpler and many have tried to make it so by using new food sensitivity testing methods. While these may help in your discovery the reality is that they are only addressing 1 of 3 reasons you may be reacting to foods.

Please know for this discussion we’re ignoring the IgE reactions, which are the anaphylactic food allergies that put people in the hospital and sometimes kill them. With this article, we’re focused on the more prevalent low-grade food reactions.

We can break them down into 3 classes of reactions. 

1. The first is IgG delayed onset food reactions. The research at this time suggests that the vast majority will notice problems by the 72-hour mark after introducing a new food. (1) So, what this suggests is that if you see no regression or bad changes in symptoms by 72-hours it’s highly likely this new food will only benefit your diet. Unless of course you react to the food and it’s not an IgG problem, which is one of the reasons why we aren’t fans of IgG food sensitivity testing…

2. The second type of reaction is an absorption issue in the intestines. The FODMAP diet research clearly shows there is a sliding scale of absorption ability among humans for carbohydrates. Basically you might be able to tolerate 15g of but not 16g of a certain type of carbohydrate. And different types of carbohydrates can interact with each other causing better or worse absorption. So, if you have a lower tolerance of absorption or eat too many similar foods that stack up and cause worse absorption you can suffer GI issues and other food reaction symptoms. (2,3)

3. The third factor is a gut microbiota issue. We are learning that the bacteria in our GI tract feed on our food selectivity multiply to the supply of the food source. (4,5,6) This means that as you eat more of a certain type of food your gut microbiota change almost instantly. And if you overload them before they can change you could cause symptoms. Also, there may be a gut flora type issue where the species in your gut are off balance making you more sensitive to certain types of foods such as in histamine intolerance. (7) In both cases, you could get a food reaction when the gut bugs that help us digest things are overwhelmed or off balance.

To recap, you could react to foods in 3 ways:

• A true IgG triggered delayed onset immune reaction or inflammation reaction
• An absorption issue due to the types of combinations of foods you’re eating
• Eating too much of a food before your gut flora are ready to support you in digesting it

And the tough part about it is that the symptoms of each reaction can feel the same. It makes it tough to pinpoint the exact problem you’re having. And simply getting an IgG test will tell you nothing about if you’re suffering from a tolerance issue both in ability to digest or microbiota problem. I talked more about IgG testing in this video on Food Allergy vs Food Intolerance.

3-Day Rule for Introducing New Foods

Now it’s time to cover the most fool-proof way to introduce new foods. This is backed both by science and real world testing with 5,000+ people who’ve communicated with us.

Previously, you might have heard us call this the 4-day rule. This is the same idea, but we’re improving it based on the science covered above and the actual results of people of all conditions who use our material.

The old way was to begin a new food every 4 days, which isn’t a bad thing it’s just more conservative than it needed to be.

The elephant in the room in healthcare is that almost everything is a test. For the most part every therapy is still trial and error, which is why I think this is a black and white problem. The only choice of certainty we have is to test it.

Then, see what happens and test again.

And with this mindset you can remove judgment and separate yourself from any negative reactions to foods you might have. Remember having a more diverse diet helps with better nutrition, better gut flora, easier social life, and generally higher sense of well-being. Here’s how to test the 3 reactions I explained above and mitigate major setbacks.

Day 1 – Introduce the new food at 1/2 cup serving for one meal

Day 2 – Eat the new food for at least 2 meals 1/2 cup each time

Day 3 – Eat the new food at least 1 1/2 cups, but no more than 2 cups this day

If by the end of Day 3 you’ve noticed no reactions it’s time on Day 4 to introduce another food.

By doing it this way, you will test all three potential reactions described above. Remember, the 4 day rule isn’t broken… it’s just more conservative.

Tell me about your experience trying new foods in the comments below. I’d love to hear what you’re frustrated with or still don’t understand about this common problem.

-Steve

The post Properly Introducing New Foods on SCD appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Intrigued? Well, the best part is it’s true and you don’t have to tweak SCD to do it.

Gaining weight is on the minds of many who attempt the Specific Carbohydrate Diet… healing faster is on everyone’s. A much debated and usually misunderstood piece of healing is working out. Elaine guarded against it for good reasons: our diseased bodies are not the same as athletes, bodybuilders or marathoners; our hormones, gut, and many other organs are just not functioning the way they should right now. So, for us to carry-on trying to belong to the groups above makes little sense. That doesn’t mean you can’t be any of the above and have a digestive disease. It just means there are special tweaks and rules to abide by during healing.

Here Are a Few Tweaks to Live By if You’re Just Starting Out:

1. Total time of training should be as low as possible to conserve body resources (Less is more in the gym. Get in and out in under an hour, changing included)
2. Rest time is of very high importance, the body is continually fighting your digestive problems and now it has to rebuild muscles (don’t go to the gym every day)
3. Unless training for a specific event, exercises with the smallest chance of injury should be used (if you’re hurt you can’t get any of the benefits of training)
4. Training intensity and exercise form are the most important things to keep in mind while training (push yourself as hard as possible, but use proper form to stay injury free)
5. Cardio creates chronic inflammation and wastes precious resources, time and calories (Just stop already. Go for walks outside instead)

These tweaks to your workout program will make sure you’re looking and feeling better right away. There is no need to wait unless instructed by a doctor. In fact, check this out:

• Strength training produces many positive adaptations (some of which help metabolism, hormones, and blood flow)
• Strength training benefits include: higher bone mass, larger lean muscle mass and promotes positive balance of chemicals in the brain

So, why did I include that last bullet point? Because I see several emails each week from people who are at risk of osteoporosis or already have it, about ½ of the people we email say they want to gain weight and one the biggest pink elephants in this community is that many of us have battled depression, anxiety and other mental problems.

Strength training, done properly, will help all of these problems! But don’t run away yet and start chucking dumbbells around. Remember, we must filter the body of strength training knowledge through our lens of digestive problems. Only then can we filter and find what we should be doing.

Luckily for all of us, Anja emailed me. It turns out she has discovered many of the same things I have. She’s gone down the rabbit hole of working out while trying to heal, finding out what works and doesn’t. So, without further ado…

[Enter Anja]

An Introduction to HIT

“Intensity of effort is almost the entire answer in itself; lacking the proper intensity of effort, little or nothing in the way of results will be produced by any amount of exercise—at least not in the way of muscular size or strength increases. But given the proper intensity of effort, then very little in the way of exercise is required for the production of best possible results.” – Arthur Jones, Nautilus Bulletin #1, 1970

I’ve been suffering from digestive illness for the past 8 years. Conventional medicine has not been very helpful for me unfortunately, so I began to look into alternative ways of improving my physical and mental well-being, including exercise.

But for most of that time, I was doing everything wrong. Even becoming a personal trainer did not make me wiser in this regard. And, I know now that I was also likely working against my own healing and recovery.

What I was missing was the recognition of certain facts of reality that must be heeded in order to reap the rewards of exercise. So, in this post I want to provide a brief overview of those facts, and then draw out the implications for digestive healing.

Exercise – The Facts

The first thing one needs to understand is that gains in muscle, strength, and cardiovascular conditioning are the result of successful adaptation—an adaptation made by the body to the demands placed upon it by exercise. The biological identity of the human body is such that while individuals vary in their maximum potential for muscle gains, the biochemical changes necessary to produce these gains are universal.

In particular, for exercise to trigger muscle growth, muscles must be engaged as fully and completely as possible and made to momentarily fail. Achieving this requires sufficient intensity—you have got to work as hard as you can.

Steve: This is an important take home point. Most people I’ve met have no idea how far they could actually push themselves, including myself. Look to go the extra mile every time.

But—and this is crucial—since intensity is inversely related to duration, it cannot be kept up for long. You can train very hard or very long, but you cannot do both at the same time.

Moreover, the body’s adaptation response occurs not during exercise, but during rest—and the time it needs to adapt is actually much longer than is often assumed. If the exercise stimulus is reintroduced to the body before it has had sufficient time to recover, it will be hindered in producing the response intended by exercise. Too much stress will deplete the body’s ability to adequately restore itself. Exercise duration and frequency are therefore determined by how much time the body needs to recover and adapt.

Steve: Many will debate this point because they fail to define the goal of a specific training program. In some programs, full recovery might not be the goal. However, things are different for us coming from the digestive healing lens

Finally, since the body constantly seeks to establish equilibrium by adapting to the stress placed upon it by high intensity exercise, exercise has to progress in intensity in order to elicit a continued adaptation response over time.

So, it is the intensity of exercise that produces most of the benefits, not volume or frequency.

Steve: Again program goals can change this, but not for our group

Now, what do these facts translate to in the gym?

The most proven way to grow bigger and stronger, is to lift weights—lift as hard as you can for only the time it takes you to reach complete failure—and no more. Then, rest for as long as your body needs to fully recover.

But What About Cardio?

Advocates of steady-state cardiovascular exercise claim that because it primarily stimulates the body’s aerobic metabolism (i.e. energy produced by using oxygen to break down fats and carbohydrates), such exercise plays an important role in conditioning the heart and lungs, and promoting fat loss.

However, the purpose of the heart and lungs is to support the activities of the body that involve the muscular system (e.g., hunting for food or escaping a predator). Hence, as long as strength training is sufficiently intense, the heart and lungs must work harder and thereby will be conditioned. Incidentally, intense enough strength training also prompts the biochemical process involved in mobilizing fat to be used for fuel.

In addition, aerobic exercise has some decided disadvantages over strength training:

1. The most efficient way to burning fat and keeping off weight is to grow and maintain muscle, because muscle is metabolically more expensive than fat (i.e. it burns more calories). Aerobic exercise may produce some fat loss, but since it is supposed to be kept up over a long duration, it cannot possibly be intense enough to trigger the building of muscle.
2. Worse, long bouts of such activity can deprive the body of the energy necessary to recover and support muscle growth.
3. Over the long-term it can cause overuse injury to the knees, hips, and back due to the forces imposed on them. By contrast, strength training is very safe provided it is properly conducted.

So, What Does All of This Have to do With Digestive Healing?

There are two important points to make here.

One, building muscle has been shown to promote the kind of physical and mental environment conducive to reducing pain, preventing injury, and increasing metabolic, hormonal and psychological functioning. In other words, building muscle can not only make you look but also feel better.

Two, exercise is a stressor on the body, which means it requires substantial resources for recovery. If you overdo it in the gym (weight or cardio-wise) and do not allow your body the time to heal, you will undermine not only your goal of muscle growth and fat loss, but also your goal of digestive healing.

Splendid. Now that we have covered the basics, my next post will give you some practical advice on how to develop a training program that optimizes your exercise and digestive healing goals.

In the meantime, to learn more about HIT training, I highly recommend you read High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way by Mike Mentzer and John Little, Body by Science by Doug McGuff and John Little, and Arthur Jones’ classic Nautilus Bulletin #1 and Nautilus Bulletin #2. A good summary of the research regarding HIT’s effectiveness is provided by Smith and Bruce-Low in Strength training methods and the work of Arthur Jones. For an excellent HIT blog, check out Drew Baye’s High Intensity Training.

Anja Hartleb-Parson is Vice President of Research for an educational non-profit. As the owner of Lead Your Self Coaching, she also helps people fine-tune their thinking skills for maximum achievement. 

– Steve

The post Gain Weight and Heal Faster on SCD: In One Hour a Week appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

You know what I mean right?

I use that term whenever I learn something that erases everything I thought I knew and leaves behind a blank slate…

Here’s what he said (paraphrased):

“Humans have ten times more bacteria than human cells in their body. So a common saying is: we’re more bacteria than we are human.”

Crazy right? What if our bodies are just puppets to carry bacteria around?

Yeah I know – I’m coming back to earth, but it’s something to think about for a minute…

If we have 10x more bacteria growing inside us than human cells, maybe we should become better friends with them.

They might play just as big of a role in our health as food, air, and water. Some people refer to this as “tending our bacteria gardens.” It can be one of the easiest ways to feel better faster other than changing your diet.

And that’s why I put this post together about SCD Probiotics and what you really need to know.

For Starters, There Are Three KINDS of Bacteria

Each of these three types of bacteria has a different role in our body and there’s some that are more important than others.

For the sake of making it simple, they can be separated by how they interact with each other. With that said, here’s the best explanation I’ve seen about the different bacteria types:

1. Essential or Beneficial Flora (AKA the good guys): that’s the friendly bacteria we’re always talking about, like Bifidobacteria, Lactobacteria, and E-Coli.

(Yes, some strands of E-Coli can be friendly.)

2. Opportunistic Flora (AKA the bad guys): there’s around 500 various species of microbes in your gut that fall in this category.  And they’re actually controlled by the beneficial flora, so they keep them in check.

They can cause problems once they overgrow… this is the “bad bacteria.”

3. Transitional Flora (AKA the drifters): these are microbes from the outside environment, the ones you take in through food and drink or just living and breathing in the environment.

They can take hold and damage our guts and even cause disease. In this case, beneficial bacteria (the good guys) usually keep those in check and prevent that from happening.

All these types have a place and a purpose, and when they start doing something other than that is when they wreak digestive havoc in our bodies.

But Probiotics Are Something Different Altogether…

Probiotics are strains of beneficial bacteria that, when we take them, support our native beneficial bacteria.

They also help control the opportunistic bacteria from getting out of control and protect us so that the transitional bacteria and pathogenic organisms can’t take hold inside our damaged guts.

But the supplemental forms that we take are “transient” and don’t stay in our bodies for very long… something like two weeks.

So they aren’t really “replacing” what we’re already missing in that sense…

Which is a bummer, because research shows that the guts of IBD patients contain 25% fewer species of bacteria (on average) than healthy people.

So we’re already at a disadvantage…

So Who Needs Probiotics?

Well, symptoms like diarrhea and constipation are signs of “Gut Dysbiosis” AKA “really screwed up gut bacteria” – which probiotics will help with.

Remember that anywhere from 50 to 80% of the dry weight of a bowel movement is dead bacteria.

And most people with digestive disease or high inflammation are going to see a benefit from taking probiotics. As I said above, we’re running on 75% of the gut bacteria a healthy person has so any little bit helps, in my opinion.

It reminds me of our friend Jay Baluk (Chrohnsboy), who has this “burnt lawn” analogy that I have to share with you.

He says (paraphrased):

“Imagine you have a big, beautiful green lawn but you have this big circle in the middle that’s burnt to a crisp and dead. Would you just let all the weeds grow so you have this beautiful lawn and in the middle you have a big giant circle with all these weeds and nasty stuff growing out of it? Or would you do what you needed to do to re-plant the seeds and let everything re-grow?”

The Bad Side of Probiotics

Before we get into the good stuff we have to touch on Bifidobacteria. It’s a hot topic in the SCD community for the reason that it can “take over” and cause health problems in some cases.

It is a beneficial bacteria, but the problem is, it’s just not a good neighbor at times. So, sometimes it can overgrow in and of itself.

So just to be on the safe side we usually recommend avoiding it in the beginning of the healing journey, but later on it can really help…

Now onto the important part – how to get started using them.

How to Start Using Probiotics… the Right Way

Fermented food has been used for tens of thousands of years and getting Probiotics from naturally fermented foods is going to be the best bet long term…

That’s why I think Elaine was so emphatic about using SCD yogurt if you’re starting SCD. It really can change lives and heal people fast, but it has its own draw backs.

Fermenting SCD Yogurt for 24-32 hours does remove 99% of the lactose sugars, BUT… it still contains the casein protein.

And we’ve seen too many people start SCD eating the yogurt, DCCC, aged cheeses, etc. and never start feeling better…but those same people try cutting it out for a little while and notice an immediate improvement.

The best non-dairy option would be making your own sauerkraut. But if that’s not an option…

So our current thinking on it is: once you’ve been on the diet about 30 days and you’re starting to feel better, go ahead and test SCD legal fermented yogurt slowly…

In the meantime – probiotics can help you heal start healing in the absence of these other sources.

Here’s Two Steps to Get Started Today:

Step 1) Your safest bet to start healing is Lactobacillus acidophilus. GI Pro “Scdophilus” is great because it’s non-dairy, SCD legal, very high quality, and has a long shelf life.

You can find out more about it here: http://www.giprohealth.com/scdophilusnext.aspx

Step 2) Start low and work your way up.  For example, if you go with “Scdophilus” from GI Pro Health, they have a 3 Billion CFU pill and a 10 Billion CFU pill. So you could start by taking 1 of their 3 Billion CFU pills per day and work up slowly to 30 to 40 billion CFU’s per day by moving up to the 10 Billion CFU pills.

(For best results: take them 30 minutes before breakfast right when you wake up or atleast two hours after a meal right before bed.  That’s the best odds to get live cultures past the stomach pH and into the intestines.)

Taking Probiotics Long Term…

Those two steps will get us started, but it’s a long road we’re headed down.

In Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride’s book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome, she states:

“A good probiotic should have as many different species of beneficial bacteria as possible. A human gut contains hundreds of different species of bacteria. We should try and get as close to that as we can.”

She goes on to say, “Making sure there are strains from different groups of probiotic bacteria is more beneficial than just one group.”

So if you’ve been cruising along for a while taking 30-40 Billion CFU’s of Lactobacillus Acidophilus and you’re feeling kind of “stuck,” consider testing a multi-strain probiotic.

It might be the next missing piece of your healing journey…

The other obvious choice here is to start testing fermented foods like Sauerkraut (Wild Fermentation is a great book to get started) OR introduce SCD 24-Hour Yogurt.

After you start feeling better on SCD + Probiotics, give SCD legal yogurt a shot…

Either one is just another step along the way.

All I do know is: Gut Bacteria is like outer space – there’s still a whole lot we don’t know about it.

In good health,

The post SCD Probiotics – What You Really Need to Know appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Our Specific Carbohydrate Diet friend of the week is Cheryl Cravino, who beat her Crohn’s Disease and now lives medication and symptom free.

Her story is one that I can relate to. Not receiving the care we need from traditional medicine, a chance meeting offers an alternative that almost everyone refuses to accept. Diet matters. Now Cheryl is returning the favor by sharing her story.

After 3 years on SCD, Cheryl has some great wisdom that I wanted to highlight:

I would start by saying don’t look at it as a “diet” (that is a four letter word that most people would define as: “something your mind struggles with, an unachievable goal”)

Expect to make mistakes……….we all have! Be patient; remember Rome wasn’t built in a day!

It (SCD) has allowed me to regain my life back, just the simple things in life, simple things often taken for granted: going for a walk, gardening, shopping, walking the dogs, and even traveling. You all understand what I mean…just no more bathroom worries.

I couldn’t agree more!

I made a ton of mistakes when I started and it was frustrating, but believe me it gets much easier once you accept and embrace the new lifestyle. In the end, Cheryl’s right. It’s totally worth it, I promise.

So, without further ado, I’ll let Cheryl tell you about her healing journey.

Why did you start the diet?

My memory takes me back almost 10 years ago, 7 of which were filled with dietary distress, dramatic weight loss, misdiagnoses, endless prescriptions, severe medication allergies, many visits to the emergency room, countless doctors, and thousands of trips to the bathroom!

In 2008, in a last ditch effort to avoid surgery, I was told about Remicade and the promises it held for patients with Crohn’s. I was to have five infusions and while sitting in oncology waiting for my last infusion, I was questioned by another patient, waiting her turn as well. She asked why I was there, and as I was giving her my nutshell version, she was called by the nurses and taken away. She turned to me and said, “You need to break the cycle, my daughter did and her Crohn’s is now gone.” I asked her what she meant, and her only response as she disappeared behind the curtain, was “it’s all about a diet.”

Two weeks later, I learned the infusions didn’t work and my doctor began discussing my surgical options. I brought up diet, which up until now had never really been mentioned; the only dietary changes that had ever been discussed with me were to avoid spicy foods and maybe bread. He disagreed that diet alone would help the severity of my Crohn’s and he thought I was foolish to believe that. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what I was told that day and knew I had to find this diet and at least try. Extensive research brought me to the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle; I read it cover to cover in one night and have never looked back. In what seemed like forever, but was actually 104 days on the diet, my symptoms, for the first time, lessened and today, nearly 3 years later, I am both medication and symptom free! Thanks to SCD.

How has SCD changed your life?

It has allowed me to regain my life back, just the simple things in life, simple things often taken for granted: going for a walk, gardening, shopping, walking the dogs, and even traveling. You all understand what I mean…just no more bathroom worries.

SCD has educated me and taught me right from wrong in living a healthy eating lifestyle, not just for me but also for my family. It has taught me patience, and that success does not happen overnight. It has shown me I will make mistakes, but I can recognize them and learn from them. It has given me willpower, now I can take on anything. And, lastly, it has provided me with a foundation to be creative, creative in the kitchen, something I never really spent much time doing before. I look at food very differently now, I know the enemies from the allies.

What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

Don’t be fooled by my statement of 3 years medication and symptom free. That did not come easy! I did read the book cover to cover in one night, proceeded to clean out my cabinets and refrigerator, which in turn led to a complete meltdown!

The reason for my meltdown was 2 things, well maybe 3; one I was a vegetarian, although I ate somewhat healthy, my diet was composed of mostly carbs. (Which upon reading the book made me realize this was probably most of my issues?) Secondly, I was 88 pounds soaking wet, and experienced drastic weight loss every time I flared…….so what the heck was I going to eat to give me enough calories to sustain my weight and not wither away to nothing?!? And oh thirdly what about my dreaded sweet tooth and snack attacks?!?

This lasted for about a week, and then I stopped feeling sorry for myself. Realizing I had no choice and I had to do this, I began the diet. I had to find it within myself to look beyond my beliefs, and break my faithfulness to a 20-year promise and I began eating meat. My belief was not of the religious kind, but of the humane kind, so as you can imagine this dietary change still weighs heavy on me today.

This, however, I would soon learn, was not to be my biggest challenge, it was keeping the menu options fresh and innovative, main meals and sides were not the issue, that seemed easy. It was the “befores,” “afters” and the “in-betweens” that were missing. I constantly looked for ideas and recipes, bought the few cookbooks I could find and even these couldn’t curb my cravings and ward off my sweet tooth. Most of the recipes were very gourmet-like and took too much time to prepare. I wanted quick, easy and tasty all in one! Easier said than done I thought, until one day I stumbled across an article on the health benefits of honey and how it can be substituted in most recipes. I began experimenting with some of my old recipes and before I knew it I had quite a collection going. Today, I am putting the finishing touches on this compilation of recipes I will call “Sweet & Savory.” They consist of salsas, dips, chips, salads, soups, appetizers and desserts. So, whenever the snack attacks or the dreaded sweet tooth strike I can strike back and still stay compliant!

What is the number one piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

I would start by saying don’t look at it as a “diet” (that is a four letter word that most people would define as: “something your mind struggles with, an unachievable goal”); you will fail before you even begin.

You need to go into this thinking and knowing it is a healthy lifestyle change, it’s about eating for the good and good of your body. Get the family involved, they too will benefit health-wise. Keep the menu fresh and innovative; don’t forgo the snacks and desserts. You are only limited to your imagination!

Expect to make mistakes……….we all have! Be patient; remember Rome wasn’t built in a day!

Eat well, Be well, Stay well!
Cheryl

The post Cheryl Cravino Beats Up Crohn’s appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

For example, what if you tried to ride a bike without honing your skills on training wheels first?

You’d go down hard and fast in less than 10 seconds, which is exactly the reason we all started on training wheels.

I still remember cruising around with those squeaky wheels keeping me alive. Every screech was a reminder that my basic biking skills weren’t good enough yet.

Then, the big day finally came when my Dad unbolted them and I never looked back… freedom baby.

All the greatest skills and procedures utilize foundational skills. These simple steps form the support structure for more complex skills. We don’t live in a bubble; real life is stressful and always changing. Getting the simple steps right is the most important step for success.

This is the biggest pitfall for a person who “jumps head first” into the Specific Carbohydrate Diet without any training wheels.

The foundation is missing.

The Foundation is Emotional

Food runs through every part of our society. Then, mix in disease and disorders that affect our happiness and it’s easy to see that SCD can be tough.

Creating a “food safe zone” gives you:

• A deep trust in a solid foundation of foods to fall back on when you can’t afford to be sick
• The unshakable confidence to weather any storm, like stressful jobs to trans-Atlantic flights
• Remove the fear of introducing new foods by creating a rock-solid environment to test ANYTHING

Food, disease, and stress each affect us differently and having a “food safe zone” that you know makes you feel good is crucial to SCD success.

What is a “Food Safe Zone”?

In simple terms, it’s a group of easy to digest foods that make you feel good when you eat them. It’s typically made up of:

• Any cooked non-processed meats
• 5-8 different cooked vegetables
• 1-3 different cooked fruits

Together, these foods form the foundation of SCD healing allowing for medication changes, supplement tweaks and trying new foods with confidence.

Each person’s “food safe zone” is uniquely suited for their body.

Create Your “Food Safe Zone” in 5 Steps

A “food safe zone” can be created anytime during your healing. To start one now follow these 5-steps:

1. Cut out the four common triggers during this phase (No dairy, egg, nuts and eat low fruit)
2. Pick one vegetable, one fruit and rotate your meats to get started (pears or apples, carrots or squash)
3. Add one new vegetable or fruit every four days
4. Add two vegetables for every one fruit (2:1 ratio)
5. Track daily calories in 5 minutes a day using a free program like www.fitday.com for the first month

This is your personal bubble to protect your healing from everyday life and unforeseen problems that arise during recovery from digestive problems. Each safe zone is easily tailored to accommodate any number of dietary restrictions or special circumstances.

If you want even more help creating your food safe zone, including step-by-step instructions, our book SCD Lifestyle—Surviving to Thriving will hold your hand every step of the way.

Click here to learn more: http://scdlifestylebook.com/

The post Ditch Your SCD Training Wheels by Creating a Food Safe Zone appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Like last week, I was out shopping for a new hat, which I hated for 2 simple reason:

1. I have a HUGE noggin
2. I only wear fitted hats without the plastic adjustment in the back

Every hat I tried on was so tight I thought my eyes were going to explode out of my head. And each time I pulled them off in disappointment the tag read, “One-size-fits-all.”

So what did I do when “one-size-fits-all” didn’t work for me?

I saw two options… either get a smaller head or find a bigger hat. I figured finding a bigger hat was my best choice.

The next morning I found a place that makes custom fitted hats for people with huge noggins like me and a few days later I was comfortably wearing a brand new hat perfect for my big head.

Sometimes, we just need to tweak things to fit us just right. And sometimes SCD doesn’t work unless you tweak it to fit YOUR body just right.

Tweaking SCD

We’re confident that SCD works for most people. In fact, we’re convinced that if diet modification isn’t working for you, you’re probably only one or two tweaks away from becoming another SCD success story.

To make it easier for you, we’ve identified four common SCD tweaks that allow the diet to work for 95% of us.

Introducing: The Four Dark Horsemen of SCD

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are described in the Bible as four beasts that ride on horses symbolizing Conquest, War, Famine and Death while bringing about the end of the world.

The bleak imagery aligns well with the four common foods that stop the diet from working for some people. The “Four Dark Horsemen of SCD” are dairy, egg, nuts, and excessive fruit/honey.

Why do these four foods stop the diet from working for some people?

Because so many of us come to SCD unknowingly suffering from increased intestinal permeability (leaky gut). Leaky gut allows HUGE proteins into the blood stream that aren’t normally supposed to be there, signaling your immune defenses to ATTACK like an angry hornets nest. An inflamed immune system makes healing on SCD an uphill battle even though you’re eating “SCD legal” foods.

Here’s the breakdown of each of the four horsemen listed in order of most problematic:

• Dairy: The protein Casein (Don’t worry – replace yogurt with dairy free probiotics like these)
• Egg: The protein Albumin (Egg and dairy free SCD is possible – even for breakfast, find out how here)
• Nuts: Nut and nut flour proteins (Check out other SCD recipes.)
• Excessive fruit/honey: Way too much sugar feeds bacteria (Read about fructose malabsorption here)

Reactions to look for: stomach pain, constipation, diarrhea, sinus drainage, horrible smelling gas, headache, and brain fog.

Armed with the tools of our “Four Dark Horsemen Strategy,” we’re confident most people can customize SCD to work for them.

What to Do if SCD Isn’t Working for You

Here’s how to tweak SCD using the “Four Dark Horsemen Strategy” and quickly get the diet working for you.

1) Start by eliminating one of the four horsemen for four days. Here’s the key: don’t change anything else in your diet so any changes you notice are only from the food you eliminated. Four days gives you enough time to tell if it’s the only tweak you needed.

2) If the first attempt fails, keep eliminating the remaining three horsemen until you find the culprit.  For many of us, eliminating all four together finally does the trick.

Remember, most of the time you’re just one tweak away from SCD success… remove that one trigger and you’re well on your way to perfect health.

For even more help troubleshooting SCD with specific step-by-step strategies, check out our book “SCD Lifestyle—Surviving to Thriving,”  which includes a bonus 32-page FAQ troubleshooting guide to help you tweak SCD to fit your body.

Here’s the link: http://scdlifestylebook.com

The post The Four Dark Horsemen of SCD (What to Do When the Diet Isn’t Working) appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet.  We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their specific carbohydrate diet stories.  If you would like to be featured please contact us.

This week we have a special guest, Fernpixel who graciously poured her heart and soul out to answer our questions.  She has been

blogging about SCD and her battles with ulcerative colitis for almost 3 years!  Not only that, she has been producing videos on all kinds of topics related to her progress and SCD for 2 years.  She has a unique ability to share her message and SCD in a very truthful but fun and positive light.  I’ve watched many of her videos and I really love her witty humor and her ability to make cooking fun.

Fern shared has so much to share that I wanted to pull out and highlight a few of quotes that I thought were really great:

“Even though I have a chronic illness, I’m healthier than ever.”

“I approach the SCDiet cooking like it’s a game. I have to follow the rules but also have fun. The Food Network has been a major help! I find lots of inspiration from what I see on TV and even if the recipes aren’t for the SCDiet, I modify them so I can eat them.”

“So I have to be organized and plan ahead. I make lists, carefully plan out my groceries, and set aside time to cook.”

I think her positive mentality is great, and one that is worth trying if you haven’t yet.  Making SCD cooking into a personal fun game is great and I love the food network as well and like to make it sort of a mental battle to see if I can take their recipes and make them SCD friendly.  Her approach to making lists, grocery shopping and planning to cook is a great tip for any SCDer.

Below is her powerful story, I urge you to visit her blog and reach out to her it sounds like she is getting ready to make a long awaited come back to the community and I think we should all try and support our own when they are in need!

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

I started the Specific Carbohydrate Diet because it was sort of a last resort option. Six years ago, I was suffering from a severe Ulcerative Colitis flare up that landed me in the hospital for eight days. My doctor suggested that I should consider surgery. He mentioned that if I had my large intestines removed, I wouldn’t have to take medication anymore and that I would less likely have flare-ups [because I wouldn’t have any intestines available to become flared up]. He made it sound really good, but ultimately it was my decision. I did my own research on what kinds of surgery was available for Ulcerative Colitis patients as well as the procedures and complications. I hate to sound like a diva, but none of them are glamorous. I had to decline the surgery. I really can’t picture myself with a medical appliance attached to me, at least not voluntarily. I don’t think I’m strong or brave enough to handle it.

My decision to start the SCDiet was actually fueled by my financial situation. At the time, I had no job, no health insurance, no savings, and was freaking out on how I was going to pay for a gigantic bill after staying in the hospital for eight days. There was no way I was going to add the cost of a major surgery on top of all of that! The SCDiet was my only hope. I was very lucky that it worked out!

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

Oh man, this totally turned my life around. There are both positive and negative aspects to this. On the positive side, the SCDiet helped me to understand food and what it does for my body. I think all of the healthy food improved my immune system overall. Even though I have a chronic illness, I’m healthier than ever. Every year I used to get a cold and sometimes it developed into bronchitis. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but ever since I’ve been on the SCDiet, I don’t get colds anymore.

Looking back, I can’t believe how much horrible crap I’ve consumed in a previous lifetime. It makes me wish I took responsibility for my health earlier. Maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation if I had. The damage is done and I’m taking responsibility for it now. I’m salvaging my digestive system and I believe that the SCDiet has played a major role in my recovery. Another aspect of this is that the SCDiet forced me to learn how to cook and I discovered that I really love to cook! I’m always cooking and experimenting with recipes and different flavor combinations. Its really exciting!

There are some negative aspects as well, the one that sticks out the most is that I often feel like an alien during social situations. For example, in my past workplace the department would often celebrate a co-worker’s birthday with pizza and cake and I couldn’t eat any of it. And believe me, I love pizza and cake! It’s not that I didn’t want it, I couldn’t have it. There’s a huge difference. And for some reason it’s a big deal if I don’t eat the pizza and cake. They said that I’m not being a team player because I’m not joining in with everyone else. It didn’t matter if I was physically there to show my support for a birthday, they wanted me to prove it. To everyone else, the only consequence is that it would make them gain weight. Oh boy! If that was the only problem, I’d gobble it up all the time! But no, for me, I get a special set of problems if I eat the pizza and cake. It’s a struggle but I have to stand my ground and not let what other people think get in the way of my health. I always say no to pizza and cake.

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

This is an extension of the last question. Because I am on the SCDiet and I don’t eat the same things as most people, I struggle a lot in social situations. The symptoms of Ulcerative Colitis are difficult to understand and very embarrassing to explain. There are lots of times when I have to remember to keep my cool. It’s very easy to get frustrated when people treat you differently. This is still a work in progress for me, but I’m taking steps to make my situation easier. The best thing to do is stay away from the people who are unsupportive of the SCDiet. The only thing they are going to do is make you feel bad about yourself, there’s no use hanging around them.

The second major challenge of the SCDiet is will-power! Believe me, it was difficult to change the way I eat. I love food! I can’t have any of my old favorites anymore. Pizza, ice cream, french fries, macaroni and cheese, donuts… the list goes on and on. It’s almost traumatizing to cut out foods that used to bring me comfort but it’s a sacrifice I have to take if I want to get better. When things get difficult, I have to get creative on how to solve the problems. The SCDiet allowed me to find substitutions for my favorite foods. I have a substitution for almost everything. Pizza? No problem! I make a crust out of mashed up cauliflower, eggs, and cheddar cheese. I turn butternut squash into fries! I approach the SCDiet cooking like its a game. I have to follow the rules but also have fun. The Food Network has been a major help! I find lots of inspiration from what I see on TV and even if the recipes aren’t for the SCDiet, I modify them so I can eat them. I also rely on cookbooks. People who are starting the SCDiet are very lucky! Now there are a great selection of cookbooks that adhere to the SCDiet. My favorite book is called “Recipes for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet” by Raman Prasad.

I have two gigantic motivators that helped me get through all the challenges. 1) I didn’t want surgery and the fear of surgery kept me in line 2) If I was surrounded by foods that I’m “allowed” to eat, it’s less likely that I will be tempted to eat “illegal” foods. So I have to be organized and plan ahead. I make lists, carefully plan out my groceries, and set aside time to cook. There are times when I would be cooking at midnight because that is the only time I have. If I didn’t do it, there would be nothing to eat the next day. I know I’m not perfect. I actually had to re-start the diet three times before I got it right and stuck to it.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

This isn’t actually my advice, it’s the advice of Elaine Gottschall, the matriarch of the SCDiet, and it goes something like this: Give the SCDiet a try [and stick to it!] for 30 days, and if it works, continue from there. She’s absolutely right.

Science and technology have come a long way, but even so, I get nervous about what the long term effects of what my prescription medication will do to me. I take my prescription medication because I have to, but I sometimes I wonder about the effects on my kidneys and liver. I don’t have the same kind of doubts with the SCDiet. I’m being sarcastic, but there aren’t a lot of studies that show any negative effects from homemade chicken soup! I’m not afraid of chicken thighs, carrots, and celery. I know that the diet may not work for everyone, but giving it a try doesn’t hurt.

Also, the SCDiet doesn’t work if you cheat. It only works if you do it right. This is not as easy as it sounds. You’ll make mistakes, so learn from them and learn them quickly.

And that’s all I have Best of luck to everyone starting the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and for everyone who is already on it: Keep going! I promise it gets better!

-Fernpixel

The post Specific Carbohydrate Diet Friends Spotlight: Fernpixel appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet. We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their Specific Carbohydrate Diet stories. If you would like to be featured, please contact us.

This week, we are pleased to interview Sherry from SCDforLife. She may be a relative newcomer to the online SCD community, but she is no stranger to SCD. She’s been using it to keep her Crohn’s in remission for 10 years! Her blog is a good mix of recipes and SCD insights.

What I think is most interesting is Sherry’s writing perspective.  I think we can all learn a lot by reading about her experience of customizing the SCD for her lifestyle. She still follows the main principles of the diet but she has started to work back in some non-legal foods. (She waited 7 years!) Because of this, she writes about interesting topics that are somewhat at the fringe of SCD. For example, we all know that fast food is not SCD legal. But, I’m sure I’m alone in dreaming of a legal fast food day. Then, I read her post on just how processed fast food is (even meat!), it reminded me that a SCD legal fast food day will probably never happen.

For those who are not big fans of pumpkin pie and are looking for a substitute, I suggest checking out her pumpkin cake recipe. It looks delicious! I’m not a big baker but I would love to hear how it turns out!

I hope you enjoy her story, I know I did, and pay special attention to question 4. She makes several very wise points!

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

I started the diet in October of 2000, about a year after having surgery for Crohn’s. Though my Crohn’s was in remission and my doctor told me I should be able to eat whatever I wanted I found myself getting an upset stomach almost every time I ate. My doctor assured me it was too soon for a recurrence and that it was probably just my body adjusting to losing twelve inches of small intestine. Still, I was scared of the Crohn’s flaring up again, and I started my own research about diet. That’s when I discovered Breaking The Vicious Cycle. I read the entire book, but didn’t start the diet right away. I think I waited about three months. The final straw was when I had to make everyone go back home when we were trying to go to a movie. I once again didn’t feel good, and didn’t think I could sit through a movie. I knew I had to try something, so I started the diet that week.

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

For me, the diet worked right away. I didn’t really have that many symptoms other than the random upset stomach, so as soon as I did the diet 100% I was fine. I attribute that to my Crohn’s being in remission rather than having to calm a massive flare. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I had discovered the book before my surgery, but I will never know. By the time I had surgery, I had a total blockage of my small intestine and there was no choice involved. After starting the diet, I felt liberated. I no longer worried every time I left the house. I was able to travel and pretty much do whatever I wanted. I also stopped worrying as much about recurrence.

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge at first was getting enough to eat. I always liked cooking,  but I realized I didn’t have much experience cooking squash or beans. The first time I baked a squash I had to call my mom to ask how! I didn’t know almond flour existed. I had to find new things for snacks and side dishes, because I was so used to grabbing chips or cookies, and making potatoes, pasta, or rice. The next biggest challenge was getting my extended family on board. It took them a long time to realize I couldn’t make exceptions for the holidays or to leave things unseasoned and un-sauced for me. My mom, who passed away last year, was always the most enthusiastic about trying my creations. She even created a few of her own SCD recipes to surprise me during the holidays. My husband has been great. He always reminds everyone about what I need, and keeps me in check when I want to eat something I probably shouldn’t have.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

I would say to read Breaking The Vicious Cycle all the way through, and really give it a lot of thought. Make sure you are ready mentally to start the diet. I still remember making the decision and picking the day I was going to start. The night before I started, I made myself a baked potato because I knew I wouldn’t have another one for a long time. Discuss the diet with your family and make sure everyone knows that you are doing it and there are no exceptions (even on birthdays and holidays). Be open to trying new foods, otherwise you will find yourself very hungry. Be prepared that there might be setbacks and give the diet time to work. Also, be prepared that there might not be an ending point to the diet. When I first started, I thought that I would do it for a year and then I would go back to “normal.” It turned out to be about seven years before I introduced new foods, and even now (ten years later) there are foods I will never be able to eat. Restaurants are always going to present a challenge, and I will always need to be careful. I now stick to the diet for 90-95% of what I eat, and I will go back to it 100% if I need to.

Sherry, thank you for taking the time to share your story!

-Jordan

The post Specific Carbohydrate Diet Friends Spotlight: Sherry from SCDforLife appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet.  We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their specific carbohydrate diet stories.  

In our spotlight this week we are extremely pleased to introduce Erin from NoMoreCrohns.com.  On top of beat Crohn’s, being a mom, running one of the best SCD sites, she also published a year of bi-monthly SCD magazines called I Want to Thrive! She is an inspiration for us all!

Her website is extremely well organized and offers loads of great recipes that are superbly designed so that all you have to do is print them and take them to the kitchen!  I’m a slob in the kitchen so having print ready recipes is awesome (no laptop spillage = score)!

As the holiday season is upon us, I would encourage you to visit her holiday recipe page for some ideas.  For you parents out there you must read her mother’s story about SCD and Crohn’s.  With that I want to leave you with one of her very powerful quotes, Erin says “I decided I would much rather spend time in the kitchen than time in the hospital!”  If that isn’t motivating I don’t know what is.

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

My journey started about nine years ago when severe pain, stomach problems, and low grade fevers mysteriously hounded me as I underwent CT scans and doctors probings with no diagnosis given. Sometimes the pain was so intense that I could hardly talk. One morning I woke with such severe pain that I was doubled over. This started a week-long hospital stay where I was diagnosed with Crohn’s. I was very discouraged that I would have to stay on strong medications for the rest of my life, and that they were the only thing stopping me from undergoing another nightmare hospital visit. A friend loaned me “Breaking the Vicious Cycle” and I started right away, realizing that I had nothing to lose – I decided I would much rather spend time in the kitchen than time in the hospital!

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

Before I found the diet, I was like a limp dishrag; I had no energy, was in lots of pain, and had little hope of being able to accomplish basic goals for my life like finishing college, or having a family one day. After a couple of months on the SCD, I was feeling almost back to normal in energy and health, had gained back my pre-hospital weight and was almost symptom-free. I could suddenly see a full, healthy life before me again. I was able to complete a White House internship, graduate from college, get married and have two healthy babies. I can’t imagine my life without the health that the SCD has giving me, and I’m so thankful for the diet!

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

Probably learning to cook for myself and be ready for any given situation with the food I needed on hand. For example, packing lunches and snacks for a full school day, and taking care of all my cooking and meal-planning for my semester in Washington, D.C. or the full-time job that followed graduation. In each of these instances, I found that planning menus ahead of time was essential and packing lunches or backup food for meals out was easier if I planned it ahead of time and packed it the night before. On the website, you’ll find three weeks of menus that got me through my semester in D.C. I kept these laminated and on my refrigerator, and cooked everything ahead of time so I’d always have what I needed.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

It is essential that you give the diet a 100% try to see if it will really work for you. The number one mistake people make when starting is including some illegal food either knowingly or unknowingly, and then thinking that the SCD doesn’t really work. Many times, if you find that you’re suddenly having symptoms again, then an illegal food has probably slipped back into your diet. You can always write to me through the website contact page and send me a list of all you’re eating and I can see if anything jumps out at me as being a possible problem. Don’t give up too quickly! The diet truly does work and it’s totally worth sticking to it 100%. You will have your life and health back!

5: Can you tell us about your magazine?

We are excited to offer a bi-monthly web magazine that is focused exclusively on the SCD! Each issue is packed with fabulous, taste-tested, photographed recipes and helpful articles! “I Want to Thrive!” web magazine was completed in 2009, and takes you through any year with recipes and articles to keep you inspired and encouraged on your journey to health.

The post Spotlight: Erin from NoMoreCrohns appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet. We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their Specific Carbohydrate Diet stories.  

This week, we are really pleased to introduce Paul from EatingSCD. His posts and blog were used by both of us, as we got started on the diet. And we consider him one of the godfathers of SCD blogging.

Paul has been doing SCD and blogging for a pretty decent amount of time, so it only makes sense that his site has accumulated a ton of very valuable posts, ranging from the newest bacterial research to great SCD recipes. One of the best recipe posts I think he has done is his SCD legal Ketchup tutorial. I really like the videos Paul does so if you like the ketchup post make sure you check out his YouTube channel. Before I give you two posts that I really love, I must highlight Paul’s great SCD resource page. There is too much to mention here, suffice to say check it out!

A post that I think is truly great is his post on handling temptation and cravings while doing the diet. He goes over a pretty great list of advice that includes many strategies that I use and a few more that I plan on trying. The first thing on my list of things to try is brushing my teeth whenever I get a craving!

Before we get to Paul’s very wise and powerful story about SCD and Crohn’s, I want to draw your attention to another one of Paul’s famous posts that I use on a weekly basis. I think his yogurt hack should be mandatory reading for anyone who is learning to make SCD yogurt, so check it out when you can.

We really want to thank Paul for taking the time to answer our questions and hope that you enjoy his responses. The wisdom he shares in questions three and four is worth reading several times to make sure you really understand his message.

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

I have Crohn’s. After an aggressive start in 1983, it slowed down. I learned to live with the cramping, urgency and diarrhea – never too far from a bathroom. I was just waiting for the next surgery. Six years before I learned about the SCD, I got married and had two kids. My main motivators for trying the SCD were my new family and avoiding the risk in taking the big drugs like Imuran and Remicade. Have you ever read the possible side effects for Imuran? They scare me more than my Crohn’s. I was also hoping the SCD would keep my kids and wife from having to endure my future surgeries and hospitalizations. I thought of it as an experiment in which I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

When I was contemplating starting the SCD, I realized just how much anxiety I had about finding bathrooms. I couldn’t take a walk around the block with my wife without having to cut it short. I was at the mercy of my body. The SCD relieved that anxiety, and, more importantly, it gave me control. I used to be the victim of a disease, unwilling to take the risk of the drugs, but now I have a choice that empowers me and gives me peace of mind. I get to drive now, so to speak.

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

Oddly enough, going back on the SCD was the biggest challenge I’ve faced. Doing the diet for the first four plus years wasn’t too hard, as apparently I can do delayed gratification pretty well. After I’d felt that I was in remission for a year, I tried going off the diet and found that it wasn’t a great idea. This made me angry. It took me a while to work through it, but I finally realized why I was mad. I was really mad that I have this stupid disease and had to change my life for it. When I had gained a handle on this emotion, I was able to get back on track.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

Have patience. I think society in general has conditioned us to think in terms of quick fixes. Quick everything, really. Fast food instead of real food, soundbites instead of real news, for instance. In essence, the idea that “there’s a pill for that” needs to be thrown out. Doing the SCD should be thought of as a project. You need patience because it will take time to achieve your goals and you will definitely screw up along the way. You’ll need to learn to listen to your body, record its reactions and realize that it will all take time. My advice is to celebrate the small victories and keep your eyes on the larger goal. It is possible for anyone to do the SCD.

The post Specific Carbohydrate Diet Friends Spotlight: Paul from EatingSCD appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet. We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their specific carbohydrate diet stories.

This week we are extremely happy to have interviewed Amy from Roboranch. She is an amazing woman who blogs not only about her battles with Crohn’s and SCD but about her family, her city, and general musings on life. It is a wonderful source of all things fun and exciting if you live in Ann Arbor, MI.

She features some great recipes, such as this one SCD Chicken Cordon Bleu anyone? But what we think is truly the gem of her blog are several articles in which she provides her experiences and advice to others who are doing SCD while pregnant. There are not many examples or stories about SCD and pregnancy and Amy’s posts are filled with several helpful hints and great advice.

Her blog post detailing the lack of knowledge in the current medical community and gestational diabetes testing is a must read for anyone who is pregnant or thinking about it while following SCD. She has another great post about breastfeeding on the diet here. But all of these posts in my mind are overshadowed by her pregnancy tips post which is the best one on the internet for SCD and pregnancy in our minds.

All together Amy’s blog is a wonderful resource to all of us in the SCD community. Her SCD success story is inspiring and her advice is spot on as far as we are concerned!

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

Growing up, I was a skinny kid who often complained of stomachaches and feeling “yucky.” In high school I began to have issues with rectal fistulas, and a tissue sample revealed the possibility of Crohn’s Disease. But I was young and in denial, and my disease wasn’t severe enough to stop me from living a pretty normal life. College, marriage, and my first real job–an office job that involved a lot of sitting and not much time for bathroom breaks. Slowly my disease crept up on me until I began experiencing daily bouts of stabbing stomach pain, endless gas, stool frequency, and bloating.

In 2000, a colonoscopy confirmed my diagnosis: incurable Crohn’s Disease. Part of my intestine was so narrowed and inflamed that I was not far from needing resection surgery. A short-term dose of Prednisone eased the pain and gave me back my appetite, but the maintenance drug Pentasa didn’t help me. So the docs brought in stronger artillery, an immunosuppressant drug called 6MP, which helped get me into remission.

In 2004, feeling pretty good and ready to get on with my life, I decided to stop taking 6MP in order to get pregnant. Thankfully, my body maintained remission throughout the pregnancy and for several months postpartum. But by the time my baby daughter was a year old, I desperately needed meds again. After several months of remission on 6MP, the drug began to lose effectiveness for me. My gastro told me that next up would be infusion therapy. I really didn’t want to go there, especially since I was hoping to have more children and this line of treatment wouldn’t allow for it.

I was feeling pretty depressed about the unfortunate state of my gut, when my mom told me about a friend who was on “a crazy diet” for Crohn’s. Supposedly, this woman hadn’t needed meds for years and had experienced successful pregnancies without complications. I was skeptical, but I talked to this woman about her diet called SCD. I listened to her story of a wildly successful recovery and remission. And then I looked up “Breaking The Vicious Cycle” on amazon.com (something I always do before making a purchase) and was amazed by the hundreds of glowing reviews. That same day, I ran out to buy a copy of the book, a yogurt maker, and the ingredients for chicken soup.

A month-and-a-half later I was off my meds and feeling better than ever (oh yes, and pregnant with baby number 2!).

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

I am in remission from Crohn’s Disease and haven’t needed medication for over 3 years. I have three beautiful, healthy, amazing young children. The youngest two are SCD babies; my oldest would probably be an only child if I hadn’t changed my eating habits. The SCD has given me control over my body–all I have to do is eat foods that my body can handle and avoid foods it can’t. How wonderful is that?

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

During my third pregnancy, I was horribly nauseous all of the time. Most of my go-to SCD meals and baked goods made me want to gag. All I wanted was mashed potatoes and soda crackers. So I ate them and felt pretty much okay, maybe because I had been on the diet for a couple of years. But let me tell you, when I started to eat a couple illegals here and there, it became really easy to start adding more of them back into my diet, and eventually I was eating illegals every day. How was my gut? Well, I wasn’t feeling horrible, but I wasn’t feeling great either. I went back to SCD 100% a few months ago, when my baby was a newborn. This has been an especially challenging commitment because I’ve had to give up dairy (no homemade yogurt or cheese) since my baby doesn’t tolerate cow’s milk protein in my breastmilk. Although it has been difficult without dairy options on the SCD, I’ve been feeling much healthier than when I was eating illegals; more energy, less gas, and no stomach pains.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

When you are starting out on the SCD, I highly recommend asking a family member or a friend to go along for the initial ride. My mom was my diet buddy. Although she didn’t have IBD, she tried out the diet with me during the early months. It was wonderful to compare notes and share recipes; and it was invaluable to have someone who fully understood the ins and out of the diet and who knew what I was going through on a daily basis. Now Mom doesn’t eat SCD all the time, but she knows how to prepare meals I can eat when we visit.

The post Specific Carbohydrate Diet Friends Spotlight: Amy from RoboRanch appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet.  We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their specific carbohydrate diet stories.  

Our spotlight this week is one we have secretly been crossing our fingers for since we started this effort.  We have the distinct

pleasure of having Kat Garson from “Kat’s Food Blog”!  I know that both of us have spent a good chunk of our SCD lives reading everything she puts up, so this really is a cool deal for us.  Kat took the time to share some of her incredible insights and blew our minds.

If you haven’t been to Kat’s site you have seriously been missing out.  Make sure you get the background and read up on her story first.  She has some really cool SCD recipe experiments that have given me the confidence to try some interesting things in the kitchen.  Mostly because we are a little weird, we are especially fond of her series on organ meats/liver and her recent post called, “Oh Lard-y“.

But what is even more interesting about Kat is her willingness to share her struggles trying to achieve that last 20% of health that is a never ending battle.  Her recent dairy-free endeavor to get acne free hit close to home for me over the last few months.  I could go on and on – and I want to make sure and throw in her SCD traveling post is really valuable if you are considering traveling.  Oh yeah and her post on where she gets her chicken eggs was just plain cool.

Kat has spent a lot of time healing on the diet and sharing it with all of us on her blog.  Her experiments with food, traveling, and refining her health are motivating and inspirational.  Make sure you follow her journey and use her knowledge to help you stay on track.  I know that it was crucial along the way while I was healing to spend some time reading up on whatever issue was tripping me up that week.

She has some great insights in her interview.  I wanted to highlight a few of my favs:

I mistakenly added nuts to my diet as most on SCD do, to try and gain weight. I wish instead I had just eaten more of the soup, boiled meats, eggs, fruit and vegetables. When you’re underweight, just throw any conception of portion out the window. Eat 3 bowls of soup if it takes that much to fill you up. Don’t overdo the nuts.

(My thoughts: Kat is smart – listen to Kat)

Start right away. Don’t worry about doing it right. Don’t worry about eating the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because you don’t know how to cook anything else. Don’t worry about messing up the yogurt or broth. Even if you follow the SCD perfectly, it still requires time for you to heal and to figure out what foods affect you. You might as well start the diet right away. As you start feeling better you will also start figuring out how to perfect the diet for yourself. Keep yourself open to tweaking your diet and supplements every couple of months until you get it right.

(My thoughts: I couldn’t have said it better, see above thoughts!)

Here is her interview – thanks Kat, you rock!

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

I didn’t have a diagnosis before the diet but was having symptoms for a long time. My doctors considered it Irritable Bowel Syndrome and did not bother with tests to investigate the diagnosis any further. When I was at my sickest, most days involved at least 20 trips to the bathroom, intense stomach pain, bloating, and weakness. The symptoms persisted for years even though I had eliminated what I thought were the main trigger foods like fat, chocolate, red meat, and dairy from my diet. I started seeing a Naturopath who suggested I might have a problem with wheat. Over the course of a couple months, I eliminated wheat and then all gluten from my diet. I noticed an improvement in my symptoms but I they never completely went away. About six months after going gluten-free I started noticing symptoms getting worse when I ate grains. Some Google searches and a phone call to my Naturopath led me to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I read the Breaking the Vicious Cycle Book and got on the Yahoo Groups BTVC-SCD group. I started the diet almost immediately and never looked back. January 23, 2008 was my last day of feeling the intense stomach pain that had plagued me for years.

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

Before SCD I was always in pain. I think pain has the most disastrous affect on someone’s quality of life. More so than the trips to the bathroom, the inconvenience of scheduling your life around your illness, or the constant fear of being sick in public, the pain was really the hardest symptom to live with.

Within a year on the SCD I had no pain so long as I didn’t eat wheat. Even though I’m still in the process of recovering, I’m no longer surviving my life day-to-day afraid to make plans. I’m actually enjoying traveling and participating in sports and community activities.

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

Not getting enough calories. When I first started I wasn’t eating the yogurt yet and was still stuck in the Food Pyramid was of thinking about portion sizes. So I was eating a breakfast, lunch and dinner with small amounts of protein and it wasn’t enough. I mistakenly added nuts to my diet as most on SCD do, to try and gain weight. I wish instead I had just eaten more of the soup, boiled meats, eggs, fruit and vegetables. When you’re underweight, just throw any conception of portion out the window. Eat 3 bowls of soup if it takes that much to fill you up. Don’t overdo the nuts.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

Start right away. Don’t worry about doing it right. Don’t worry about eating the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because you don’t know how to cook anything else. Don’t worry about messing up the yogurt or broth. Even if you follow the SCD perfectly, it still requires time for you to heal and to figure out what foods affect you. You might as well start the diet right away. As you start feeling better you will also start figuring out how to perfect the diet for yourself. Keep yourself open to tweaking your diet and supplements every couple of months until you get it right. Working with a naturopath, holistic nutrition consultant, or SCD counselor can make the transition easier.

What did you think about Kat’s interview?  Share your thoughts below.

The post Specific Carbohydrate Diet Friends Spotlight: Kat from Kat’s Food Blog appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet.  We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their specific carbohydrate diet stories.  

This week we are very lucky to have interviewed Susan… “The SCD Girl”.  Her blog details her life beating Rheumatoid Arthritis and helping to curb her son’s symptoms of Autism, all using the SCD diet.  She is a real person, and writes like a real person, and that’s my favorite part about her and her life.  Check out her amazing story and get to

know someone that has had an incredible healing journey.

I really like her site (mostly because I love anyone who digs a Paleo lifestyle), but seriously her writing style is effortless and it is so easy to connect with her life and get into it.  If anything, just take a minute to read her post about the SCD Diet and Doctors (it could save your life, ha-ha).

Just last week my wife and my son picked up colds and I was freshening up on my SCD cold protocol (just in case) and read an awesome older post about dealing with being sick and being SCD.

All in all, Susan is an incredible person and another awe-inspiring SCD story for both her and her son.  If anything, it just plain makes you feel good to read about her adventures in life and all that she has been able to accomplish alongside her son and her husband over the past few years.  Thanks again Susan from all of us that you have helped on the diet so far, this post will surely help a lot more people as they start their own healing adventure.

She has some invaluable pieces of advice down below, so just to make sure you don’t miss them… these are my two favorite nuggets:

“Personally I think everybody goes overboard on cow dairy.” (agreed: enough said)

“And you really do have to test all the foods! Just because it’s on the SCD legal list doesn’t mean it will automatically work for you.” (Thank you for this Susan!  We always advocate that the diet will work, you just have to customize it for what works for your body within the SCD framework)

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

Well, this is kind of a long story, so bear with me! Right after my son was born, I noticed some weird swelling on my knuckles. I went to the doctor and she said, “I think you have rheumatoid arthritis.”

At the time, I wasn’t in any pain and I didn’t really know what I was in for. The doctor signed me up to see a specialist. There weren’t very many rheumatologists around, so my appointment was actually months away.

By the time I made it to the rheumatologist, I was already in agonizing pain. I was started on standard therapy, which includes methotrexate, and then sulfasalazine. I was quickly on the maximum dose of methotrexate, although the sulfasalazine seemed to be the medication that actually worked somewhat.

Most unfortunately, I did not improve much. I was diagnosed by the rheumatologist as having “moderate to severe” RA and I spent the next year off and on steroids… I remember being on the phone with the doctor’s office with tears in my eyes to request them on more than one occasion.

I was also experiencing severe brain fog. People literally thought I was stupid, which had never happened before — I was an honor student in high school!

Finally I got sick of not getting any relief from anything, so I started doing my own research at Pub Med. I was a medical editor for a year a while back, so I could read the abstracts and draw conclusions. This is where I first found some small, well-controlled studies linking food intolerances to rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. I started an elimination diet I found online (The McFerran diet (link: http://www.frot.co.nz/dietnet/reviews/mcferran01.htm); he comes off as a bit of a nutter so I have no idea why I decided to try this one), and it was amazing. The swelling in my hands went down almost overnight. My doctors had often talked about “flares” and I thought I had never had one because how could my pain be worse? Once the swelling went down, I realized I had basically been in one constant flare since my diagnosis.

I found the SCD after my son was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. I had already been off gluten for years at that point, so I had already heard about the gluten free casein free diet as a treatment for autism. We did take my son off gluten, and it made a difference, but I felt like something was still missing.

Strangely enough, my good friend’s mother had heard of the SCD diet. She pointed me to Pecanbread.com and that’s how we got started. Once I started reading more fully about the SCD and how it’s been used to treat colitis and Crohn’s disease, I realized that sulfasalazine had probably been working on my own silent gut dysfunction, and my son had ALWAYS had digestive problems along with his autism (which is common). I also read about how antibiotics can screw your digestion up, and I was on antibiotics all the time as a child. I figured my son had inherited my screwed up digestion. So we both went on the diet together.

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

Well, at first, the sugar withdrawal was so bad, I thought I was gonna die. Remember, I was gluten free before. Guess what? A lot of candy is gluten free, and I knew them all! LOL. But once I got past the first week, I experienced a remarkable decrease in disease activity, as far as the rheumatoid arthritis goes. After going gluten free I was able to discontinue steroids, BUT after I went on SCD, I actually ended up not needing any medication at all for a full year!

My son really does a lot better on SCD. He is sensitive to so many foods (even many which are SCD legal), and he’s more focused and aware of everything. He has been mainstreamed into general ed classrooms now for the last two years and he’s turning into a remarkable, smart little boy.

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge is probably school! Well-meaning adults have made mistakes at various times, and so has my son. We explain that my son cannot have any food that is not from home, but things do happen. One time he told us he ate part of a candy cane. We weren’t sure whether or not it actually happened, but that afternoon he spent a lot of time sitting on the toilet, so I’m pretty sure it did happen! Another time a teacher gave him raw carrots (we were only sending cooked carrots from home). My son is very good about turning down candy and snacks for the most part though, and by communicating with the school, things have gotten better. His speech class had a party for the end of the school year last year, and the speech teacher called and told me so — 10 minutes from the time the party was starting. I ran over with a couple of SCD legal cookies, so a disaster was averted.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes (because you will make them), and prepare to be surprised! For example, one time I gave my son some raw lettuce about a week after we started the intro diet. He immediately had diarrhea and I was amazed! Once you remove a lot of the constant irritants to your system, suddenly you will notice these things that you didn’t notice before. Something similar happened to me once I tried almond butter. These little experiences let us know that we were on the right track. And you really do have to test all the foods! Just because it’s on the SCD legal list doesn’t mean it will automatically work for you. Personally I think everybody goes overboard on cow dairy. I myself cannot tolerate cow dairy for example, and ASD kids should generally avoid it as well.

And if there’s room for a number two piece of advice, I would say cook in bulk! You will make yourself crazy if you try to cook at every meal. I cook in bulk all the time and it has saved my sanity. It has also made it easy to just grab some food and take off for wherever we’d like to go.

Yes, my son has his days where he wishes he could have mac and cheese. I tried to make it for him with goat cheddar and spaghetti squash and it was really good! But he didn’t tolerate it. Moments like that can make you sigh, but for the most part, I don’t feel limited at all eating this way, and most of the time my son doesn’t feel like he’s missing out either — he gets an almond butter brownie every single day!
I’m no longer a slave to junk food, my rheumatoid arthritis is under control, and my son is present, alert, and aware. I feel very fortunate indeed.

Thank you Susan, you are incredible!

The post Specific Carbohydrate Diet Friends Spotlight: Susan “The SCD Girl” appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Nancy Bradshaw actually got a hold of us because her story is so powerful that she wanted to share it. She is an inspiration and also a great example of someone who thought that the SCD Diet didn’t work for her. We are always talking about how it works for most people, as long as you tweak it to fit your body and your personal healing journey…

Nancy’s story is a great example of that, and if you read this and haven’t started the diet yet… think again about giving it a shot for 30 days… you just might end up being a success story spotlight on our website!

Nancy, thank you again, you are awesome and we wish you the best!

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

I have had Ulcerative Colitis for 28 years, diagnosed when I was 18 during an exciting, yet stressful time in university. I tried the western medical approach for 10 years and spent lots of money on pharmaceutical drugs and maybe they helped manage my symptoms a little, but I wasn’t very healthy. I wasn’t even aware of options as I didn’t talk about the colitis to anyone but doctors and my immediate family. However,  I didn’t want to lose part of my colon and I didn’t like how having Ulcerative Colitis affected my life and luckily mentioned it to a few people and heard of options like a naturopath – I didn’t even know they existed. I started taking responsibility for my own health and looking at other options, and started getting much better results in 6 weeks than I did in 10 years on pharmaceuticals.

I thought the SCD diet helped, but it didn’t completely heal me so I assumed it was that the diet didn’t fully work for me (I assumed I was following it closely enough).

Two years ago, when all my naturopathic techniques didn’t work and I was really desperate during a bad flare-up, I called up Lucy from Lucy’s Kitchen who I found on the internet, she helped me figure out what I was doing wrong. (I didn’t have a yogurt maker so wasn’t making 24-hour yogurt and getting all the healthy lactose-free bacteria for my stomach, and I thought the odd small cheat wasn’t a problem – it was a big problem).

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

I have had some severe flare-ups (last one was 100 times/day in the washroom) and it was so scary I wondered if I’d ever get better. After 7 weeks of rigidly following the SCD diet, I was clear and my energy started to return. The best part is getting my energy back, so although the diet is some work, feeling great is the reward – and so making a few changes in my eating is nothing compared to having a fantastic life.

I can now eat anything I want and stay colitis free, however, if I do regular cleanses using the SCD diet to help prevent colitis relapses, or if I see any signs the colitis is coming back, I jump on the diet. I am not on any pharmaceuticals, so I have no side effects and can instead spend my money on vitamins and other life-enhancing routines that I do, including my kickboxing classes and personal growth/spiritual courses.

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

I didn’t think the diet worked for me, but when I called someone who actually had been successful with the SCD Diet, after talking to her a little bit (Lucy from Lucy’s kitchen) I found out what I had been doing wrong for 16 years – and why it didn’t work. So, researching the internet, finding someone to call, and then reaching out is what made the difference. I had to overcome my reluctance to take up someone’s time who I didn’t even know (be a bother) when I was so exhausted and a bit desperate to get my energy/life back. I got Lucy’s cookbooks and yogurt maker and felt so cared for and glad I could buy something from the person who would change my life for the better.

Also, I have a sweet tooth so just love desserts and chocolate. So my big treat each day was herbal tea with honey so I’d have that a couple of times a day. Also, once I detoxed from the sugar, I started to feel a little better. I was so tired that the time in the middle when I wasn’t getting better and couldn’t have sugary treats was hard….so I called up Lucy (from Lucy’s Kitchen) and said, “I’ve been on the diet 2 weeks and I am not better, why bother?” And she graciously said, “this works for most people, stay rigid, and it will likely work for you and it will all be worth it.” So, the hope of having energy for my life, for my daughter, and keeping my colon is what kept me on it.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

Follow it rigidly, so you get results and make sure to make yogurt – it is easy. And Elaine does talk about taking vitamins – that is so important for building your whole system. I take more vitamins than she recommends, exercise, eat organic and free-range foods, have a deep sense of purpose in my life through being of service to our amazing planet, I take courses and get counseling to learn about how to continually grow as a person and enhance my relationships, so I have healthy loving supportive relationships in my life, and I have spiritual/meditative practices which help provide me with a sense of trust in the process of life. I love that I have the energy to be a great mom, wife and contributor in the world.

Ultimately, I do the emotional work to clear resentments and build love…..I believe my colitis is linked to how I internalize stress and my stomach/colon is my body’s signal that I can’t ignore a problem or not speak up. So, I’ve had to learn to speak up and for me, it has been important to do this in a way where I am respectful and curious towards whoever I am speaking up to. I can panic internally when something goes wrong (people would never guess this about me as  I am very accomplished and seem calm/very happy), so exploring ways to help me trust in the process of life has been huge.

So, the SCD diet has been the key to my health. However, the Ulcerative Colitis has been the journey that has opened the door for me to take full responsibility for my life and well being (not hand it to the doctors), learn how to eat healthy in a way that honors our planet and animals, and it has helped me deeply listen to the sacred vehicle I was given – my body and instead see the colitis as a wake up call to adjust my life, rather than just see it as a big inconvenience.

Incredible value, thanks again Nancy!

-Steve

The post SCD Success Story: Nancy Controls Her UC After Thinking the Diet Didn’t Work For 20 Years! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

If you’re like me, you’ve read a hundred SCD Success stories and websites about how to figure out if the diet will work for you before you try it. And they all say things like:

“If you follow strict adherence and never cheat it will work for you… ”

“If you eat the yogurt you will finally see the results you were looking for… ”

“If you don’t see any results in 30 days it probably isn’t going to work for you… ”

Man, I remember when I first read all this stuff. I thought to myself, “Cool! Now all I have to do is eat SCD Legal and I will find out if this is my magic pill. Now I’ll just give it a shot for 30 days and I will know for sure if I can cure my disease or if I will be chained to my toilet forever…”

Well, there was just ONE SMALL problem…

We all have different bodies that are damaged a little differently and the SCD Diet requires a bit of tweaking for each person to get it just right…

And that’s why I’m going to give YOU the 100% fool-proof way to make sure no matter what the SCD works for you…

Here it is:

When You Start the Diet… Know You’re Going to Have to Use Trial and Error to Get it Right FOR YOUR BODY.

Yes, that’s it.

I know that this sounds a little too simple, but don’t leave just yet.

Say I walk into a new clothing store, and I have never been there but I really like one of their shirts. I pick it up and say, “This looks about right, I think I will take this one.”

If I actually try it on and it fits, then I GOT IT RIGHT. But I don’t know that until I take it back to the dressing room and try on one or two different sizes to see how they fit, and then I can confidently take it home to impress my wife.

Say I like the shirt and it seems to fit perfect, but it’s 100% cotton…

Do I really know that that’s the right size? What if it shrinks?

If I pull out the tag and it says it’s been pre-shrunk then I know that I GOT IT RIGHT, and IT’S GOING IN MY BAG!

Say I’m a single guy out on the scene desperate to find a wife and settle down. I know that I want to find a wife and settle down, but I need to meet the right woman. (Minor detail right?)

If I fall head over heals for the first woman I meet that is sheer luck, but if I end up dating a few girls and find out I don’t want to marry them, then one day I walk into a book store and fall madly in love with a woman in the non-fiction section, then I know that I GOT IT RIGHT (see a pattern here).

It takes some trial and error to get things right in life because everyone is just a little bit different.

In a Nutshell, the Point I Am Trying to Make Is:

• Stop looking for excuses that the diet isn’t going to work for you, like “I can’t digest fats” (there’s ways to fix that).
• Stop thinking about GIVING UP before you give the diet some time to work (2 weeks isn’t enough time… it took years to get this sick).
• Stop worrying about LOSING WEIGHT when you should just be concentrating on being able to get your body some nutrients it is desperate for (then you can get the weight back).
• Start EXPERIMENTING with the diet, and watch to see how your body acts. If you poop a little less the next day and feel ok, assume that YOU GOT IT RIGHT and keep going.
• Give the diet 30 days to give it time to do what it does best… heal.

Of course, once you know how to tell if the SCD Diet is going to work for you, that’s when the whole outlook on life changes. That’s the point you need to understand what it takes to get results on this diet, completely heal your gut, and finally take control of your health.

And that’s a whole other story.

If you want literally HUNDREDS of pages of ways to make sure this diet works for you, then I highly recommend downloading a copy of my eBook, “How to Start the SCD Diet in 24 Hours and Survive the First 90 Days and Beyond.”

It will give you a COMPLETE guide for starting the SCD Diet and making sure it works for you, more quickly and easily than you ever imagined.

==> Learn More About The SCD Lifestyle eBook Here

-Jordan

The post Will the SCD Diet Work For You? Here’s How to Find Out… appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Hand writing the answers to these questions is better than typing, but better yet leave your answers in the comments section below so you can return in 6 months and update them.

1: How healthy do I feel during an average day? Describe in detail, your physical qualities including pains, annoyances and pleasures, then describe your mental state including emotions and energy levels.

2: Now, pretend you are having an average day 6 months from now, would you like to change the description above? If so, write out your ideal average health day in 6 months.

3: Moment of truth, what do you think it’s going to take to get from how you feel now (question 1) to how you want to feel (Question 2)? If you don’t know, try making a list of any actions you are taking or are thinking about taking that could possibly result in your ideal average health day.

6 Months From Now, Do You Want to Feel the Exact Same Way You Did Today?

Albert Einstein is credited with the following definition of insanity, “Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”

If you are ready to try something new to fix your health problems, why not try the specific carbohydrate diet for 30 days? What is the worst that could happen – you continue feeling like you did today? What is the best that could happen?

If you think the SCD might help and you want to get started right away, download a free guide that describes every step of the way!

The post 3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Start the SCD Diet appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

This week I just can’t wait any longer to roll out our spotlight… Christina from Organically Autoimmune.  Christina is doing something I wish  I would have done and documenting her SCD healing journey every step of the way, and it is incredible!  If you haven’t checked out her site you it is a must read for anyone on the diet or even if you are still considering it.  She has committed to 365 days on the SCD Diet (awesome by the way) and she is sharing every detail along the way.

You can ride along with her on her healing adventure and see for yourself what can happen.  Plus, it’s really cool to be able to read through her experiences and know what you can expect if you are considering starting the diet.  If you are thinking about starting the diet, live vicariously through her everyday for a while and see what your thoughts are.  Christina is an incredible person and she is doing something so awesome for the SCD Community.

Here are her answers to the questions we love to ask… enjoy:

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

Before I was diagnosed with UC, I scoured the internet for information on what could be wrong with me. My symptoms were pretty classic of IBD, so I had an idea it was Crohn’s or UC. For almost a year up to my diagnosis, I was experiencing symptoms such as blood in my stools, debilitating abdominal pain, fever, bouts of constipation and then extreme diarrhea. Because I didn’t have insurance at the time, I was looking for any kind of treatment that didn’t require the hospital.

On one of those online UC message boards, people were talking about a diet called “SCD” and I became curious. It took a while, but I figured out that they were talking about the Specific Carbohydrate Diet as outlined in Breaking the Vicious Cycle (BVC). I ordered the book, read it from cover to cover the day it arrived and went immediately to Whole Foods to buy my introduction diet ingredients.
I gave the diet a so-so attempt, but the fact was that I was already too sick. I had spiraled so far down that I was going to the bathroom twice an hour and had lost 20 pounds in about one month. I literally could not stand long enough to prepare the chicken soup or yogurt. It was at that time that I had no choice but to go to the ER and they admitted me immediately.

Because my mom has RA, I already knew about the types of treatments they were likely to offer me with a UC diagnosis. I did not want to use steroids like Remicade or Humira or any type of immunosuppressant drug, for that matter. It didn’t make sense to me that I would weaken my immune system in order to solve one problem, and leave myself vulnerable to the common cold in the process.

My doctor reluctantly agreed to let me try 16 Asacol pills a day, despite the fact he said on a scale of 1 to 10 he thought I was already at an 8 in severity. Luckily, within two weeks of treatment, I had reduced my trips to the bathroom to about 3 times a day and I had absolutely no fever or pain. It was quite a miracle.

Although Asacol treated my UC very well, I experienced a lot of hair loss. I think part of it was due to the fact that I was malnutritioned for so long, but it’s also a side effect of Asacol. For any female—especially one in her twenties—watching your hair fall out in clumps is quite traumatizing. So, I started cutting down my meds to try to regenerate my hair growth; while my hair did stop falling, it wasn’t growing back.

I was down to two Asacol pills a day when I made the decision to stop treatment against my doctor’s recommendation. After a couple months of being off meds, I became aware of subtle symptoms returning: fatigue, slight cramping, diarrhea in the morning and up to three BMs a day. I was worried that the reckless way I was consuming food and beverages combined with the fact that I was no longer on medication was putting me at risk for a flare-up. That’s when I knew that if I was going to be indignant enough to refuse prescriptions drugs, then I had to take control over my diet.

I took BVC of the book shelf, brushed away the dust and instantly made the decision to give it my all for at least a year. I’d say I was most motivated by personal convictions (to be medication free); fear (of having my colon removed); and vanity (I want my hair to be restored to its previous thickness).

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

I’m barely approaching my second month, so I feel like I’ve only skimmed the surface of SCD, but already there have been some substantial changes:

I lost almost 5lbs immediately without trying. I know for some UC sufferers, this would be a bad thing because when we’re in a flare, we tend to be underweight. But I’ve had about two years of what some people call “remission” but I like to refer to as “packing on the pounds.” So, I have 15 pounds to spare.

Before SCD, I was caught in the sugar trap and I couldn’t control my appetite. That has totally ended. Now, I eat when I’m hungry and I don’t ever eat past the point of fullness (except for peanut butter cookies—the BTVC recipe really is to die for and I can tear through a batch with a vengeance).

By far, the biggest change has not been in or on my body, but in the way I am spending the hours in my days. Now, I am conscious about what I am putting in my body; I spend hours in my kitchen baking sugar-free desserts; I am acquainted with kitchen appliances I never knew were in my cabinets; my creativity is bursting at the seams as I continually seek new and interesting ways to cook with vegetables and nut flour; and I’ve been pushed past my comfort zone with socializing because eating out just isn’t that much fun for me anymore. I have been forced to branch out and think of other ways to connect with people—like Scrabble tournaments!

You know, when I started SCD I expected to drop a few pounds, regulate my BMs, and stop my morning cramping, but I never thought it would breathe inspiration back into my life again. I don’t really even think that I knew I was lacking in inspiration! Eating was such a robotic, thoughtless action before—now it’s like I have the opportunity to engage in an art project three meals a day. It’s a radically different approach then what the American marketing machine is feeding us, always pushing convenience, easier, cheaper, more, tastier, faster. SCD is the antithesis to this marketing mantra as it encourages us to slow down, spend a little more and eat a little less—to make a connection with what we’re feeding ourselves so that our life can be fuller.

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

I still really struggle with coffee. I am a self-proclaimed coffee addict but it’s worthless to me without cream and Splenda. I pray every day that there was a legal dairy that tasted good in coffee (by the way, do not use yogurt as a creamer—it’s beyond disgusting). I have chosen to look at this as an opportunity to cut down on caffeine, and have reduced my coffee intake from essentially a constant IV drip in my right arm, to ½ a cup every other day.

Also, I have to make sure to watch my moods and emotions. That’s a big trigger for me. Like I talk about in my blog, I have been self-medicating with macaroni and cheese or some other comfort food for my entire life. Since that’s no longer an option, it’s really important that I don’t get too high or low at this stage of the game. I feel like I’m in the SCD incubation period and it’s just so delicate that I can’t afford to rock the boat with too many crying fits or tantrums—that’s like two steps away from a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream binge for me.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

Commit to it for one month with everything you have. Follow every rule, get crazy, make the yogurt and don’t allow yourself even one cheat. If you hate it at the end of that month, then give yourself full permission to go back to your old ways—junk food isn’t going anywhere, you guys. But if there is even the slightest possibility that SCD could improve the quality of your life—whether you have an autoimmune disease, a weight problem or a hormone imbalance—don’t you owe it to yourself to sacrifice one very small month out of your entire lifetime to see if it will work? Personally, I believe we all deserve that chance.

Christina, you are an inspiration to us all and on behalf of the SCD community, thank you so much for sharing every detail of your journey to give everyone else evidence of what the diet can do!  You are awesome!  Good luck and I can’t wait to see every new page turn.

The post Christina From Organically Autoimmune appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet. We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their Specific Carbohydrate Diet stories.  

This week, we are really excited to spotlight Naomi, who runs a blog called Milk for the Morning Cake. This is a really cool honor for us because we have both spent hours on her site during our journey healing on the SCD Diet. Naomi is an incredible person; she is a Homeopath and Nutritionist who gets it, from her own experience with Celiac disease and not getting any better on a gluten-free diet… not to mention she is an unreal SCD cook.

If you haven’t been to her site, you are missing out. It is quickly evident that she has helped a lot of people get better and really knows what she is talking about. Spend some time getting excited about trying her recipes, like one of my favorites her Broccoli, Garlic, and Lemon Zest Soup.

She took the time to wade through our SCD Diet success questions and she did not fail to impress. Enjoy her words and really take in the massive value she is sharing with us.

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

I am a Celiac sufferer and I was developing a gluten-free baking book using wholesome gluten-free flours made from buckwheat, amaranth, sorghum, teff, millet and chestnut. My focus as a nutritionist has always been on whole foods, prepared from scratch and yet there was no book out there which gave Celiacs guidance on using whole foods – everything seemed to focus purely on re-creating facsimiles of wheat-based products. It was my mission to provide low GI versions of baking classics! Unfortunately, all this baking and testing of grain-based products – wholegrain or not – caused me to develop leaky gut syndrome. My thyroid started to under perform, menstrual cycle got completely off kilter, skin fell off in sheets and my guts were either holding everything in, or letting it all hang out! I was in a huge amount of pain, constantly. When I found out about SCD, I was skeptical at first because it seemed so extreme. But I had tried the O type blood diet with good results some years previously and it dawned gradually that I might not get on too well with grains and starches. Here’s a link to the post I wrote about realizing I had to give up starch: http://milkforthemorningcake.blogspot.com/slow-dawning-of-terrible-truth.html

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

I wasn’t a good student at first. I’m a baker and I was itching to get on and bake goodies, breads and so on. Early on in my SCD career, I realized that I was going to have to say goodbye to peanuts, cashews, pistachios, honey, dried fruit, pulses and coconut for quite a while, if I was going to get better. I also don’t get on very well with cow’s milk in any form, so it took me a while to work out that I should be making my SCD yogurt from goat milk instead. When I got over these initial teething problems, things did start to improve – although it took about a year before I felt good again. Now, two and a half years later I feel great – although I still can’t eat pulses or much dairy and keep off sweet stuff and fruit as much as I can due to being a metabolic protein type.

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

My biggest challenge was knowing what to do when I felt exhausted, didn’t want to cook and craved a big slice of cake or a bar of chocolate! I faced it by learning to have things stashed away in the freezer that I could just throw in the oven and by focusing on what I could eat – half a jar of expensive bio-dynamic hazel butter and a ripe banana? OK if that’s what makes me feel better! I ate a lot of ripe banana and hazel butter during my first winter on SCD. I also developed recipes such as my simple pea and basil soup that could be made in five minutes flat, but tasted fantastic and comforting: http://milkforthemorningcake.blogspot.com/simple-pea-and-basil-soup-dairy-free.html

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

Prepare yourself by making up batches of soup and stews in advance and freezing them. Know what you are going to be eating and have it in the house – don’t have anything else in the house that could tempt you to cheat because you will regret it. Don’t eat advanced foods before you’re ready – just because someone in a forum said they were ready for coconut after three months, doesn’t mean you are! Go slowly and always be prepared.

Thank you Naomi, this was awesome!

-Jordan

The post Naomi from Milk for the Morning Cake appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

This interview podcast is packed with Carol’s incredible insights from her own journey on the diet as well as the many people that she helped along the way. Take the time to soak up her incredible wealth of knowledge if you are thinking about starting the diet or even if you have already been on the diet for years. All of us can learn something new from her words.

To play the file, simply hit the play button at the bottom of the post and give it a moment to load up.

Here Are Some of the Highlights:

3:20 Carol’s insights on what Elaine thought about her allergies

5:40 After 10 years on SCD, Carol finally traveled again!

6:45 “I can now eat everything!”

7:50 “SCD was one of the most significant things that ever happened to my life.”

8:50 What’s the most important thing? “You have to believe in this.”

9:22 “Believe in Elaine. Strictly adhere to the diet when you’re starting, don’t fool around.”

9:50 “SCD isn’t about what you can’t have, it really isn’t, there is so much that you can have and so little that you have to give up.”

12:02 “I didn’t see SCD as a challenge.”

12:42 “Every morning when I wake up and I am going to follow SCD and I think that about what it’s done for me and what it’s done for other people I feel like I have been handed the keys to a brand new life.”

14:30 “Don’t feel like you have to do a whole bunch of complicated things to be on this diet. All the food a person needs is meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, dairy if you can use it, and healthy oils.”

15:22 “Don’t obsess over treats and foods… with the basic foods you can create any combination.”

17:28 “Let the diet work first.”

20:25 The best way to figure out what’s stopping you from getting the results you want on the diet

22:48 “I look at foods allowed on the SCD Diet as an artist with tubes and tubes of different colors and they mix them up on a pallet.”

25:55 “There’s only one SCD.”

26:30 “Give SCD one month of your time.”

27:16 Why people came back to the SCD Diet and did better the 2nd time around

[powerpress]

Thanks for your time and experience Carol!  What are your thoughts?  Post your comments below…

-Jordan

The post Interview with a Specific Carbohydrate Diet Veteran: Carol Frilegh appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

The question is, will it work for you?  We strongly believe the answer is yes…

But the real question is: are you going to try starting the SCD Diet?

We want to be there to help you every step of the way to stop your diarrhea/constipation, stomach pain, and low energy and take control of your health!

So I have a favor to ask…

I have a question for you and if you have 60 seconds to answer it it would mean the world.  What’s stopping you from starting the SCD Diet?  In other words, if there was one thing that would help you finally take the plunge… what would it be?

Leave your comments below, and if you are already on the diet, please share your thoughts too… together we can help other people in the SCD Community heal on this incredible diet.

The post What’s Stopping You From Starting the SCD Diet? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet.  We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their specific carbohydrate diet stories. 

This week we are pleased to spotlight Tracee (Mrs. Ed) who runs a blog called Mrs Ed’s Research and Recipes.  Her blog details her amazing journey in motherhood and SCD which she sums up saying, “We are a household dealing with autism, food allergies, Celiacs disease, Crohn’s disease, chronic constipation, severely picky eating and snoring…”  Her story inspires me anytime I feel like giving up…

Spend some time on her site and you are in for a treat… literally.  I really like it because not only does she make some

incredibly amazing SCD legal meals, like my personal favorite mango chicken or pork, but she also finds some really interesting research to share with everyone that makes us all smarter.  Her short but sweet post sending people over to the Healthy Skeptic’s series on digestion and GERD alone is worth the read because that is one of the most informative articles on I have ever read.

We had the opportunity to ask her our SCD Diet success questions and she brought some incredibly valuable knowledge into the mix.  Read this once a month and stay motivated… enjoy.  If you do anything at all, click on her link to Dr. Ayers website about Cooling Inflammation, you will learn a wealth of knowledge from the information he shares.

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

I had a very touchy tummy as a child, which I seemed to outgrow, and have been plagued by severe canker sores my whole life. When I was 15 I began getting nickel sized ulcers in my throat accompanied by severe fatigue. I was continuously tested for mono, which would always come back negative. In my late twenties the bouts of fatigue/ulcers would last 5-9 weeks at a time. The doctors would say “it’s just you”.

My brother, who is now 40, has autism. He is about 5’3″ and wears size 12 slim in children’s cloth, but no one ever thought to check his GI tract.  I remember it was very difficult for my mother to take him places and get him ready for school. We must have been a sight in public….a 4’11” woman dragging a screaming kid and me walking about 10 feet behind. In the mid 1970’s she came across a book called “Why Your Child is Hyperactive” by Dr. Ben Feingold. It was about a diet that removes artificial preservatives from the diet.  Check it out here.

My brothers response was amazing, while he was still autistic, the temper tantrum disappeared.  We could actually go places as a family without outbursts. We credit this diet to my brother becoming a lot higher functioning. (The Feingold Diet is still ignored by the medical community)

My son, Gordon, developed GI problems at one week of age: failure to thrive, projectile vomiting and would cry in 12 to 16 hour bouts. The doctors were going to write it off as colic, but then I noticed a poster about GERD behind one of the doors in the waiting rooms. Treating for GERD seemed to make everything better for awhile. At 18 mos he spent a month on antibiotics and quit speaking after that. He would go weeks at a time on a liquid diet, refusing to eat. His tantrums could last hours at a time. A year later we ran across info on Omega-3’s and tried the Feingold diet. The leaps he made were extraordinary; however, he was still autistic. His tantrums were gone, he could babble and interact with adults. We were thrilled and had no idea there was even more we could do for him.  When I ran across info on the GFCF diet for autism, it seemed a bit far fetched. However, most of the kids that it worked for had gi problems identical to Gordon’s, so it was worth a try. We got zero response, even though we would find out later that we both had severe gluten issues. Luckily, I had run across a few blips of info here and there on the SCD. The fact that it focused on more digestible foods peeked my interest.

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

Three weeks into the diet, the most amazing thing happened. Gordon began to say about 5 new words a day, his motor skills just came back, and he noticed other children. All of this just happened overnight! He had the biggest smile on his face for a couple of months. Within a year he went from non-verbal to average language usage, although his pronunciation still needed work. He has now started kindergarten on time. In most areas he is indistinguishable from his peers. He has a few issues left, like not always looking at people when they talk to him, and has a mild PDD diagnosis. Anyone who knew him before the diet will tell you he’s not the same child. Those who didn’t simply do not believe those who say that!

During this time, I found I had gluten and bakers yeast issues. Eliminating these kept my ulcers away and slowly reduced my sinus allergies by about 80 percent. I could finally give up the daily allergy medicine! It turned out I have Celiac’s and Crohn’s (the throat ulcers were Crohn’s).  I have one of those jobs where I don’t see the light of day much, and am and stressed out, so I didn’t have time to learn SCD for my son and GF for myself.  I just ate his SCD food for awhile and had noticed a lot more energy. When I finally had time to cook GF for me, I became fatigued again and craving sugar (kicking the sugar habit was tough for me so any cravings set off an alarm). If I want to keep my energy level up, I have to eat SCD. I will eat some gf foods when we go out to eat, especially on vacation, but I stick to the SCD most of the time. At first I thought of it as a temporary diet, until we healed, but the more I read about nutrition, the more I’m convinced it may be the best way for some of us to eat. I really enjoy the blog Cooling Inflammation by Dr. Ayers, a cellular biologist. He discusses how many of the chronic health problems we have today are due to dietary inflammation. His anti-inflammatory diet recommendations are very similar to the SCD: Cooling Inflammation

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenges were finding recipes and not feeling deprived. I love cookbooks and fortunately there were some gorgeous ones. I ordered every one, so I could look at pictures of all the things I could have. I also love to experiment with food, but it took awhile to finally have success with my own recipes. I remember throwing away a lot of experiments. Once I had a few favorite recipes to turn to, life began to feel “normal” again, which made it easier to stick to the diet.  That was a big reason for starting a blog, maybe having more SCD recipes out there would help others stick to the diet.

The other challenge is the medical community. There is always a look of horror when they find our child is on a special diet. The media has done a convincing job telling Americans that special diet are “dangerous”, despite piles of medical research to prove otherwise. No on even thinks to look for this research, even doctors, because our Food Pyramid Brainwashing has been so effective. The Food Pyramid is a highly inflammatory diet which is dangerous to many of us, but a real perk to pharmaceutical and industrial food profits. That is the other reason for my blog, to point to some of the research that we need to pay attention to. I’m hoping in the future to have more time to for this.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

Just do it. Give it an honest try for one month. Think of it as a fascinating science experiment and just go for it. It may be the best investment you’ve ever done. And if the SCD doesn’t work for you, keep searching for the “you” diet, what your body runs the best on. It doesn’t hurt to ask God to help you with direction.

Thank you Mrs. Ed, you rock!

The post Mrs. Ed from Mrs. Ed’s Research and Recipes appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

I wanted to take a minute to share an incredible SCD resource with everyone, if you haven’t had a chance to check it out. It has helped me through a few sticking points in the past, that’s for sure.

The Healing Crow was a non-profit organization started by Seth Barrows in 1999 to help others with chronic illness. The website has recently been taken down but the folks over at scdiet.net have hosted the archived version so that it’s legacy can live on. Here is a link to check it out.

On the healing crow’s archived site, there is a really valuable section entitled “SCD Wisdom” where there are many incredible insights from Elaine on various topics about the SCD Diet. I wanted to share one in particular that helped me in the beginning, while I was trying to figure out how to start the SCD Diet.

Elaine answers those of us that feel like we don’t have the time and energy to start the diet… something we all struggle with in the beginning.  In the end, what I heard her say to me was, “Don’t let fear give you excuses… if you want to get healthy, just give it a shot.” But that’s just one guy’s opinion. Here’s what she said:

Subject: Concern Over Diet – Time and Energy

Question: My greatest concern is the time, energy and effort it will take to adhere to such a strict diet.  I will obviously have to drastically change my lifestyle. But I am ready and hopeful.

Elaine writes: Don’t be too scared of the diet’s demands. Putting a fresh chicken, 10 peeled carrots (do in 5 minutes with a potato scraper) 3 peeled onions and a handful of parsley, salt, into a pot and cooking for 3-4 hours, straining thru a colander and rescuing the carrots and chicken. From then on, you just puree the carrots and add to broth with chicken. It is not hard and you do that for a couple days. The cheese, eggs, meat, cooked fruits and veggies are easy.  Just get a cookbook and any dummy can get the idea. Good luck.

What are your thoughts about what she had to say? Comment below…

The post What If I Don’t Have the Time or Energy to Start the SCD Diet? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet.  We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their specific carbohydrate diet stories.

This week we are pleased to spotlight Matt Robinson who runs a blog called Natural Digestive Healing. His blog details his incredible journey taking control of his UC without medication, starting with the SCD Diet.  Matt is really interesting because he was an incredible endurance athlete before his UC diagnosis and continues to compete while following the SCD Diet, which inspires me when I get tired from chasing my 2 year old son around the house…

Take some time to check out his site and take in all the valuable information he has laid out in a simple, easy to

understand format.  He has tried many different additional treaments and shares his experiences with each one.  The nutritional information he provides alone is worth the gander, but the best stuff he has is in the pschology of the diet and how he has been successful.

Before we get to his interview I wanted to share a couple quotes from two of my favorite posts on his site that I feel strongly will help out all SCD’ers.  The first is a really powerful post summarizing a conversation Matt was having with a woman as she and her husband started trying to get a handle on his Crohn’s diagnosis:

“Before I start this post, it’s important to note that I handle 90% of my symptoms with the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. It took us (both my wife AND me) a long time to accept the lifestyle changes that I needed to make… For a long time, neither of us wanted to hear it. So, when I write, just know it’s taken me almost two years to come to terms with my new lifestyle. Every improvement that the SCD, however, has given me has made the transition easier–a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Another awesome post Matt put up that I like is about how to build a relationship with your Dr. All of us in the SCD community have had some bad experiences with Dr.’s along the way, so this article is great for finding a way to start a new relationship off on the right foot:

“When you’re first searching for a GI, view the first appointment as an interview. Make sure the two of you are a fit. It can be a bit like dating… Is the doctor respectful? Does he/she take time with you? What are his/her credentials? Why did he/she get into medicine? Does he/she listen to you? Is he/she open to naturopathic treatments? etc.”

We had the opportunity to ask him our usual SCD Diet success questions and he did not fail to deliver.  Read this over a few times, it is incredibly powerful.

1: Why did you start the diet (share your story)?

I started the diet during a massive flare-up (my last flare) that started in 2008. After about 9 months of medicine after medicine (Asacol, Colazol, Imuran, and two rounds of Prednisone), nothing worked for me, nothing was controlling my colitis. I was still going to the bathroom between 8-24 times per day. I was anemic, malnourished, and excruciatingly tired. I had fevers and uncontrollable shaking. My joints ached. I lost 20 pounds (down from 150 to 130lb. I’m 5′ 10″).To give you an idea, I am a competitive ultra-endurance athlete, and I couldn’t even climb a flight of stairs. The doctor had begun to mention that they could take out my colon.

No way.

I’m also a self-proclaimed geek, so I read a lot. In May, 2009, during one of my (many) research sessions, I stumbled onto the Breaking the Viscous Cycle website on a lark, while searching for dietary suggestions for people (like me) with Colitis. A dietary mode of dealing with IBD? But my doctor said that diet had nothing to do with it? I ordered the book. Nothing else was working. What did I have to loose?…only my colon.

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

As I said, I’m a geek, so I had been meticulously tracking my treatments and symptoms. Four days into the diet, I noticed a change for the better. That was June, 2009, and it was my first sign of improvement in over nine months.. By August, 2009 I was down to 2-3 bowel movements per day–from 8-24 (depending on the day). I could no longer see blood in my stool. By the end of August, I had weaned myself from medication. My bowels continued to improve. By Christmas, 2009, my bowels had pretty much stabilized (unless I ate something weird by accident). My stools were still loose, but I had regained my energy and the weight I’d lost. I began to run and to lift weights. I no longer needed to nap at lunch. I had energy to help my wife and to play with my (two) kids.

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge for me was convincing my wife of the changes I needed to make–essentially, we would both have to adopt the diet. I work a lot, so she would bear the primary burden of cooking, grocery shopping, etc. We needed to be in it together. No more calling for pizza if we both had a long day. No more dates out to eat (at least at first; we eventually found some places we could go). We asked, What do we do when we go to potlucks with friends or family? How do we travel? It looks like a lot of work and we’re already busy, can we do it? Can I (Matt) give up bread and beer? Will my wife have to give up those things too?

All (or most) of these changes seemed to rest on her. It took a month of talking about it, of back and forth, before she agreed to essentially be my primary care giver. We were already both proficient cooks, so I agreed to cook on the weekends, and to help where I could; however, giving her time to adjust to the idea and commit to the changes of the SCD, herself, was a big challenge. To her credit, she’s been happily doing it for almost 18 months now, and we both love it. She lost weight and gained energy too. It’s been beneficial to both of us. We have rediscovered the joys of the family meal and cooking has become (most days) an enjoyable part of our everyday life.

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

Make sure you know what you’re getting into, and then commit to a minimum of 30 days. Let me explain. The SCD is such a radical shift from the everyday American diet and lifestyle that you need time to marinate in the changes you are about to make. You need time to adjust your mindset some, consider what you will gain, weigh it with what you will give up, and make the commitment.

For example, when people ask me, Don’t you miss (insert your favorite food)? Or, Wasn’t it hard to give up (insert your favorite food-based social activity)? Or, my personal favorite, Aren’t you tempted by (insert food)? I usually answer that last one with, “Are you tempted to drink untreated water in Mexico? Of course not, you know what it will do to your gut. It’s the same thing with me and (insert food). I know what it will do to me, so I’m not tempted by it.” That doesn’t mean that I don’t get jealous when, at a cookout, everyone else is eating bread, ice cream, and drinking beer. It’s not the food that tempts me though, it’s the freedom that they have that makes me jealous sometimes. That’s another discussion…

The bottom line is, if I hadn’t taken the time to meditate on the changes I was about to make with the SCD, if I wasn’t wholly committed to making this change for my own health, when those questions came up I wouldn’t have been able to stand my ground, to stay on the diet, and I would be back in the doctor’s office instead of writing you now.

So in setting your mindset, do consider what your giving up, but put a different spin on it. You’re giving up a life of diarrhea, medicine, surgery, hospitalization, lethargy, undernourishment, and (perhaps) cancer. I’d give up chocolate to avoid those things any day.

The post Matt from Natural Digestive Healing appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

We make it a priority to highlight SCD personalities from across the internet.  We love hearing success stories and want to spread the knowledge of those brave enough to share their specific carbohydrate diet stories.  

This week we are pleased to spotlight Arden D. who runs a blog called Ardeneats.  Her blog is an amazing resource for How-to cooking videos and offers many life lessons that are hard earned on SCD.  I’ve watched and used many of her videos and I think you should check them out too.

Before we get to her story I want to highlight two of my favorite posts that I think are of extremely high value for all SCD’ers.  The first is a post about mistakes and lessons learned on the diet. I think she makes a great analogy and this is a good lesson for everyone to keep in mind:

“4) Going off the diet too early because I was “better.” I started adding in “illegal” food as soon as I thought I could handle it. Because I had been so sick for so long, it didn’t take a ton of improvement for me to call it success. If only I had comprehended just how far I had yet to go, and how much set back this behavior caused me, then I would not have strayed. If an injured player is put back on the field before the injury is healed, then the likelihood of that player incurring further injury that could end his/her playing career forever is high. Why risk it for one game or one season when I have my WHOLE LIFE ahead of me? Is it more important to live and live well, or to eat a particular food for 30 seconds in my mouth?”

Her tips on traveling SCD style are great from this post. A couple ideas I hadn’t thought of that she points out are:

“6) If you are flying, investigate whether shipping will be cheaper than checking frozen food sealed in Styrofoam.”

“11) If you stay at a bed and breakfast, call in advance to ask if you might have access to the kitchen to do some minor cooking yourself.”

We had the opportunity to ask her a few questions about her success on the diet.  She has a great story and I think she tells it best, so make sure to read on and don’t forget to check out her blog!

1: Why did you start the diet (symptoms, health problem)?

I first started SCDiet in 1999 on the advice of my doctor. He thought it was most probable that I suffered from celiac or some kind of negative reaction to grains in general. He felt the best way to test out the theory that grains were hurting me was to remove them all from my diet and see if I felt better. My whole life changed when I took grains, starches, and all processed foods out of my diet. SCDiet provided me with the basic framework to figure out which foods I can tolerate the best. I had tried many other diets in the past, all of which had been unsuccessful. This diet was really the first key that unlocked the door to health on my journey of recovery from digestive illness.

2: How did the SCD Diet change your life?

I have no doubt that SCDiet has saved my life. I suffered from severe and mysterious wasting. I am 5’6″ and my lowest body weight was 83 pounds. I had tried any number of conventional or traditional methods of gaining weight and addressing malnourishment. None of us could understand why a calorie wasn’t a calorie for me, and everyone watching me eat couldn’t understand why I was so thin. Once I truly adjusted my way of thinking to embrace SCDiet as a behavioral lifestyle, I ended up feeding myself more than my microbial overgrowths by choosing the best foods for me personally. As my microbial numbers have realigned to a more desirable population, my vitality has increased. I am getting nourished now and attaining levels of health and well-being I had never known to be possible before. A calorie resembles a calorie again for me, and I am overcoming long-term deficiency diseases that were secondary issues from malabsorption and microbial imbalances. I am beginning to know health and what it’s like to feel good after a lifetime of illness!

3: What was the biggest challenge you faced on the diet and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge that I faced on SCDiet was learning how to cook. I really had little to no idea about what to do in a kitchen. I called family and friends and asked them to teach me something by demonstration. I got a lot of cookbooks. I made a lot of terrible food as part of my learning process. I had to adjust my way of thinking about how I was going to obtain food. I loved to eat out. I loved to have others do all the hard stuff and to enjoy the pleasures of just eating without knowing. I had to make the decision that I was going to know what everything is that goes into my mouth and where it came from and how it was raised. This meant research, which is time and energy invested. The one thing I thought I never wanted to do with my life, cook, became the one thing that would save my life. So, I cook to live, and by doing so I get to choose what to do with the rest of my healthy life!

4: What is the number 1 piece of advice you would give someone thinking about starting the diet?

The SCDiet isn’t just about WHAT you eat, the legal foods, but also about HOW you prepare food. The introductory diet isn’t just about eating chicken, rather it is about eating the chicken soup prepared in a particular way to maximize absorption and ease tummy woes. The reasons to eat foods well cooked, peeled and deseeded at the beginning are to reduce the threat of unwanted microbes while the body is weak, reduce spasms, inflammation, and other illness related symptoms, give the digestive system a break from hard to digest foods, eliminate parts of foods that can get lodged in sore spots in the gut, and to generally relieve the assault your body has undergone.

The post Specific Carbohydrate Diet Friends Spotlight: Arden Eats appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

There is a lot of mental power that goes into committing to try something for 30 days. It will keep you focused through those horrible days, when you can’t think about anything but quitting and turning back to the old way of life that was way “easier.” The idea of trying something for 30 days actually gave me the confidence to take action and start the diet… to give it a shot. What’s the worst that could happen? It doesn’t work and I go on to researching my next “magic pill.” Best case is that it works and my search over.

It only took my body 7 days to stop the diarrhea that had kept me trapped to the confines of my bathroom for all those lonely weekend nights. I had naturally stopped my diarrhea in 7 days using the SCD Diet… which made the next 23 days of my commitment wayyy easier! In fact, I am almost at two years now and I have never looked back… I don’t count the days down anymore, I just keep counting up with how many days since I have been healthy.

Here’s what I want you to do. Commit to trying the SCD Diet for 30 days and you will commit to naturally stopping your diarrhea in 30 days using the SCD Diet… they are interchangeable with one another. Do the following three steps to get started and you won’t ever look back…

1: Write down your commitment to the SCD Diet and share it with someone close to you. Pen something along the lines of…

I, (name), have made a firm and fully-committed decision to start the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I am prepared and have the courage to commit to this diet for 90 days. Therefore, on this, the ____________ day of _____________, 20___, I vow to myself that I will adhere to the framework of the SCD diet. I will successfully start my intestinal healing process on this diet through dedicated practice of the principles laid out in this book and Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health through Diet. I will reach my 90-day milestone on the SCD diet on the _____________ day of ___________, 20____.

2:  Re-read Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall, so you remember why you’re getting into what you are getting into… but don’t let the details overwhelm you… 30 days is simple enough.

3: Go to http://www.scdlifestylebook.com/free.php and download our free guide to properly starting the SCD Diet and pick a day that you are going to get started. It’s that simple, we have every detail laid out… just make the commitment and follow the steps. First, just make it 7 days, then 14 days, then 30 will seem like nothing.

If you do these three things and start the diet with the full intention of trying it for 30 days, you will naturally stop your diarrhea in 30 days using the SCD Diet. Every step is laid out in the guide to make sure you get started properly, the only hard part is the part inside your head that you have to commit to 30 days and actually do it.

If your diarrhea isn’t stopped in 30 days, then send us an email for some more help on figuring out the one piece of the puzzle that might still be causing you issues. But if you at least gave it 30 days, started it properly, and followed it with strict adherence you should be hitting your stride right about that time.

What is the most overwhelming part of starting the diet for you?  Leave comments below…

– Jordan

The post How to Naturally Stop Your Diarrhea in 30 Days Using the SCD Diet appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

It only took me a couple weeks on the SCD Diet to finally gain control of my IBS and finally be able to make my own decisions in life, instead of my stomach pain or diarrhea making them for me.

But There Is More to the Story…

IBS is driven by some back seat drivers working in the background to make life miserable. It is primarily driven by bacterial overgrowth and inflammation. An inflamed gut with an overgrowth of the bad guys is a recipe for disaster and leads to the symptoms labeled irritable bowel syndrome.

You have to attack this thing two-fold:

1. First, by killing off the bacteria (ideally through starving them to death)
2. And then cooling the inflammation down.

What’s the best way to accomplish both of those tasks… the magic pill to take control of IBS?

You guessed it, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.

The SCD Diet works to stop feeding the bad bacteria the crucial carbs, sugars, and starches that it needs to proliferate and it also cools down the inflammation in the gut by dramatically lowering the intake of Omega 6 fatty acids and complex carbohydrates that irritate the lining of the gut. So, what is the key step to make all this work harmoniously together to start making you feel better? The key step is properly executing the SCD intro diet. Without it, you may not ever get control of the bad bugs and be able to break that evil cycle.

The intro diet is so important, because it reboots the gut flora and starves out the bacteria in one swift motion to make sure that the foundation of foods that the SCD Diet builds from that point forward is made on a solid footing. If you complete the intro diet properly, you can be confident that you can get a handle on the symptoms of your IBS, one day at a time.

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet is Rather Simple if You Boil it Down…

Basically, you just say NO to some types of food and YES more often to others. It is really that simple.

Sure, there is a learning curve. But just because it’s different than trying to understand drug interactions doesn’t mean it is harder. Instead, it should be exciting. You can finally go explore the outer aisles of the supermarkets, and in the process dust off those unused pots and pans.

That is really all the Specific Carbohydrate Diet is: learning a new way to shop, cook and when to say No to certain foods.

There are no horrible side effects and no cancer, but your food bill might go up temporarily. The same thing would happen if you tried a new supplement or drug.

What if in 30 days you could naturally get more energy, balance your weight, stabilize your blood sugar, end your digestion troubles and all you had to do was eat differently?

Now, what if I told you all you needed to focus on was doing the right things on the diet and that there was a guide that would show exactly how to get started to make sure you get all the benefits you can from the SCD diet?

Well, if you’re interested, I created a free guide that will walk you through, step-by–step, how to start the SCD Intro diet properly… just go here to get your free copy: http://www.scdlifestylebook.com/free.php

Remember, it all starts with a quick 30-day trail that you can start today if you want. Worst case, you suffer the same symptoms you have now. Best case, you stop having diarrhea and constipation… the gas stops all together, and you take control of your health.

Have you kicked IBS with the SCD Diet? Comment on your experience below.

Back to SCD Lifestyle

The post Why 30 Days on the SCD Diet Will Give You Control of Your IBS appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Or eaten a half jar of almond butter?

What about licked salt off your hand?

Stuffed your face with so much fruit you got sick?

In the past, I’ve done all the above and more. During my time on the SCD diet, I swear there were times when I was literally addicted to some foods. Sometimes, I would snack on one of these simple pleasures for weeks and then suddenly when I looked at my grocery bills I would get a huge slap in the face. I ate a pound of honey a week for the last four weeks, how about a whole box of raisins in 2 days?!? Yikes.

Sometimes, it would take a bit of a realization about how much I was eating to cut back (or cutoff). But other times it was more immediate, like eating a whole bunch of almond butter and getting sick. In the latter instance, it can sometimes be hard to know how much of any one thing you are consuming unless you are diligently tracking your food. In many cases, though, the culprit might be known and probably still sitting in your kitchen.

As I’m getting farther down the healing road and reflecting on the past, I’m starting to wonder if these cravings are normal. And I have read yahoo group posts and message boards of others who have faced these same challenges. While that usually offers some relief to know that I’m not alone, there are still the questions in the back of my head lingering…

Do I have an addictive personality? Is this diet causing me to become a neurotic basket-case? Are these foods actually bad for me or only in copious amounts? Ahh… they could drive me mad if I let them go too far.

Over the past few months, as I’ve dove into the inner biology of the body and the interactions between brain, body and gut, I’m starting to shift my thinking. What if these cravings, I mean real cravings, where my every thought is literally overtaken, are being driven by my body?

Am I even in control of what I’m eating? If not, who or what is?

What if I was lacking a certain vitamin or mineral and my body knew this and it is secretly taking over to obtain what it needs?

Is my gut ecology actually secretly sending me subliminal messages to eat certain foods that one particular strain of bacteria or yeast need to live on? I’ve talked about this before in my post on week 11 of my SCD healing journey.

This is sort of a brain-dump-rant post, but I’ve been researching and working on several hypotheses related to the above and I’m curious

have you been there with me? Do you know what I’m talking about? Are you researching this too? Maybe you have some of the missing pieces of the puzzle I’m trying to locate and we could help each other.

If anyone has any particular knowledge on these subjects or knows of any good resources I would love to read them. Or if you’ve been there in the trenches with me, tell your story below. I know when I was going through my various challenges it helped reading and knowing that I wasn’t alone.

Take care,

Steve

The post SCD Food Cravings: Are You Crazy or Is Your Body Trying to Tell You Something? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

I was really shy when I first started the diet and hid the fact that I was eating the SCD diet. But over time, I learned a few things that made it easier to get by and now I have no trouble sticking to the diet and following a normal work life. In fact, sometimes people at work even pull me aside because they want to learn more about how I got to be so healthy. Here are the top three ways to manage the SCD diet at work.

Number One: Always be prepared! At dinner time each night, I make enough food so that I can pack my lunch to eat the exact same foods the following day. Doing this one thing allowed the SCD diet to integrate seamlessly with my work life. I am always prepared with an SCD legal packed lunch and if I end up having to stay late, I always have an emergency meal ready in the freezer for defrosting in the microwave. Believe me, I have attended some very high-class meetings that had catered lunches and I just hauled in my big, ugly, red cooler, asked for a microwave, and proceeded to eat some leftover pork tenderloin on a paper plate! People are very understanding when you feed their curiosity a little; it has not affected my career in any way. The bottom line is if you are always prepared for any occasion and set up the condition for success then you will never have an excuse to give in and fall off the wagon. Make it easy for yourself and always eat your leftovers for lunch the next day; make enough food the night before!

Number Two: Talk to the elephant in the room! I built up my confidence by keeping my co-workers informed about what was going on. If I didn’t speak up and say something about why I was hauling a cooler to an upscale meeting when lunch was being served who knows what crazy rumors their imaginations would conjure up. The bottom line is educate your co-workers about what you are doing… just say something along the lines of, “Yeah, I am on a special diet for a while because of some food allergies I am experiencing. It is extremely healthy and if you ever want to know more about it, let me know. Since I have been on it, I feel incredible.” I have found that this usually satisfies their curiosity and puts the ball in their court to find out more, but most do not ask again and seem to have a little more respect for me for taking care of my health. Giving them just enough information to let them know that you are not trying to exclude yourself, but are merely doing it for health reasons, is all that is needed. As the information about different digestive diseases spreads, many people will think of you as a strong person for making positive changes to help your body.

Number Three: Don’t skip out on invites to social situations. If your workplace is a very social place, and business is frequently conducted at restaurants, don’t be afraid to go right along and bring your own food.

I have never had a problem explaining to the maître d’ that “My co-workers and I will be having a lunch meeting here and providing you with a lot of business. It is important that I attend. However, I have a lot of food allergies so I have to bring my own food. I trust that it will be fine if I heat it up and join my colleagues?” This always works, and the service staff has always been great about accommodating me. Don’t forget to chip in on the tip, though. Bottom Line: You’re trying to heal your body to live a long and healthy life. People will admire that. Don’t be shy and never skip out on something just because you have a special diet and are bringing your own food!

If you follow these three tips that I have implemented over the last year, things at work will be just as normal as you could imagine. In fact, people may even show more respect for you because of how you’re taking control of your health… you never know, one day your boss might call you in their office to get your advice on their digestive problems!

Got any SCD tips for work? Add to the comments below.

The post The Top Three Ways to Manage the SCD Diet at Work appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

It’s a very rewarding and gratifying experience to start adding new foods in, so I always approach it like a curious kid.  This is the first time I was trying new foods with a healing digestive system… so each one was its own fun experience.  First things first: I always waited until I had been feeling good for at-least 2 to 3 days before I even considered trying something new.  If I wasn’t feeling good in the first place, how was I going to know if the new food I introduce was causing a new reaction?  Once I looked around and decided I had a good foundation to grow off from.. it was time to try something new.  My only caveat here is that rule does not apply to the intro diet.  Elaine made the point to teach us that staying on the intro diet for more than 5 days is probably not a good idea.  If you have been on the intro diet for five days and you are still not feeling better… you still need to transition to phase 1 because the intro diet just can’t sustain your body for long periods of time.

Once I had been feeling good for a few days the basic rule of thumb I followed for trying something new was 4 days.  I would introduce one new item to my normal routine and eat it once a day for 4 days before I made an assessment about any changes to my body (unless it caused immediate diarrhea or something like that… then it’s obvious).  I have found that at times I notice a negative reaction relatively quickly – within the same day.  But other times it has taken up to 4 days for me to realize, by tracking my symptoms, that the new food was negatively impacting me slowly.  If you introduce something new, reactions you want to be cognizant of range from brain fog, sore throat, sinus drainage, headache, and severe canker soars in the mouth, to diarrhea or constipation.  You will notice symptoms like these now more than ever, because your stomach has been feeling better and you aren’t so focused on it.  You will really become hypersensitive to what else is being affected in your body after you have become reliant on your foundation foods.

Last thing is Last: I can’t stress enough that when you are trying something new it is vital that the rest of your diet remains consistent with the go-to foods that you’re confident allow you to feel good.  If I deviated from this and had a bad reaction, I was always in shambles trying to figure out exactly what triggered it.  Each time I made this mistake it set me back in my progress on the diet substantially.  The Bottom Line Is: When you no longer have any diarrhea or constipation to worry about, introduce new foods via 4-day trial periods and monitor your body’s reaction closely. (Don’t forget to record the results in a journal.)

Don’t be too afraid to move on. I hovered in a holding pattern for a long time because things were going well.  That is fine for a little while, but if you’re healing well, introducing more freedom and diversity to your diet is going to further you’re healing.  Plus. it’s the best part of the diet to realize that SCD legal foods really are amazing in and of themselves.

You will experience the taste of foods that you were never able to appreciate before this, and you will feel great doing

it.  If you are looking for some help on what foods to introduce first the amazing folks at PecanBread.com developed the stages of the SCD diet for people to have a general guideline of what foods to introduce and in what order.  We took those stages a step further and introduced the Phases of the SCD Diet starting with the intro diet and moving from phases 1 through 5 with an additional detail.  Our phases identify the phenol (salicylates) levels of the foods in each phase from weakest to strongest (you may have heard of this from the Feingold diet).  Phenols can cause reactions during the early period of the SCD diet before healing has started to take place.  The reaction can be as small as a little constipation or diarrhea; or as large as complete brain fog and headaches.  You can download our free Phasing charts in PDF format along with a free chapter of our book here: Phasing into the SCD Diet. Post it on your refrigerator and look forward to advancing to each new item, one day at a time.

What has been your experience introducing new foods?  Comment below.

The post The SCD Secret to Success: How to Properly Introduce New Foods appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

It’s not cheap to be healthy and it’s a scary feeling to have to choose. I have spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to save money on this diet without compromising my health, so I summarized them below in the top three ways to save money on the SCD Diet.

1: I make 100% of everything I eat. I don’t worry about buying pre-made foods like frozen turkey patties or bottles of SCD legal this and that… they are expensive and not as pure as when I make something from scratch. The SAD had taught me to grab convenience and get everything pre-made. It was a tough paradigm to shift, but once I realized that I felt better when I made 100% of everything I ate, I realized that it also saved me a bundle of money! For instance, I could buy some pre-made turkey patties that may be SCD legal for $7.00 a pound frozen. Alternatively I could buy some clean turkey meat at my farmers market and make my own turkey patties twice a month for around $4.50 a pound. That adds up over time really, really fast. The bottom line: Make 100% of everything you eat and you will feel better and you will save money.

2: I hunt down nearby farmers markets and buy local and in-season fruits and veggies. I save a decent amount of money by skipping the middle man (the supermarket). While locally grown produce isn’t as good as organic, it’s very close (much better than store bought from another country). I scour the local newspaper and find little Farmers markets whenever I can and get all of my fruits and veggies based on whatever is in season in my area. In the long-term, saving $0.30 a lb every week for 52 weeks adds up fast. Plus, in the winter I found a local guy that owns a greenhouse and will deliver fresh fruits and veggies during the cold months. The bottom line: find a local farmers market and buy what is in season… save on the shipping costs and the middleman market, plus it feels great to support your local economy.

3: I seek out local farmers that sell meat in bulk. In most cases, buying a quarter cow (about 200 lbs) can save you close to $100 from buying at the store. Steve and I just got half of a grass-fed cow for close to $3.00 a lb. That includes ground beef and all the steak cuts. Compare that to the $3.50 a lb I pay for dyed garbage ground beef at the supermarket… not to mention the $11.00 a lb for a nice steak. Another really huge savings I stick with is to buy a whole chicken or whole turkey and then bake it or cook it in the crock-pot to feed the whole family… I save a bundle that way because when I buy pre-cut up meat, like chicken breasts or thighs, I am paying for someone to cut it up for me. The bottom line: Find a way to buy bulk meat from local farmers. Use Craigslist (that’s where we have had the best luck) or check out http://www.eatwild.com/.

These are just a few things that will help you pinch pennies and the same tactics I use for my family. If you take the time in the beginning to find all these shortcuts, it will be your normal routine each week or month and you will save

gobs of money. Just remember that investing in your health is a priceless expense and the SAD has trained us that food is an area where we don’t have to spend any money. Change that paradigm and cherish the taste of a good quality grass-fed cow, it’s good for the soul! Just because it’s good for you doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to save some dough.

Got any other SCD money saving tips? Leave in the comments section below.

Back to SCD Lifestyle

The post The Top Three Ways to Save Money on the SCD Diet appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

However, there is going to come a point in time on the diet when you might end up in a situation where you are eating out. With so many functions of our society taking place around food, there is a possibility you might be in that position. In order to try to ease your dining experience, I wanted to put together some useful ideas that I’ve learned.

Qualities to Look for in a Restaurant

First off, from my experience, many issues regarding the eating out experience are mitigated by properly researching a restaurant. Usually you won’t find SCD legal foods at a chain restaurant. Typically, you’ll have to search out the higher end of the value scale. Many lower end chain restaurants don’t actually cook their meals. Instead, they end up re-heating mass-produced entrees that almost always have been chemically altered on a food assembly line off site. So, even if they wanted to prepare the dish SCD legal they couldn’t.

A good quality to look for is gluten-free menus. These can often be found online if available (although not always), as I’ve found that restaurants that are truly capable of preparing SCD legal meals are very good at promoting the fact that they cater to people with food allergies.

Another helpful clue that a restaurant might be able to accommodate me is if it is a seafood or steak house, due to seafood and beef usually not being marinated.

The next step in the due diligence process is to actually call the restaurant and tell them that you have multiple food allergies and would like to speak to a manager about them. The first thing I tell them is that I have to eat gluten-free and grain-free.  If the’re knowledgeable about this,  normally we are off to a good start. I don’t start describing the SCD diet, because I’ve found that if I list too many “can’t have things” in a row, they easily become overwhelmed.

At this point, depending on what they’ve already covered with me, I start going through the following list of questions (making sure I get an answer to them all at some point in the conversation).

6 Questions to Ask When You Call a Restaurant

• Do they marinate any of their meats?  If all their meats are marinated it is a no-go.
• Where does their meat come from? Be careful of frozen chicken as it normally has been injected with an SCD illegal broth solution.
• How do they receive their vegetables and fruits? Frozen and fresh are normally okay, canned is no good.
• Can they prepare my meal in a clean area separate from other diner’s food? Avoid cross contamination as much as possible.
• Does the restaurant cook with butter or margarine?
• What kind of oil do they cook with? Olive oil is good to ask for, to avoid any man-made sprays or vegetable oils.

If a restaurant can pass all these tests, then the next step is using common sense when ordering in person.

Action Steps Once You’re at the Restaurant

Make sure to make it clear to your server that you have food allergies. It’s always safest to ask for only salt and pepper as seasonings. (Bring your own spices into the restaurant if you want.) If you’re ordering a salad, ask for only olive oil or no dressing. Always try to get steamed vegetables or a fruit cup as your side dishes.

If you get stuck in an emergency situation, and after looking at the menu you don’t feel comfortable ordering anything, don’t be afraid to make up your own dish on the fly. I’ve worked with servers to create my own salads combining a meat they use for an entree and eliminating any illegal ingredients from the salad.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to bring in your own meal if you are confronted with a social situation in which you need to be at a restaurant. Just let your server know that you have severe food allergies and need to eat your own food. Ask them to heat it up in the microwave when everyone else’s food is ready (I’ve never had a problem with this request). The important thing to remember is that you are always taking a risk whenever you eat out and someone else is preparing your foods. There could be consequences in even the most careful restaurants. The decision to eat out is not a light one to make, and it’s probably best to wait until some healing has taken place before even considering it.

If anyone else has any tips, please leave them in the comments section below, thanks!

-Steve

P.S. – If you’d like more help with getting started on the diet, grab a copy of our book here.

The post How to Eat at Restaurants on The Specific Carbohydrate Diet appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

From some reading online, I figured the only reason I needed to eat the yogurt was for its probiotic effect. So, I reasoned… if I could get those probiotics in pill form, why would I ever mess around with creating my own yogurt?

Well, that’s the danger of doing incomplete research on the web. Without investigating both sides of every story, we will usually only find the side we want to hear. Of course I found the answer I was looking for – plenty of websites telling me how good it was to take some probiotic pills.

What I didn’t do was fully read about the difference between the two. Because I chose the easy way out, I didn’t start yogurt until sometime in the 2nd month of the SCD diet. This was a huge mistake, because as soon as I started it I saw a HUGE improvement in my bowel movement quality.

To understand why yogurt is different (and usually, better) than probiotic pills, keep reading.

What is Yogurt?

Yogurt is an ancient fermented food that has been eaten by people all over the world for thousands of years. But it’s not just curdled milk.

Yogurt is created when specific bacteria is allowed to ferment milk. When the bacteria ferments the milk, it becomes thicker, tangier, and more acidic – and it can keep much longer than regular milk can. It also becomes full of healthy-gut-promoting good bacteria (aka probiotics).

Traditionally, yogurt has been made with animal milks – everything from cow to goat to camel – but it can also be made with dairy-free “milks” like almond and coconut.

And because the bacteria consume the sugar in the milk (lactose) during the fermentation process, properly made 24-hour yogurt can be tolerated even by people who are lactose intolerant.

Yogurt isn’t just full of probiotics – depending on what type of milk is used, it is also high in protein and a great source of calcium and B vitamins (2,6 and 12).

Properly prepared 24-hour yogurt is an important part of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, the Gut And Psychology Syndrome Diet (GAPS), and many other healthy gut diets.

Homemade vs. Store-Bought Yogurt

There is a huge difference between homemade 24-hour yogurt and store bought yogurts.

The obvious difference is in the quality of ingredients. Most store-bought yogurts have thickeners, preservatives, artificial colors and flavors, and WAY too much sugar.

But even if you can find a plain yogurt with no added ingredients other than milk and the bacteria, there’s another really important difference between store bought and homemade 24-hour yogurt – the amount of probiotics in the yogurt.  

The probiotic content of yogurt depends on a few factors – most importantly the quality and quantity of the starter used (that’s the good bacteria added to the milk), the temperature at which the fermentation occurs, and the amount of time the yogurt is allowed to ferment.

Store bought yogurt is generally fermented for a short period of time at a higher temperature. And many store-bought yogurts are flash-pasteurized to make them shelf stable – which means they contain almost no live or active cultures by the time they make it to you.

Homemade 24-hour yogurt is fermented for 24 hours at 100-110°F. The low temperature and long ferment time allow the bacteria to consume all the sugar present in the milk and create billions of beneficial bacteria. A cup of 24-hour yogurt can contain 700 billion CFU’s (colony forming units) of good bacteria.

(And if you can find 24-hour yogurt at your health food store, be prepared to pay a lot!)

24-Hour Yogurt vs. Probiotic Supplements

Now we understand why 24-hour yogurt is much better than store-bought yogurt, but you might still be wondering… why yogurt at all? After all, you could just take a probiotic capsule and get all the good bacteria you need, right?

First, we have to consider the fact that our gut has 100 trillion bacteria inside it. Most probiotics contain somewhere between 1 billion CFUs and 5 billion CFUs – with some especially potent capsules containing 25-50 billion CFUs.

And probiotics aren’t cheap – high-potency capsules often cost $1 or more per capsule.

Compare that to the 700 billion CFUs in a cup of 24-hour yogurt – that means just one tablespoon of 24-hour yogurt contains about 44 billion CFUs.

Now, I’m not saying that probiotic supplements are bad or a waste of time or money – just that they aren’t comparable to SCD legal 24-hour yogurt. Probiotic pills have their place in the healing journey. They are especially useful in the beginning months of the diet. They are also useful when they supplement your diet with bacteria strains that are not in your yogurt starter.

But, if you’re not using 24-hour yogurt as a probiotic source, you’re really missing out on an affordable source of extremely high-quality probiotics.

How To Make Your Own 24-Hour Yogurt

So, now that you are ready to dive into the world of making homemade yogurt, where do you go to learn how?

Here are our directions for making 24-hour yogurt at home.

This is the yogurt maker we recommend using. (It is the only yogurt maker available that makes 24-hour yogurt properly.)

The take-home point of the article? Don’t neglect eating 24-hour yogurt! It is an extremely nourishing food that delivers a payload of good bacteria that are just waiting to help your gut get healthy. Probiotic supplements aren’t an adequate replacement for the power of 24-hour yogurt. But don’t throw them away, as they usually contain other good bacteria strains not available in homemade yogurt.

I know deciding to start eating 24-hour yogurt gave me a huge bump in health, and I’m sure it will for you, too! Making it at home is easy and straightforward with our directions.

– Steve

P.S. Do you still think you can’t tolerate or don’t need yogurt? Leave a comment telling us why.

The post 24-Hour Yogurt Is The Difference Maker, Don’t Eat It At Your Own Risk! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

My goal was never to gain, rather to just make sure I was getting proper amount of calories to maintain my current body weight. While I think it is very important that you understand what your specific daily/weekly calorie total should be that subject is beyond the scope of this post.

Instead, I want to offer some simple to implement strategies to help the person who is looking for an extra bump in calories to maintain their current weight or gain some back.

Number 1: Stop buying the leanest cuts of meat and neurotically trimming off all the fat. In my past, I used to be a Fat-phobe tricked into avoiding the most flavorful cuts of meat by mainstream marketing. That’s until I realized that saturated fat is my friend and that anything mother nature produces is going to be better for my body than manmade fats. I’m looking at you corn and canola oil! Now, I eat bacon, beef and pork almost exclusively. Fat is needed for proper digestion more than fiber and is more calorie-dense than protein or carbohydrates (9cals per gram vs 4cals per gram).

Number 2: Increase your butter or Ghee intake. With approximately 100 calories per tablespoon, liberally adding these products to every meal is a great choice to overcome a calorie deficit. They are great sources of good quality fats and the best part is they make every type of dish better! So slather on that butter!

Number 3: Drink your Oils. More specifically, I recommend supplementing with a couple of tablespoons of coconut oil if you’re short on your calorie intake for the day. Or if you’re like me I don’t need the calories but love the health benefits and add it to every dish I can. At around 120 calories per tablespoon, coconut oil packs a mean calorie addition. Olive oil is another good source.

Number 4: Add Coconut milk to everything! Coconut milk is almost entirely made of good saturated fats that help digestion. With

every cup adding at least 300 calories (a whole can is usually 700+) to each dish, this is an easy one to work into your daily smoothie, stir-fry, omelet, frittata or soup.

Number 5: An Avocado a day keeps the weight loss at bay! Avocados have a delightfully nutty, smooth texture and can be added to just about any dish. With an average-sized avocado containing approximately 300 calories, they make a great snack or are a breeze to add to your eggs, burgers or salads.

These are just some sample ideas of simple ways to add more calories to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which is inherently more nutritious and balanced than the average SAD diet. The best part of the diet is it can be tailored to anyone’s individual allergies, calorie requirements or tastes.

– Steve

The post 5 Easy Ways to Add Calories to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

While on the SAD Diet, I Could Eat Until My Belly Hurt

And I also knew that it was going to cause my stomach to grow when I did. It boils down to basic physics; I could easily eat 2,000-4,000 calories (1 large pizza) of processed food in one sitting (holidays, parties, etc). I think most people intuitively know this and save for a few occasions a year where they gorge until near food coma takes over.

I know I strived to train myself to recognize when I was satisfied but not full on the SAD diet. By doing this, I was able to keep my weight mostly under control. So, when I switched to the SCD diet I ate until I felt the same way.

Unfortunately, what I didn’t account for is that when eating whole foods it is generally harder to get the same amount of total calories per volume of food.

For example, when I started the SCD diet, I measured and weighed every calorie to help me understand more about how much I was eating and how it was affecting me. I swore I was eating like a hog but at the end of my first several days on the SCD diet I looked at the numbers and I had only been averaging 1,400 calories a day!

At the time, I was shooting for around 2,100 calories a day so this was WAY too low for my maintenance needs.

Once I saw this, I knew I needed to start to retrain the types and volume of food I ate in each sitting. I was going to have to experiment with my diet by upping the protein and fat content, if I couldn’t handle eating a higher volume.

So, to Answer the Title of This Post…

How do you make sure you’re getting enough calories?

First off, you need to make sure you have a good idea about how many calories you’re getting. Measure, weigh, and record all your meals for at least 2 weeks. Once you have a better understanding of how many calories you are eating, the next question most people ask if they realize they are unintentionally starving themselves is “How do I eat more calories?”

The simple answer is eat, Eat, EAT! That might come off a bit coarse but I think many people need to hear this message. While the SCD diet is a restricted diet in the sense that certain types of foods are prohibited, the amount of legal foods a person can consume is unlimited.

This is a very important idea to grasp, as the volume and ratios of natural food needed to sustain your needs can be vastly different than what you’ve been practicing your entire life. I know it was an eye opener for me when I switched from the SAD diet to the natural SCD diet.

If you find that you’re struggling, like I was, to reach your caloric needs with the volume of food you’re eating, you have several options. First off, focus your attention on fats and protein. Reduce the amount of fruits and vegetables you are eating and up your meat and healthy fat consumption. The second easiest option is to add more meals to your diet. If you’re only eating 3 square meals a day, try adding in a couple snacks throughout the day. If you’re already eating several snacks a day, turn them into whole meals that mimic your big meals.

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet is a trial-by-fire experience. Each person will need to tweak different aspects of the diet based on their past life experiences.

Don’t be afraid to buck conventional wisdom when you switch to eating whole natural foods.

-Steve

The post Are You Eating Enough Calories on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Jordan and I talk a lot about making sure you have a defined, reachable vision of what you want your health future to look like. We also talk often about the importance of journaling and tracking what we are experiencing on a daily and weekly basis.

Recently, we were talking about the Bristol Stool Chart and we were discussing our recent poops (everyone’s favorite topic). The topic came up that, with the Bristol Stool chart, there really isn’t one defined end point. And depending on which expert or doctor you talk with, you get a range or different answers about what the “perfect poop” is.

Back when we were both really sick, anything but diarrhea and horrible gas was feeling amazing. Then, we started feeling better and went through a period of obsessing over a perfect poop in order to make sure we weren’t messing the diet up. But over time, we have started to wonder if we weren’t chasing something that doesn’t exist.

So, how do people like you and me know when our digestion is at its best? Does everyone have the same end point? These are all questions that I think needed to be thoroughly pondered. If we just use a scale like the Bristol Stool chart to gauge our poops, then that automatically assumes that there is a definable perfect point that we are trying to achieve on that scale.

Many people will tell you that the range of perfect poops is in the 4 to 5 range on the Bristol Stool Chart. But when we’re taught over and over again that we need to have a very specific defined goal, what is the exact perfect poop… a 4.5?

According to our discussions so far, the above graph would be everyone’s end point or goal. To strive to get a 4.5 poop every day of the week… come on, really? Everyone’s the same? Is that even possible in the real world? And therein lies the problem with setting specific end point goals while using a scale.

Well then, let’s develop our own. What if we use math to help get a better measurement of the perfect poop? How about if we account for the real world and add up all our poops as scored on the chart and then divide by the number of days. If that number is 4.5, then we’ve reached the end of our health journey!

Wait, no….that’s not right either.

So, what are we going to do? We need a definable end point that tells us when we are “healed,” a way to measure that we are fixed… or so says the goal-setting process.

I think the answer lies in accepting that we live in a less than perfect world where our bodies will always be adapting and changing. Because of this, I think it is best to decide on qualifying rules that should be applied in conjunction with using the Bristol Stool chart. There are things out of our control that can change how our bodies are operating, like stress, environmental influences, and even lack of sleep.

For myself, I’ve adopted a range of the scale, with a qualifier that: if my poop comes out without any hard effort that it has the potential to be a perfect poop. Once that easily expelled feces is in the toilet and I see it and it matches the range of 3.5 to 5.5 then in my mind it’s a perfect poop.

Think about your body and decide what conditions define your “perfect poop.” Everyone is different, if you have been having severe diarrhea your criteria might just be that: if it doesn’t have any urgency and you can just go whenever you feel like it, it’s perfect. Write down what your overarching personal criteria is for a “perfect poop” and stick to it. The Bristol Stool chart is a very useful tool but make sure you make your own. Your body is going to vary day-to-day and obsessing about a 4.5 or 6 here and there is only going to make you crazy. Keep it simple and decide what really matters to you the most.

The bottom line is this: don’t obsess over the minutia! If you are feeling good and the poops are meeting your overall criteria, then enjoy it… that means you’re getting better. If you’re not meeting your criteria, then you might want to start looking at changing something because what you’re doing is not working. As human beings, we have to learn to accept variation in life and in our bodies. After years of being sick and finally starting to take control of my health, I know that the endless pursuit of the “perfect poop” can be a hard thing to let go of and learn to live with life’s variation.

-Steve

The post SCD Diet OCD: Are You Chasing the Elusive “Perfect Poop”? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

1. Chew Your Food. When I used to eat the SAD, I was always in a hurry to finish every meal… as if I had a gun to my head to eat as fast as humanly possible. The digestion process begins in the mouth and when I learned to take the time to slow down and actually start that process correctly before I swallowed each bite, my digestion took another step in the right direction. When I swallowed food before chewing it completely, my stomach had to work harder and take more time to break it down because that job wasn’t completed in the mouth. The extra time it takes to complete the job in the stomach messes up all the rest of the digestion process, from the small intestine to the large intestine, and makes it tough to do things properly. Slow down and take the time to completely chew each bite.

2. Don’t Drink Liquids with Meals. Having a beverage with every single meal was another really bad habit I brought with me from the SAD. As food hits the tongue during a meal, the taste buds tell the brain what’s coming in and trigger a very precise digestive concoction in the gut to properly breakdown exactly what is being ingested (meaning it’s different for every meal). When I washed that down with something as simple as water, it would throw off the special mixture by diluting it and changing the pH… messing with the digestion process. Again, this causes the stomach to work harder and can speed up the transit time of food into the next stage of digestion. Wait at least an hour or two until you start drinking liquids again after eating a meal. Just remember to drink plenty of liquids and stay hydrated in between meals, as it is very important to your health. The best time to hydrate is about a half hour before a meal.

3. Stop Grazing. Snacking is a very common habit I picked up from a lifetime on the SAD. It became less and less important to me as my blood sugar balanced out on the SCD diet and I stopped getting hungry every two hours. When I eat a meal, my digestive process tries to run its course and then ship the broken down food into my small intestine. If I introduce more food on top of that meal within an hour of eating, my stomach has to start all over again and I will end up with partially broken down food being shipped to the small intestine and an incomplete digestion cycle. Try to eat meals in one sitting and wait for complete digestion to take place in the next few hours before anything else enters your mouth. Spreading a meal out over an hour or two, by grazing is very taxing on the digestive process and snacking drives that habit.

If you take the time to implement these three positive habits on your new SCD diet, it will help you become one step closer towards health. It’s not going to solve your digestive problems as a whole, but it sure helped me get to another level of health I never thought was possible. Just try it for a week and see if you notice a difference.

Got any other helpful tips about eating for proper digestion? Share them in the comments section below…

-Jordan

The post SCD Diet Eating: 3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Digestion Right Now appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

In the beginning, things were not this way. I was still so sick that it seemed like everything I ate was causing problems and I was chasing my tail trying to figure out what was causing all the problems. I was stuck in an SCD holding pattern for months… and I couldn’t figure out what to do to improve and move forward. I learned the hard way how to pinpoint foods that were causing me problems and stopping me from SCD success. After I figured out the basic process, I needed to go through to get rid of foods causing a problem, my health advanced quickly and things haven’t slowed down since.

The basic rule of thumb is 4 days. Try completely eliminating a food item for four days to truly gauge how it was impacting your digestion. At times, I have found that I notice a negative reaction goes away relatively quickly – within the same day. But other times it has taken up to 4 days for me to realize that the food was negatively impacting me. I can’t stress enough that when you are trying to troubleshoot the SCD diet, it is vital that the rest of your diet remains consistent with the go-to foods that you have confidence in. If you deviate from this and can’t figure out what’s causing the problem, you will be a mess trying to play around with your diet to figure out exactly what triggered it.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how to troubleshoot the SCD Diet and take your healing to the next level.

–  Start by eliminating one of the big three: The protein in eggs can be a trigger for many people with digestive diseases. Once I realized that I was eating eggs at a couple meals a day, I tried life without them for four days… and it was incredible! I felt better very quickly and found a way to make due without egg and still don’t eat them to this day. Start with egg and see if you experience any changes (remember, keep everything else the same). If it’s not egg, be happy you can still eat them and move on to the next step.

–  The next big offender is dairy. Dairy also has a protein that is very reactive and eliminating the cow’s milk yogurt and cheese alleviated many of the symptoms I had that were still bothering me. Once I went dairy free for four days I was at a level of health that I never thought possible. Don’t panic if you can’t have dairy. You can always try goat’s milk products in place of cow’s milk products, because the protein is a little different and you might have better luck. If you’re like me and that doesn’t treat you well either… then it’s on to almond milk yogurt and no cheese for a while, but very much worth it!

–  If you try eliminating egg and dairy and are still having issues… look to high concentrations of sugars. By that, I mean start with juices. There is a lot of SCD legal sugar packed into the Welch’s Grape Juice that caused me to still have horrible gas. Once I stopped the grape juice, the gas stopped and I felt better than I ever could have imagined. I also had to take a little break from guzzling honey because that high intake of sugar was driving some horrible gas, even though it was SCD legal sugar.

–  If the big three are not causing your issues, keep narrowing the list by applying the same principles. If you are eating any raw food, like ripe bananas or avocados, give those a rest for four days and see how it goes. Sometimes, those can cause issues with people in the beginning as well. Otherwise, keep picking different items that you eat frequently and whittle the list down until you see the positive change you are looking for.

Believe it or not, most of the time it’s just one food that is keeping you from SCD Success… find that one food and eliminate it and you are well on your way to feeling amazing.

What has been your experience troubleshooting the SCD Diet? Share your tips and tricks in the comments below…

Back to SCD lifestyle

The post Troubleshooting the SCD Diet: How to Pinpoint the Foods Stopping You from SCD Success appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

On the flip side, when I started the SCD Diet in 2009, the number one question that my friends and family asked me when I told them about the diet was, “Does your doctor know you’re doing this?” (Imagine it coupled with a stern look of concern.) As if I was making some rogue, vigilante, anti-establishment decision to martyr myself in the name of health. I still laugh thinking back about it. My how things have changed.

The best part, in my case, was that my doctor did in fact recommend the diet to me, but I was a rare instance. Most doctors are unaware of the diet connection to digestive health and might not support diet at all.

In any case, the Standard American Diet (SAD) has ingrained a strong tie to food as the foundation of most social gatherings with my family and friends. It led to some interesting situations that made me squirm when I was first starting the diet. Especially in the beginning, when I rapidly lost weight, I could feel people talking about me and my diet around the room with genuine concern for my well-being. Little did they know, I felt amazing and was having perfect poops day in and day out for the first time in my entire life!

The Fact Is: Most of Their Concern and Lack of Understanding Was Driven by Fear

People are generally afraid of what they don’t understand and the fact that I was doing a diet so different from what they are used to drudged up fear about something they didn’t know how to react to.

There are many misguided “norms” about the SAD that caused my friends and family to be afraid for me after I started the SCD Diet. Some of them are just outdated ideas that they expressed worry to me about, such as (these are somewhat exaggerated for demonstration):

• If you don’t have carbs from grains you will wither away from lack of energy
• The fat in the meat will kill you faster than you can get healthy
• The lack of fiber will stop you up until you explode
• If you don’t eat pasta or starches you will be hungry all the time and pass out
• Your bones will rot if you don’t drink milk everyday

On top of all of these fears, my family gatherings are surrounded by food that represents love. My SAD family gives love by creating bountiful meals for us and takes great pleasure in sharing their love in that way.

If I don’t eat their love, then I must not love them, right? 

When I realized that some of my family members felt that way it blew me away. I never imagined that they would feel so shut out and disrespected just because I couldn’t eat the glazed ham, pasta salad, and pie they slaved over for Easter Dinner. I had taken away the only way they could love me, unintentionally.

So, what can you do about it?

Here’s 5 Ways I Helped My Family and Friends Understand My Diet:

1. I explained that I love them no matter what

I explained that if I were to “cheat” and eat the food they created I’d spend the next 4 hours in the bathroom… and it’s just not worth it anymore. 

Once they connected the food to the pain I felt, they no longer felt offended that I couldn’t share in the meals they made for me. Instead, I made some suggestions and gave recipes of some SCD legal foods that I could eat (like a plain lemon chicken, or scrambled eggs). 

Help your friends and family find other ways to love you… it will alleviate a lot of tension.

2.  I always took time to share how great the diet made me feel

As they watched my health improve, they had less and less and to say… and they started asking more and more. The bottom line is: as I got healthier and healthier their fears started to turn into curiosity about what they might be doing to harm themselves. 

Just keep showing them that you really are feeling better and they won’t have to worry so much.

3.  I was always prepared

No matter what, I planned for success and always brought my own meal just in case I might need it. By being independent and strong, my friends and family respected me for handling the situation with poise and independence. Plus, by bringing my own food I never risked getting sick from something that I probably shouldn’t have been eating in the first place. 

Set up the conditions for your success and always come prepared.

4. I took some time to get interested in how they are feeling

If it felt right, I gave a few pieces of advice on things that they can do to improve their health. I talked about about bacteria, digestion, and how grains/starches/sugars impacted my body. Knowledge is the number one combatant to fear, and it will raise their level of awareness about their own health. 

If you run into the random stubborn Uncle, don’t waste your time, just smile and nod and remember that you can’t change everyone (then see tip #2).

5.  I got over the social pull to fit in

The SAD will create a very strong pull to fit in at most family and friend events. I could take two paths, either I would sneak out and eat my meal in private so that I didn’t have to talk about it all (which is fine as I started to heal and build confidence)… or I could confidently eat my healthy life fuel right alongside everyone else and be proud of my decision to take control of my health. I used to eat in the car really quickly so no one would even notice until I started to heal. Over time I started eating my incredible SCD legal meals proudly in front of everyone and I would become the center of attention while everyone begged to learn more about how such healthy food can taste so good. 

Do what feels comfortable… but don’t miss an opportunity to create your own gravitational pull at your next social event.

In the end, friends and family don’t understand the diet because they are afraid of what they don’t know. If you can calm their fears they will very quickly become curious and have a general interest in the amazing transformation you are undergoing. Be proud and don’t give into the social pull to deviate!

What has your experience with friends and family and the SCD Diet been like? Share in the comments section below…

– Jordan

The post Why Your Friends and Family Don’t Understand the SCD Diet — and What to Do About It appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Right before I learned about the SCD diet, I was willing to do anything to get better… if my doctor would have told me that eating dog poop would have been the fastest way to get better… I probably would have picked up a few dogs from the pound on the way home and started a new diet!

Luckily, he told me about the SCD diet instead of dog poop and I was able to take control of my health and heal my gut with normal food. But the diet challenged me in many ways. In the beginning,  it was socially awkward at work and family gatherings, there were tough cravings to fend off, and it was psychologically hard in those first few days to drastically change how I ate and push through the intro diet.

There was one key mindset that got me through the intro diet and helped me heal to where I am today. That mindset shift is the Number 1 most important mindset to starting the SCD Diet right. 

Here it is…

I no longer live to eat, I eat to live!

Food became my fuel to live and enjoy life, rather than living and enjoying life through food… but only for a brief moment in time. Fear not, as I progressed through the diet I quickly realized that the SCD diet allows for some incredible natural meals that taste amazing and still allow me to feel great… but it took some time for me to get there. I had a lot to learn about cooking meat, spicing things up, and what makes food actually taste good.

In the meantime, I just put my head down, ate to live, started feeling better, and loved every minute of it! If I wouldn’t have been able to embrace that mindset early on, I know that I wouldn’t have been able to get through all those tough moments when I thought about cheating or considered giving up on healing my gut.

The bottom line is this: eat to live and feel great!

Anyone else have any mental tips that helped them with the diet in the beginning?

-Jordan

The post The Number 1 Most Important Mindset to Starting the SCD Diet Right appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Beings that commitment can be the greatest challenge to overcome on the SCD Diet, I wanted to put together a quick list to keep the commitment in perspective… here are the top five reasons to try the SCD diet instead of Humira to handle the symptoms of Crohn’s Disease. Of course, always consult your doctor before making a decision like this one… but you can always bring up some of these points with them.

1. The SCD diet treats the root cause, Humira treats the symptom. If I were to tell you, “Gee, my toilet is overflowing and every time I walk in the bathroom my socks get all wet!” Would you give me rubber boots so I could stop changing my socks every time I had to pee… or would you hit me upside the head and tell me to go turn off the water so I could fix the broken piece inside the toilet?

Humira is the rubber boots… it essentially turns off your immune system by blocking the production of TNF-alpha, a protein your body is producing as an inflammatory response, but believe me, the toilet is still overflowing. The drug does nothing to address the root cause leading to the inflammation.

The SCD Diet does address the inflammation as a piece of the healing journey… seems like an easy choice to stay committed to it, otherwise your bathroom floor is going to be all wet for the rest of your life.

2.  Humira has side effects like: reactions at the injection site, upper respiratory tract infections, sinus infections, nausea, urinary tract infections, flu symptoms, abdominal pain, high cholesterol, blood in the urine, back pain, high blood pressure; and more seriously: infections such as tuberculosis, sepsis (bacteria in the blood), and fungal infections… not to mention the whole increased chance of developing cancer thing.

The SCD Diet has side effects like: increased energy, mental clarity, reduced inflammation, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, improved blood pressure, and increased nutritional uptake.

Both can help you get perfect poops… what more needs to be said?

3.  Humira is expensive… estimates around the web show that Humira can cost more than $13,000 a year for patients who have no drug coverage. That’s over $1,000 a month. Even if you went crazy and got all organic food and grass-fed meat you probably would only spend about half that per month for one person! Crohn’s disease and Colitis sufferers spend close to $2 Billion annually on medication.

If anything, the SCD diet can save you money… instead of expensive medication you’re choosing expensive healthy fuel for your body.

4.  Humira was man-made and has been around for close to 10 years… the primal/caveman diet (of which the SCD diet is very similar) has been the natural diet of homo sapiens (modern humans) for 200,000 years.

Hmm, personally I’ll take 199,990 years of evidence please.

5.  Humira can be a crutch, taking control of your health through the SCD Diet can be empowering. Choose your path wisely. I know which road I took… the healthier, less expensive, more intelligent, proven road that ends up leading me to my hopes and dreams… rather than taking me into a dark forest of feeling like crap.

The bottom line is: relying on a medicine to suppress your immune system and curb the symptoms of Crohn’s

disease so that you can eat whatever you want and make it through the day is not ideal.  Following the SCD diet as a part of a comprehensive healing plan so that you feel incredible and no longer experience the symptoms of the disease at all is better any day of the week in my book.

Empower yourself, take control of your health from your disease and seek to break free of the medicine.  It’s the only way you’re ever going to get your life back from the dark corners that digestive diseases drag us into.

Share your thoughts, advice, experiences in the comments section below… lay it all out!

-Jordan

The post Top 5 Reasons to Try the SCD Diet Instead of Humira to Relieve the Symptoms of Crohn’s Disease appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

The same holds true with chronic heartburn or gastric esophageal reflux disease (GERD). Conventional Wisdom says “Ah, I have too much stomach acid because it burns sooo bad!” Once again, listening to conventional wisdom, including most doctors and ALL pharmaceutical companies, you’d be wrong again.

Chris Kresser put together a great series of articles into a free eBook that explains how and why GERD happens. I think it should be required reading for anyone on the SCD diet, because it explains in very simple terms how and why many people on the typical Standard American Diet (SAD) have acid reflux and how doctors treat the symptoms with medicine handed to them from the evil pharmaceutical empire. It also helps that the author backs everything up with legit sources and studies.

Here are some of the highlights:

1: “GERD is caused by increased intra-abdominal pressure (IAP)”

So, that begs the question “What causes intra-abdominal pressure?”

According to the author:

2: “Instead, I believe the primary causes of IAP (and thus heartburn and GERD) are bacterial overgrowth and mal-digestion of carbohydrates – both of which are caused at least in part by low stomach acid. In a nutshell, the process looks like this:

Now, I encourage you to read the entire eBook so you can be informed about your body and the real reasons for GERD. Chris breaks it down as this: you need to simultaneously treat both the bacterial overgrowth and the maldigested carbohydrates (from grains and starches) as well as the root cause of low stomach acid. If you don’t address each issue you allow the cycle to continue.

So, How Is Addressing Bacterial Overgrowth and Maldigested Carbs Accomplished?

It’s easy. Just start the SCD diet, which reboots the gut flora (kills bad bacteria) and removes any hard to digest carbohydrates (grains and starches) and then supplement with Betaine HCL until the levels of stomach acid secretion are strengthened. You treat the root cause, break the cycle and remove the symptoms all in one fell swoop.

What are your thoughts on his articles/eBook?

-Steve

The post The Specific Carbohydrate Diet Cures GERD? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Frontier produces two lines of products, one of which is their own brand name.

They also created an all organic line of spices that is called Simply Organic.

I currently own and use several frontier products, including their pure vanilla extract, simply organic cinnamon, chipotle pepper, simply organic basil and simply organic oregano. It’s starting to become quite the collection. I started out slowly by first buying the cinnamon, which I absolutely love (freshest I’ve ever tasted in ground form). After doing some more research, I decided to see if some of the harder spices to obtain on this diet, like curry powders or any spice/herb that is smoked and then ground up, would be SCD legal form with this company. I emailed the company specifically to inquire about chipotle pepper’s smoking process and made sure to mention that I am allergic to man-made anti-caking agents and any starches. Here is the email I received back.

Hello Steven,

Thank you for your inquiry. Frontier does not use any processing aids or
anti-caking agents without listing them prominently on the label. Most of
our single ingredient spices contain nothing other than the spice itself
with the exception of a few fine ground products (such as onion and garlic)
that contain silicon dioxide as an anti-caking agent. Again, this is
prominently disclosed on the label in the ingredients declaration. If a
label doesn’t feature an ingredient declaration, such as basil, that means
that there is only one ingredient, basil.

The smoking process does not include anything other than actual smoke from
a traditional “smoking” method. Nothing is added to the jalapenos in this
process.

Kind Regards,
Jesse Otter

As you can see from above, they are very open about listing all ingredients on their products. In addition, of the products I own, I have never reacted to any of them. An interesting note from the email shows that they do add silicon dioxide (also known as silica) to their garlic and onion powders, which according to Pecanbread’s supplement listing is a legal additive (Note: I checked their products out online and it turns out their garlic salts include silicon dioxide where as they have granulated garlic and onion that do not contain it).

Overall, I am extremely impressed with this company and love their products. I plan to continue buying from their simply organic line because I know that these spices are even more pure being free of any man-made chemicals. I have found this brand in several big box grocery stores in several cities but if you cannot find them you can always order from their website.  (We are in no way affiliated with this company and do not make any money to endorse their product… we just like their stuff and thought we would spread the word.)

Got any other good spice companies that are your favorites? Tell us about them!

-Steve

**Originally, I included Simply Organic Curry powder in this post. But as Carol pointed out below, after further research most curry powders, including Frontier’s, use fenusgreek powder… which is illegal because it is mainly used to make additives such as guar gum.

The post SCD Legal Spices: Frontier Simply Organic… Spice Up Your Life! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

The worst part about carrots, though, is that they take 3 to 4 hours of boiling before they are fully cooked. While the research is a bit inconclusive about the degree to which steaming is better than boiling, it is a widely accepted fact that steaming vegetables allows them to retain more vitamins and minerals. Not only is it healthier to steam veggies but the best part is it’s faster!

For the first batch of carrots you make, I highly recommend you boil them just to get a good idea of what they look like when they are done (and feel that pain of boiling something for 4 hrs). Honestly, I always hated it when my math teachers made me learn the 47 steps to solve a problem before showing me a 2 step process that produced the same result. Therefore, I can’t fault you if you want to try the easy method first. The secret to cutting their cooking time by 3 hours is below!

Start by picking up 4-5 pounds of carrots from the store (buy local or organic if you can).

Now, we need to wash and peel them. Next, grab the big end of the carrots and use your swivel peeler to run the length of the carrot. Make sure to rotate the carrot and get all sides of it. Then, flip the carrot around so you can peel the area you were holding onto.

Next, I set up my steamer. I use an Oster steamer, but you could just as easily steam them in a pot on the stove.  If you have a steamer like mine, fill it up with water and get it set up so all you have to do is plug it in and start it.  If you’re using a pot to steam, start boiling the water while you prepare the carrots.

Now that the steamer is setup, chop off the ends of the carrots and cut them into roughly 1 inch sections and place them right into the steamer.

Next, we need to start the steamer… I’ve found that depending on how ripe the carrots are it usually takes 40 to 45 minutes in the steamer to reach the same cooked level as boiling them for 4 hours. If you’re using a conventional steaming pot on the stove, it can take up to an hour and a half.

Your fork should easily poke through the carrots. It’s a good idea to check and then give them an extra 5 minutes.

Now, dump the cooked carrot chucks into your food processor and blend away. I don’t like adding water to my carrots because I like them to be extremely thick; however, it is sometimes a good idea to add ¼ to ½ a cup of water to the food processor to dilute the carrot sauce a bit (especially for kids because it makes them easier to digest).

Great job on making your first batch of SCD legal carrots! If you want to enhance the flavor of the carrots, sprinkle some salt over them prior to steaming them.

Let me know if you have any questions or an even faster way to prepare carrots.

-Jordan

The post How to Make SCD Legal Carrots Faster and More Nutritious at the Same Time! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

How Do I Slow Down?

In many instances, people fail to see any results on the SCD diet because they simply moved way too fast through the phases. The amazing folks at PecanBread.com developed the stages of the SCD diet for people to have a general guideline of what foods to introduce and in what order.

At SCD Lifestyle, we took those stages a step further and introduced the Phases of the SCD Diet starting with the intro diet and moving from phases 1 through 5 with an additional detail. Our phases identify the phenol (salicylates) levels of the foods in each phase from weakest to strongest (you may have heard of this from the Feingold diet). Phenols can cause reactions during the early period of the SCD diet before healing has started to take place. The reaction can be as small as a little constipation or diarrhea or as large as complete brain fog and headaches. You can download our free Phasing charts in PDF format, along with a free chapter of our book here: Phasing into the SCD Diet.

Using this phasing approach will give your body a couple weeks (hopefully months) of low inflammation foods so that you can begin healing before you start trying more advanced foods. At the very least, you should avoid Almond Flour and cheese (preferably most dairy) until you have been free of diarrhea, constipation, and other mental/physical symptoms for four days in a row.

To give you a rough idea of timing, you shouldn’t be entering into Phase 3 foods until you’re 3-6 months into the diet. Keep in mind, everyone is different and some will be faster just as some will be slower.

How Do I Introduce a New Food?

• Only introduce a new food, if you have been free of diarrhea, constipation, and other mental/physical symptoms for four days.
• When deciding what foods to introduce next, follow our phasing charts or the stages diagrams from pecanbread.com and step through them one by one… don’t jump ahead.
• When you try that new food, eat it for four days without changing anything else so you can know exactly what reaction, if any, you had to that food.
• Track all your symptoms in a journal or you will be chasing your tail trying to figure out what happened when you spent the entire day on the toilet!

Final Thoughts…

At SCD Lifestyle, Steve and I are committed to helping you start healing today, that is why we preach a very conservative approach to the diet. No matter how many times we read Breaking the Vicious Cycle, it just didn’t have a plan or the answers we needed to start getting healthy. In the beginning, we would try various SCD legal foods and they would leave us scratching our heads (on the toilet of course). This frustration is what motivated us to finally write a book detailing a step-by-step outline showing how to survive the first 90 days and beyond… by taking it slow and healing properly.

We have been dealt this hand in life and this is the first time in our lives we have the power to fix it ourselves. Take control, be diligent, and meticulously introduce new foods as slow as you can handle to make sure you’re going to be successful.

We have the right to live life feeling good just as much as anyone else… but it’s up to us to take control of what we put in our bodies! Leave others your advice…

-Jordan

The post The #1 Reason People Fail on the SCD Diet… and Never Get to Feel Better appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

In Part II, we discussed wine which is made through the process of fermentation. In this guide, we will examine liquors, which are drinkable liquids containing ethanol made by distilling fruits, grains or vegetables. If you missed Part I, make sure you go back and read it to have a better understanding of how alcohol affects your digestive system.

Understanding Liquor and Liqueur

A liquor, or spirit, is a liquid of at least 20% alcohol by volume (ABV) made using a distillation process. A liqueur, or cordial, is an alcoholic beverage that is made with added sugar and flavored with spices, herbs and or other aromatic flavor enhancers. A liqueur can be of any alcoholic content by volume where as most liquors are federally mandated to be at least 40% ABV. Labeling laws of developed countries are the one clue we can use to decide if an alcoholic drink is legal on the SCD diet. If a bottle of liquor doesn’t specifically call out what kind of product it is (whiskey, vodka, etc.), then it is probably certain to be a liqueur of some type. To get familiar with the many types of liqueurs check out this list.

The Illegal List

If you are anything like me, you’ll want to understand more about why certain types of alcohols were illegal. I already covered sweet and dessert wines in part II. Beer is in the same boat with sweet wine, the fermentation process isn’t completed therefore beer contains plenty of sugars, grains and is made using yeast (illegal). We covered why Liqueurs and cordials are illegal and yes American Schnapps is a type of liqueur. But what about Brandy, Cognac, Port Wine, and Sherry?

Brandy is considered a spirit and is made from distilling wine, however the problem lies in the fact that most brandy is finished with sugar and caramel color additives. Cognac is actually a type of brandy that is very heavily regulated. I originally had high hopes only to find out that it is usually finished with sugar and caramel additives as well (except probably some extremely expensive brands). Port wines are wines that are prematurely stopped during the fermentation process by adding a natural grape spirit called aguardiente. This leaves residual sugars in the port wine making it illegal. Lastly, Sherry is drink that starts off as a fully fermented wine but then it is fortified with brandy making it illegal.

The Legal List

Vodka

Vodka is considered by many to be the “cleanest” liquor available. This is because it has the lowest level of fusel oils and congeners compared to other liquors (all distilled alcohols will contain some level of these by-products). Vodka can be distilled from any plant matter high in sugars or starches. Many types of vodka are made from grains such as corn, rye, wheat, and sorghum. However, vodka is also made from potatoes, molasses, sugar beets, soy beans and grapes. Vodka is usually distilled multiple times and distillers use many means of filtering (usually charcoal) to eliminate colors and flavors. This is what contributes to vodka being considered the cleanest of liquors.  In the United States and Europe, by law vodka cannot have a distinct aroma, character, color or flavor. Vodka is normally distilled to at least 80% alcohol and sometimes as high as 96% ethanol. It is then cut down by water to 40% for sale.

Gin

Gin is a distilled liquor flavored from juniper berries and made from any type of neutral spirit (odorless, colorless, flammable alcohol). Gin, by law, is created two different ways. In what is considered the higher quality; a neutral spirit is re-distilled with the addition of juniper berries to flavor and create gin. The second method is called compound gin and it is created by mixing neutral spirits with “natural flavorings” without re-distilling the liquid to get the juniper berry taste. Gin’s natural flavors are usually citrus and spices. There are many different types of gin defined by international law, the largest and most well known subgroup of gin being London dry gin. London dry gin can be flavored in any way but no sugar can be added and it can only be cut down with water (usually distilled to at least 80% ABV). Gin is required by law in the U.S. to be at least 40% alcohol.

Whiskey

Whiskey is distilled liquor made from grain mashes. Whiskeys are strictly regulated worldwide and can be made from several types of grains including: barley, malted barley, rye, malted rye, wheat and corn (maize). Whiskeys are broken down into sub-classifications based on the grain that is used. However, all whiskeys are distilled to 80 to 90% ABV and then cut down with water. Whiskey obtains most of its flavoring from the type of cask (usually wooden) it is used to age in. Even without understanding the sub-classifications of whiskeys it is useful to know that all whiskeys are legal on the SCD diet.

• Bourbon Whiskeys are primarily American whiskeys made from at least 51% corn mash
• Rye Whiskeys are broken down into two sub-types: American rye whiskey, which is made from at least 51% rye, and Canadian rye whiskey, which doesn’t necessarily have to be made from rye but most possess characteristics of Canadian rye whiskeys to be labeled a rye whiskey
• Corn Whiskey must be made from at least 80% corn mash
• Scotch Whiskeys are required by international law to be made in Scotland. They are distilled two or three times and then aged for a minimum of 3 years in oak casks
• Irish Whiskeys are required by international law to be made in Ireland. They are usually distilled 3 times and are required to be aged in wooden casks for at least 3 years

The “Drink at Your Own Risk” Liquors

Rum and Tequila are not called out in the legal/illegal list on pecanbread’s list. However, I did find an old letter from Elaine saying that consuming light rum was okay but not dark rum, but I was unable to find anything in the SCD world that speaks on Tequila.

Rum

Rum is made from sugarcane by-products such as molasses and sugarcane juice. It is produced by adding yeast and water to the sugarcane by-product to start the fermentation process. Once fermentation has taken place the resulting liquid is distilled. After the distillation process the rum is usually aged in wooden barrels or metal casks. Rum is a rather unregulated word that leaves producers open to use any kind of production process. Because of this rum can only be broken down into general sub-classifications:

• Light Rums, also known as sliver or white rums, have very little taste and are usually filtered after the distillation process to remove coloring
• Gold Rums, also known as amber rums, have more color and flavor than light rums due to being aged longer in wooden barrels and are not usually filtered
• Dark Rum, also known as black rum, are darker in color and have a stronger flavor than gold or light rums. This is usually due to be them being aged longer in charred wooden barrels. The taste is usually slightly spicy with caramel and molasses overtones.  These are the types of rums usually used in baking
• Spiced Rums, which get their flavors from added spices and sometimes caramel, and many times artificial coloring or flavoring is used

Based on the fact that Elaine stated she was okay with the occasional use of light rum, I think it is fair to assume that light and gold rums are relatively safe to consume on the SCD diet. When evaluating dark and spiced rums, the picture becomes a bit more clouded unless you get written validation from the manufacturer that these rums may have artificial additives, therefore making them SCD illegal. I would also caution people that rums are made using yeast which may or may not be completely consumed during the fermentation process making rum a more risky liquor to consume on the diet.

Tequila

Tequila is a blue agave based spirit. It is produced mainly around the city of Tequila, Mexico (hence its name). The production starts by harvesting the piñas (core) from the blue agave plant. The piñas are then broken down and yeast is added to start the fermentation process. After fermentation is complete, tequila is usually distilled 2 or 3 times. The tequila is then diluted down to be sold at 40% ABV. There are two main types of tequila: the first is made using only the blue agave during the production process and it is called 100% agave (heavily regulated by the Mexican government). The other type of tequila, called mixtos, are made up of blue agave and up to 49% of other sugars. Per Mexican guidelines to be called “tequila” the liquor must be made in Mexico, made with 100% natural ingredients, and contain at least 35% ABV.

My take on tequila is that you should probably avoid it while on the SCD diet. According to the Mexican government regulations, all natural ingredients must be used in the production of tequila. Manufactures may add caramel coloring, glycerin, and sugar based syrups to flavor it. Also remember that yeast is used to ferment the blue agave sugars which could cause trouble for people with digestive problems.

Wrapping It Up

If you choose to indulge in a drink or two on the SCD diet you will probably not cause any significant digestive repercussions. However, in my mind there are two key points to take home from our discussion of alcohols. The first is that moderation is the key; stick to one to two drinks once or twice a week at most. The second is to become informed and diligently choose a type of SCD legal alcohol to drink.

Hopefully this article has cleared the air around consuming alcohol on the SCD diet. However, if you think I left anything out or want a more thorough explanation leave some feedback below.

-Steve

The post The SCD Diet and Alcohol: Part III – The SCD Guide to Liquors appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

As with all things in life, it is extremely important to have something to measure yourself against to find out where you are in relation to where you want to be. Poop is no exception. In fact, poop is something everyone is always so scared and embarrassed to talk about… but it is the number one indicator of how well our bodies are functioning inside.

So, Let’s Talk About Poop

If you’re on this site, you’re probably really good at pooping and have wisdom beyond your years on the ins and outs of a good poop. Sometimes, you probably even celebrate and think about getting the camera when you have a memorable “normal” poop. My wife never thinks it’s funny when I yell, “Honey get the camera” and I don’t have the heart to tell her I’m serious…

I am right there with you, it’s a constant struggle to please the digestive system and a nice amazing poop is your reward. We all remember how sick we were and that one time in the grocery store when it was coming and it was coming now no matter what… that’s why those small victories are like standing on the podium at the Olympics with the gold medal around your neck. All those years on the SCD diet, taking vitamins and probiotics (training) resulted in the big win!

Ok, so what really is a “normal” poop and how do you know what’s going on inside? How often are you supposed to go? Well, the usual “it depends” is the answer you normally hear with this one. Everyone is different… and everyone’s level of digestive health is different.

A man by the name of Heaton, at the University of Bristol, developed the Bristol Stool Chart just so we could all finally have something to measure the output of our systems to. Most of the research out there suggests that in a perfectly running digestive system, every meal in should equal a good normal poop out… so roughly three a day. Again, everyone is different.

The Bristol Stool Chart gives you a breakdown of the seven types of poop that occur. Types 1 – 3 are considered to be various levels of constipation, while types 5-7 are considered various levels of Diarrhea. Types 4 and 5 are the more ideal levels of normal.

This is just meant to be a brief introduction into the Bristol Stool Chart and something that anyone with digestive issues should become familiar with. You have to measure yourself against something to know where you stand with your level of healing. Poop is the best indication of how well your digestive system is functioning.

If you want to read further and get a better description of each level of the chart, along with what it might mean about your digestive system, this is a great article to break that down for you from GutSense.org.

The important thing at this point is just getting familiar with this chart and figuring out where you stand, so you know how far you have to go to improve. As you heal, you might find yourself jumping around from one end of the scale to the other. Just focus on where you want to be and the things you need to do to get there.

Talk about poop; everyone does it. Got any good embarrassing stories?

-Jordan

The post The SCD Diet and Poop: It’s Time to Talk About It appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Elaine has put together the basic diet, or Intro Diet, with each piece of the puzzle in a specific place for a specific reason. The chicken soup is incredibly important because it is very easy to digest and incorporates many natural anti-inflammatory properties to aid in your body’s recovery. It is also going to keep a steady supply of vitamins, minerals, and hydration going while your body works hard to eliminate the pathogens it has been flooded with. The remaining foods are meant to be supplemental to the chicken soup and to provide some variety throughout the day. Bottom Line: Eat the soup!

Ingredients:

• 2 Lbs. of Chicken Thighs and Legs, skin and all
• 10 Large Carrots (or equivalent)
• Sea Salt

Directions:

Hour 0: Let’s get the chicken soup started.

– Take out your slow cooker and dump in the 2 lbs. of chicken thighs and legs, skin and all.

– Grab 10 carrots and peel them. To peel the carrots hold them on one end and run your swivel peeler down the length of the carrot to remove a thin layer. Slowly rotate the carrot 360 degrees and peel around the carrot until you have done the entire surface. Switch the end you’re holding and finish off the part where your hand was before.

– Cut the discolored part off each end.

– Drop the 10 carrots into the slow cooker.

– Sprinkle sea salt all over the carrots and chicken parts

– Fill the slow cooker ¾ full with water

– Set the slow cooker on high for 4 hours and write down what time you started it!

Hour 1.5:

– Stir your chicken soup.

Hour 3: Now the chicken soup has been cooking for 3 hours and needs some maintenance. We’re going to remove the parts of the chicken we don’t want.

– Get out a plate and some tongs.

– Pull out each piece of chicken one at a time, and use a fork and a knife to scrape the skin off the chicken.

– Once the skin is cleared, cut all the chicken off of the bone and dispose of the skin, bones, and cartilage.

– Add the chicken meat back into the soup.

– Stir everything well.

Hour 4: We’re going to remove the fat from the soup. It is hard to digest and not necessary for the Intro Diet.

– With a fine strainer or spoon, skim off the layer of fat that is forming on top of the soup (you may just notice it as a different color or that it looks like bubbles on top of the water). Do this twice to remove as much fat as possible.

– Let the slow cooker run on high for another hour just to get everything nice and broken down.

Hour 4.5: Now it’s time to puree the carrots that have been cooking in the slow cooker.

– Take a fork and stab the carrots that are boiling. If they’re ready, the fork should pierce through with no problem and almost make the carrot fall apart if you try to lift it out. If they are not done, let them cook for another half an hour and keep checking. Otherwise it’s time to puree everything.

– Pull out all the carrots from the chicken soup and put them on a plate.

– Fill your food processor about ¾ of the way with carrot chunks.

– Add about a ½ cup of water to the food processor (it helps break down the carrots).

– Run the food processor for about a minute until you don’t see any more chunks left.

– Add the pureed carrots back into the soup and stir it up really well.

Hour 5: Your chicken soup should be all set to go at this point.

If there is still a layer of fat on the top, skim it again with the strainer before you put it away. You can always leave it on low for a couple more hours to make sure everything is cooked well, or just unplug it and put the container in the refrigerator. More fat will magically appear overnight, which you’ll have to strain again in the morning (it will be a solid white layer on top of the soup and very easy to scoop/strain out).

Good luck and let us know how you’re doing on the diet. Anyone have some better suggestions for the soup?

Back to SCD Lifestyle

-Jordan

The post The SCD Intro Diet Chicken Soup: How to Make it Right and Why You Should Eat It! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

About Wine

Wine is made from grapes (keeping it simple) that are crushed and then fermented using different kinds of added yeast. The yeast eats the natural sugars from the grapes and converts them to ethanol alcohol. The fermentation process can stop naturally when the yeast consumes as much of the sugar as it can or it can be stopped prematurely to allow more sugar to remain in the wine. Wine is usually classified as “Dry” or “Sweet” based on how much sugar is left in the wine. This residual sugar amount is usually measured in grams of sugar per liter of wine. There will always be some amount of sugar left in the wine as grapes contain some sugars that are unfermentable.

Classifying Sweetness of Wine

The level of dryness in wines seems to be a bit unclear. My research consistently showed that any wine with over 45 grams of sugar per liter (45 g/l) is considered sweet. That would lend one to believe that any wine under this amount is considered dry and therefore SCD legal. This is where the research and definitions of wine tends to get a bit muddy.

While the amount of sugar left in wine is measured in grams per liter it is usually expressed in a residual sugar percentage (RS %). The sweet wine level that measured 45g/l would therefore give 4.5% on the residual sugar scale. Here’s a very nice table of the ranges of residual sugar and their appropriate dryness levels. It is important to note that a dry wine, as defined by residual sugar content, can taste sweet and a sweet wine can actually taste dry. This can be a result of any number of factors during the winemaking process.

So, What Can I Drink?

From all the research I’ve done, it appears the conservative approach for SCD’ers is to drink only wine that is below 1% RS (sometimes referred to as extra dry).

So, how do I pick a wine at the store? That is a great question… I’ve found it only gets more confusing from here.

The primary problem is that wine manufactures aren’t forced to list the RS percentage (or sugar content) on their labels. Until recently, this left SCD’ers trying to make educated guesses based on names. But these lists could only work as broad guidelines, as any wine can be either sweet or dry.

Dry Red Wines: Merlot, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Bordeaux, Syrah

Dry White Wines: Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Riesling, Brut or Extra Brut Champagne

Illegal Sweet Wines: White Zinfandel, Late Harvest Wines (usually Riesling), Ice Wines, Sec or Demi-Sec or Doux Champagne, Port, Sherry

This is just enough information to be dangerous when buying wine.

My old technique was to choose a table wine that is usually drier (see table above) and then confirm with someone working in the wine section that it is indeed a dry or extra dry wine. I’d make sure I read the labels and verified that it was supposed to be served with food. While I was never afraid to ask, I found that the employees of the store rarely had a good idea as to the level of dryness of any wine that I asked about.

Sugar Isn’t The Only Issue

But it isn’t JUST sugar you need to look out for when selecting a wine – both red and white wines are potentially full of additives (that’s because the USDA allows 76 additives to be added by manufacturers to red wine to make it taste and look “better”).

These additives range from things like purple food coloring to added yeasts to aid the fermentation process and sugar to increase the alcohol content. Even SAWDUST can be added to create an “oak-y” flavor.

And because the USDA doesn’t regulate the additives, ingredient lists (they have to protect “trade secrets” after all) or even the alcohol content – spending more on an expensive bottle, buying a bottle described as “dry,” or choosing a lower listed ACV percentage does NOT guarantee a better choice.

High-sugar, high-alcohol wines leave me feeling groggy and hung-over – even just 1 or 2 glasses. We already know that sugar, artificial flavors and colors, and preservatives like sulfites in food can cause flares, achy joints, itchy skin, and brain fog – they can do the same thing when they are in wine.

How to Pick a Gut-Safe Wine

I don’t mess around in the liquor store trying to guess which wines might be safe for my gut anymore. Instead, I leave it to the experts at Dry Farm Wines.

Dry Farm Wines is a wine subscription that takes all the guesswork out of choosing the best wine for your health – meaning every wine from the company is lab-certified to be low in sugar, low in alcohol, low in sulfites, and additive, mold, and preservative free. They’re also organic or naturally farmed (without irrigation) and come from old-growth vines – meaning they taste better and are better for the planet.

Each bottle from Dry Farm is hand-selected and tested to:

• Not exceed 12.5% alcohol (standard wine can have up to 24%!)
• Have less than 75 PPM added sulfites (can be up to 350 ppm in standard wine)
• Have less than 1 gram/L total sugar (not regulated in standard wines)
• Have less than 2 PPM of the mold ochratoxin (not regulated or even tested in standard wines!)

Being low in sugar and alcohol, and being mold, mycotoxin and sulfite free means – most importantly – that you won’t feel tired, groggy, puffy or “hungover” the next day if you enjoy a glass.

Jordan and I are loving our monthly delivery of Dry Farm Wines – and we know you will too. If you want to give it a try, or serve it at your next dinner party, you can get a bottle for just a penny when you sign up for a monthly or bi-monthly membership! Check it out here ? dryfarmwines.com/scdlifestyle

Check out the last part of this series, as I dive into the world of distilled liquors. Anyone have any other wine selection recommendations?

-Steve 

The post The SCD Diet and Alcohol: Part II… SCD Legal Wine Guide appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

What Is Neti?

Neti is taught as one of the 6 preparations to get the body ready for yoga practice.

The most common Neti technique uses warm water mixed with salt to gently cleanse the nasal passages. The mixture is actually very similar to the make up of human tears and it flows through your nose and sinus, washing away pollens, mucus, viruses and bacteria. And a Neti Pot makes this process relatively easy.

Using a Neti Pot every day helps to thin mucus and flush it out of the nose.  It has everything to do with the tiny, hair-like structures called cilia that line the inside of the nasal passages and sinuses. They move back and forth to push mucus to the back of the throat or to the nose to run out. People that have chronic sinus problems usually have cilia that move erratically and can no longer thin and move the mucus on their own. Saline solution helps to keep the coordination of the cilia intact so they can keep removing the bacteria, allergens, and other irritants.

Why Does It Help My Immune System?

The common cilia in a average person’s nose contains a build up of environmental and natural irritants that it has a hard time getting rid of. While these irritants continue to stay housed in the sinus cavity the immune system continues to react and fight against the foreign inhabitants. By removing them on a daily basis, the nasal passage is cleared and the immune system can rest, reducing hyperactivity and chronic reactions. This is a much better alternative to taking some kind of anti-histamine, which just turns off the immune response temporarily, but does not remove the source of the problem.

The sinus cavity, nose, and the back of the throat are lined with mucus membranes. Everything that we breathe in, including cold and flu germs, get stuck in the mucus membranes and are supposed to be moved backward toward the back of the throat and into the stomach where they are killed by stomach acids.

But like I mentioned before, sometimes those cilia become erratic and have a hard time moving the viruses and bacteria to where they need to go. Cold and Flu viruses cannot live at normal body temperatures in the beginning. They need to find a nice cozy place in the sinus cavity (which is colder than the rest of the human body) to colonize and become strong. Once they build up their forces, they can move into the back of the throat and begin a full-scale infection!

Using a neti pot with warm saltwater not only flushes out the virus but it introduces a higher temperature to help kill them off as well. Then, the mucus membranes can begin to clear out and have healthy function again. When the mucous membranes are healthy, they harbor the body’s IgA antibodies that can take down the infections naturally.

Before I use the neti pot, I also gargle with the warm saltwater. This not only feels great on the back of my throat, but it removes any of those cold and flu bugs that might be trying to make a home back there.

How Do I Use It?

First: I heat up some water to a nice warm temperature (never use water that is hot to the touch or it will cause damage to your nasal passages). Roughly 8 oz works well.

Second: I mix in my salt. I use a pre-packaged saline salt that is designed for use with nasal rinsing. Table salt should not be used because of the anti-caking additives it contains and sea salt is too harsh on the nasal passages. Most stores carry saline salt that is pre-packed in somewhere around ¼ teaspoon quantities.

Third: I gargle for about 30 seconds to clear out the back of my throat.

Fourth: I tilt my head 45 degrees to one side and pour the solution from the spout of the neti pot into my upper nostril. Breathe normally through your mouth and the solution should pass through your sinus cavity and empty out your lower nostril.

Fifth: I switch and do the same thing with the other nostril so that both sides receive an equal cleansing.

Sixth: I usually wait a few minutes to blow my nose gently so that my sinuses have emptied.

Here are a couple good videos to demonstrate the technique:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8sDIbRAXlg

https://www.howcast.com/videos/164292-how-to-use-a-neti-pot

I have not had one cold or sinus infection since I have been using this daily for the past 7 months. I also have had dramatically reduced allergies and nasal congestion in that time. I just made it part of my morning routine after breakfast every day… it leaves me feeling clear and ready to start the day.

You can get a neti pot kit anywhere and it usually includes the pot and some saline packets. Even Wal-Mart or Target carries them in their pharmacy areas. They run around $10 and can be just about the best investment you can make in your immune system while you start the SCD Diet. It goes hand in hand to help promote a healthier body and help guide you on the path to intestinal healing.

You have enough to worry about, why not take one more measure to avoid getting sick?

Tell us your stories about the Neti Pot… How has it improved your life?

-Jordan

The post The Neti Pot – How to Boost Your Immune System Today appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Overall Health Effects

Before we can properly discuss how alcohol impacts the digestive system we need to discuss the amount of alcohol ingested.  The amount and how often you consume alcohol are by far the two biggest factors of alcohol’s effects on the human body. A quick Google search will show you that chronic alcohol abuse will result in a substantial increase in your chances of getting cirrhosis of the liver, cancer of the liver or digestive tract, diabetes, GERD, alcoholic hepatitis and the list goes on and on. Therefore, I will not be examining the problems associated with acute alcohol usage as I am going to assume anyone who is following SCD is well aware that alcohol abuse is not going to help them heal any of their digestive problems.

That being said; for this post we are going to be discussing moderate alcohol consumption. What is moderate consumption? Great question… most studies seem to define it as 1 drink for women and 2-3 drinks for men per day. A drink is then defined as roughly 4-5 ounces of wine, 12oz of beer, or 1 oz of 80 proof (40% alcohol) liquor.

Alcohol Has Benefits?

So, why drink any alcohol? There are more and more studies showing up every day hailing alcohol and its effects on your health. This summary of a study published in the British Medical Journal shows that 2 drinks a day cuts your risk of a heart attack by 25%! This study from the South African Medical Journal makes a very compelling statement, “Epidemiological evidence suggests that moderate consumption (1-3 drinks) of alcoholic beverages, particularly red wine, is associated with an overall improvement in health, especially cardiovascular health.” It is also known that alcohol thins the blood which can help anyone at risk of atherosclerosis. So, at this point we know that chronic or acute usage of alcohol is very detrimental to our health and that there is some evidence that moderate consumption might actually be beneficial.

What Does Elaine Say?

Well, in all instances in which she does permit alcohol she always attaches the word “occasionally” with it. I interpret that to mean in moderation, as I’m sure she was well aware of what excessive drinking does to the body. According to Breaking the Vicious Cycle and Pecanbread.com the following lists are what is and is not permissible on the SCD Diet

LEGAL: Dry Wine, Gin, Rye, Scotch, Bourbon and Vodka

ILLEGAL: Beer, Sweet Wines, Sherry, Cordials, Liqueurs and Brandy

Now you might be thinking “Great, I’m home free as long as I stick to the legal list!” Well, not so fast… I feel inclined to share a few details with you before you make your final decision the next time you reach for a bottle.

Alcohol Getting Down in the GI Tract

When you drink alcohol, about 20% of the quantity is immediately absorbed through the stomach walls. The remaining alcohol in the stomach starts to break down with the help of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase. The stomach contains limited amounts of alcohol dehydrogenase allowing most of the remaining alcohols to pass through where it is quickly absorbed by the upper portion of the small intestine. The digestive tract blood vessels transport the alcohol to the liver, as liver cells are the only body cells that can produce enough of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase to breakdown the alcohol quickly. Overall, alcohol is given a first class pass through the digestive system and directly to the liver. Doesn’t seem like it impacts the digestive tract too bad, right?  Let’s look a little closer.

The following points are distilled (pun intended) from my research on how even the smallest amount of alcohol affects the digestion process. See the end of this post for my sources.

• Alcohol damages mucosa cells (special digestive cells lining your GI tract), which leads to less saliva production in the mouth, inflammation of the esophagus, and inflammation of the stomach
• Alcohol impairs digestive motility (muscle control and contraction), which slows the movement of food through the esophagus and intestines and usually leads to diarrhea
• Low alcohol content drinks (beer, wine) raise levels of stomach acid which can cause acid reflux and gastritis.
• High alcohol content drinks (distilled) don’t raise stomach acid levels but they are more inflammatory to the mucosa cells leading to higher amounts of inflammation
• Lastly, alcohol impairs the stomach acid solution by precipitating (separating) pepsin the main enzyme responsible for protein digestion, which limits the digestion process as pepsin is activated by hydrochloric acid (main component of stomach acid)

Summing It All Up

So, what are we supposed to do, abstain completely from alcohol? My answer would be “YES” if you haven’t ever been a drinker. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that shows alcohol is not helping to heal our digestive tract, therefore adding additional damage to our system by claiming scientific studies might show some possible health benefits is asinine in my opinion.

But, what if you enjoy alcohol in moderation? I think that if you stick to the list of approved types of alcohol and follow Elaine’s advice of “occasionally” (moderation) the benefit of being able to enjoy a night out with some friends or a relaxing drink after a long day during this diet is probably psychologically worth it. However, please be aware that any amount of alcohol directly affects the speed and quality of digestion, therefore it not advisable to drink before or during a meal. The breakdown of food that is consumed with or after alcohol is likely going to be incomplete and the food will stay in the intestinal tract longer, ferment and contribute to the viscous cycle we are fighting.

What is your opinion on the use of alcohol while on SCD? Do you partake in a drink here or there? I would love to hear your opinions.

This is part 1 of a 3 part series. Go to Part II to learn more about SCD Legal Wines and Part III for SCD Legal Liquor.

References:

– Study: The Effects of Alcohol Consumption Upon the Gastrointestinal Tract

– Alcohol’s Role in Gastrointestinal Tract Disorders

– Alcohol and Gastric Acid Secretion in Humans

– Alcohol Abuse and Your Stomach

The post The SCD Diet and Alcohol: A Guide to the Effects of Alcohol on the Digestive Tract appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.