Giving Thanks

On this day of thanks, I have started to reflect on all the wonderful things I am very grateful for. To begin with, I am so thankful for my great health. This time last year my health was started to fall apart. I’m so happy that I have come a long way from last Thanksgiving. I have never felt better.

Much of my health improvements couldn’t have been made without the love and support of my family, my amazing boyfriend and my awesome roommate. My mom has probably been the most supportive. As someone who, too, has struggled with illness, she knows how hard and scary being sick can be. She also is the one who really believed in that I could stick to the SCD and make it work. When my doctor was doubtful, my mom was right there with me, standing my ground and convincing the doctor that it was so worth it.

I am so grateful for finding the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.  With that appreciation, I can’t even begin to express the gratitude I have for the creators of all the blogs, web sites, and recipe books that I have found. Without you, SCDers, I would have never tried this diet. I would have never known that a diet change can heal. I would have tried every medication and probably hated every moment of it because I hate, hate, hate taking meds. So, thankful, fellow SCDers, you were my inspiration.

In other festive news, my mom and I have been cooking up an SCD storm! I was a little nervous about my first SCD Thanksgiving, but I can’t wait to eat now! My mom and I made Lemon Meringue Pie, Pumpkin Pie, and Candied Walnuts. We’re also experiment with making a mashed celery root recipe and making some turkey gravy. I can’t to try it out. I’m hoping to post some pictures and recipes as well as input on the results. That may have to wait until tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Eat, drink, and be merry! Tell your loved ones how much you appreciate them and remember all the great things you have in your life.

Taking a breather

Due to finals and the upcoming holiday, I’m taking a quick break from my blog. I do intend to continue this blog past my course requirements, but I need a brief break.

Please keep checking back for updates!

Thanks and Happy Eating on Thanksgiving!

Living With Crohn’s Disease commercial

My roommate and I are watching 13 Going on 30 on FX right now, and this came on during commercials:

My roomie looked at me and said “huh. I’ve never seen that before. Have you?” I actually have never seen a Crohn’s commerical on TV before. I immediately hopped on the advertised site Living with Crohn’s Disease to see what it’s all about. The site is run by the biomedicine company Centocor, which makes medication for Crohn’s. I think it’s interesting that nowhere in this commercial do they mention Centocor or its medications. I wanted to take the Crohn’s control quiz on the Living with Crohn’s site, but you must enter too much personal information for me.

Also, I thought the commercial was a little too overacted. They were so dramatic that it actually amused me. They’re so serious, but what I’ve learned from Crohn’s is that you can’t be too serious about it. It is a disease and you must have control over it, but you don’t need to be such a downer about it. In my family, we joke about my Crohn’s and it helps me not to fret about it too much. Overall I think they need to replace their lame actors with real people and make something more uplifting.

Tweet What You Eat: taking food diaries to the next level

As usual, I was going through my Yahoo! Group discussion board emails for SCD and I ran across one post about a new web site. The site, Eat Right, is based in Ireland. While exploring this site I found something very interesting: Tweet What You Eat It’s a Twitter-based food diary. “Use Twitter to track what you eat, and now your weight, by ‘tweeting’ food items to your personal food diary on Tweetwhatyoueat.com from your mobile phone, IM or through Twitter.” Using your Twitter account you send direct messages to TWYE, so

your friends can’t see what your food diary. TWYE says, “Twitter is the perfect platform for a food diary application. You can send Twitter messages from a phone via SMS, your favorite IM client and even the web through Twitter.com! That makes it very versatile for our on-the-go lifestyles.”

It’s cool to see a new application for the Twitter technology, and I think it shows that Twitter can be used for more than just updating about your life. I’m not sure I’ll be tweeting my eating habits anytime soon, but perhaps someday.

Gene mutation may lead to clues about Crohn’s

On the research front this week, researchers discovered a gene mutation that may lead to clues about Crohn’s and Colitis. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists have found “a genetic flaw that could drive a rare childhood form of colitis, and the finding might have implications for the broader range of illnesses collectively known as inflammatory bowl disease (IBD).”

They studied the genes of nine children with a severe form of childhood colitis and discovered mutations in two genes that produce cell receptors for interleukin-10. This is a protein that control the body’s inflammatory response. If there is a mutation in the receptors for interleukin-10, the entire immune system is thrown off-balance. According to the New England report, a bone marrow transplant eliminated the child’s disease in one of the cases.

I, personally, find this fascinating. It’s not the first time that they’ve done studies on interleukin-10 and IBD, but this new study apparently shows that they might be able to find adults with insufficient amounts of interleukin-10 and learn how to treat them.

I think it’s a step in the right direction for studying gene mutation in IBD patients. I hope they take this research and continue on with it. Adult IBD is more complex in genetic terms, especially Crohn’s. The cause of the disease is still unknown and not understood. There does seem to be that genetic link (we discovered that my great aunt has Crohn’s, so there’s my genetic link), but they’re not sure what that link is.

After reading this I started thinking about the idea of a bone marrow transplant. If, in 5 or 10 years, they do discover that a bone marrow transplant, or some other treatment for that matter, would eliminate my disease, would I do it?  At first my heart immediately said HECK YES! but then, my mind got into the conversation too. I don’t know if I would want to do it right away. There are so many risks with transplants, and I already have my own way of treating Crohn’s. It would be nice to miraculously wake up Crohn’s-free and eat that delicious doughnut I’ve been craving for two days now, but I don’t know if I want to slip back into my old habits. Then I wonder if the treatment will really work. Will I be cured forever or could it come back? I guess only time and more research can tell us, but it’s nice to think that there’s headway made on the Crohn’s research front.

Carry on, researchers, carry on.

Bare Fruit Apple Chips a new favorite

When I went to NYC a few weeks ago, I was introduced to new store-bought snacks: Bare Fruit products. My mom bought some yummy snacks, including Bare Fruit’s Apple Chips,which are bake dried slices of apples. They’re organic, gluten free and have no added sugars and preservatives. They’re so good that I seriously just downed an entire bag in one sitting.

I also tried they’re dried pears and dried cherries. These are also good, but I still think that apple chips are my favorite.