It’s estimated that IBD, which takes the form of Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, affects 5 million people worldwide. The United States accounts for more than half of that number. In recent years the incidence of IBD has increased in several countries where both Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis had previously been uncommon. And that increase, the study’s authors note, seems to coincide with these nations adopting a Western diet.

Previous research connecting diet with IBD had been limited and even conflicting. However, most of those studies involved a small number of participants. The current study drew findings from questionnaires given to 116,087 adults aged 35 to 70 who were enrolled in the global Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study between 2003 and 2016. After a median follow-up of 9.7 years, 467 participants were found to have developed IBD (90 with Crohn’s disease and 377 with ulcerative colitis).

After adjusting for other potentially influencing factors, researchers found that those individuals who reported a higher intake of ultra-processed foods—such as soft drinks, refined sweetened foods, salty snacks, and processed meats—were much more likely to develop IBD.

Participants were grouped according to their level of ultra-processed food consumption: less than one serving a day, one to four servings per day, and more than five servings per day. Compared with people who had less than one serving of ultra-processed food a day, those who consumed one to four servings daily had a 67 percent greater risk of developing IBD. And those who ate at least five daily servings of ultra processed food were 82 percent more likely to develop IBD than those who ate one serving or less. 

Among study participants, ultra-processed food consumption was highest in North America, Europe, and South America. These regions also logged the highest consumption of processed meat and soft drinks. Participants in North America and Southeast Asia ate the most salty snack foods such as chips, while South American participants consumed the most refined sweetened foods such as chocolate.

Researchers found that unprocessed red and white meat; dairy; and whole foods such as fruit, vegetables, and legumes were not associated with IBD risk, leading researchers to posit that it isn’t the type of food but the way a food is processed that relates to the elevated risk.

“Ultra-processed foods often contain high amounts of many non-natural ingredients and additives such as artificial flavors, sugars, stabilizers, emulsifiers, and preservatives,” said the study’s lead author, Neeraj Narula, MD, MPH, FRCPC, director of the IBD Clinic and associate professor of medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. “Detergents and emulsifiers that are added to foods may have a detrimental impact on the gut barrier, as some translational science research papers have demonstrated increased intestinal permeability—or ‘gut leakiness’—with consumption of these ingredients.” Narula notes that increased intestinal permeability is thought to play a key role in the development of IBD.

Growing Research

This is not the first time ultra-processed foods have been linked to disease. A 2018 population-based cohort study of 104,980 participants found that a 10 percent increase in the proportion of ultra-processed food in one’s diet raised their cancer risk by more than 10 percent. Another large observational study linked higher consumption of ultra-processed foods with increased risks of cardiovascular, coronary heart, and cerebrovascular diseases. Meanwhile, there is also evidence that eating an ultra-processed diet increases calorie consumption and leads to weight gain, compared with a diet rich in whole plant foods. 

To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer. For meal-planning support, check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path.

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Receiving the Diagnosis

At the hospital, the doctors told me that I had some inflammation in my rectum and lower bowel, and they said they’d like to keep me in the hospital for a week for observation. 

I was put in the gastro ward and given antibiotics and aminosalicylate (5-ASA). I also had to insert a mesalamine suppository. Meanwhile, my condition kept declining. I went from around four bloody bowel movements per day to six or seven by the end of the week. The hospital gave me miso soup, rice porridge, half a raw egg, and some fish with soy sauce, as these were supposed to be easy to digest for colitis and Crohn’s patients. 

I remained in the hospital, as I started having upwards of 10 bowel movements each day. My doctors put me on steroids to try and help my symptoms, to no effect. The frequency of my bowel movements continued to increase. Sometimes I couldn’t even make it to the bathroom, so I asked for a smaller, private room with a more accessible bathroom. 

Rapidly Deteriorating 

My parents flew in from New Zealand to be with me. At this point I’d been in the hospital for weeks and lost 30 pounds. I wasn’t responding to the medications. The doctors stopped giving me solid foods, with the hope that the medications would work better on my empty stomach. But that didn’t help. Soon I was having 15 bowel movements a day, often bloody.

I began to have intense abdominal pain that I needed strong painkillers for. I could barely walk and was so weak that I couldn’t even get out of bed to go to the bathroom, so I was in adult diapers, and my mom had to clean up after me. 

By the fifth week in the hospital, I had lost 50 pounds. The gastroenterologist tried to do another colonoscopy but was unable to get the camera past my rectum because my colon was so inflamed. They suggested surgery. I was in so much pain at that point that I was up for anything. But my mother pushed back. She told them that I’d only gotten worse under their care and that she didn’t want them to operate on me. 

The doctors said my only other option was to take tacrolimus, an immunosuppressive drug typically given to people undergoing organ transplant surgery. Since colitis is believed to be a result of the body’s immune system mistakenly attacking friendly bacteria, they thought the medication might help get it under control. So we agreed to give it a try.

I responded somewhat to the tacrolimus. The frequency of my bowel movements decreased from around 40 to 15. As I started to feel slightly better, I was allowed to introduce solid foods back into my diet. 

Discovering Dietary Solutions

Throughout all of this, my mother had been frantically researching remedies for colitis, and she’d read about the power of a healthful plant-based diet for healing Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis. It made a lot of sense to us and we decided to try it. We told the hospital dietitian that I’d only be eating the vegetables, not the eggs, fish, or other hospital food. My mom brought a blender and juicer to my room, and she started making me banana smoothies and celery juice. 

Remarkably, after just a couple days, I began to feel better and more nourished. My stool started to form, and I was able to walk and control my bowels again. The doctors were pleased with my progress. Within a week, I started only having bowel movements three or four times a day, and while I was still weak from losing so much weight, I began feeling like myself again. The gastroenterologist was able to perform a colonoscopy on me and found that my inflammation had reduced significantly. He said that I was in remission. 

A Rocky Road to Recovery

I returned home to New Zealand feeling better—but it wasn’t all smooth sailing from there. 

I didn’t fully understand what to eat on a plant-based diet, and soon I caved to cravings and started eating some animal products again. Within a month, my colitis symptoms started up again, and I realized that animal products were aggravating my disease. I knew that I would have to stay plant-based if I was going to stay in good health. It took me a while to comprehend this as I loved meat, dairy, and eggs a lot. 

But I did more research into plant-based diets, reading Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, The China Study, The Starch Solution, and Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes. I also watched Forks Over Knives. I began to fully appreciate just how detrimental animal products were to our health. I was lucky that my family joined me on this journey and also went plant-based, so there were no animal products in the house to tempt me. That support was key. 

It was still a difficult journey to wellness, though, as I struggled with mental health issues, including depression. But after about six months of ups and downs, I stabilized and was in good health once again.

Thriving and Symptom-Free

It’s been eight years, and I’m happy to say that I’ve been well ever since, without needing medications. I enjoy an abundance of whole plant foods, and I’m thriving as a plant-based athlete. I’ve competed in mountain bike races, duathlons, and 10 half marathons. I’m currently preparing for a full marathon. 

Adopting this way of eating was the best decision I ever made. I am very lucky to be here and grateful to have taken control of my health through a whole-food, plant-based lifestyle. 

Ready to get started? Check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path. To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer.

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I can safely say that 2013 was the worst year of my life. At the beginning of the year, pregnant with twin girls, I was put on strict bed rest for extreme symptoms of ulcerative colitis (UC). My doctors were monitoring my UC and high-risk pregnancy closely, and had put me on a high daily dose of prednisone, an oral steroid commonly prescribed for UC. But the medication was mostly ineffective, and in early February, my husband, Andrew, and I lost our twins at 32 weeks due to complications.

We were floored, both by the stress of bed rest and the subsequent worst possible outcome. Even though it was determined that my symptoms were not causal to our loss, our questions began. What had we done wrong? Had the high doses of steroids I had been prescribed for my UC symptoms played some role? If my body had been healthier, could I have brought our twins safely to term?

The remainder of the year was a blur of UC flares treated with different drug regimens. Ultimately, my body gave in, and I landed in hospital days before Christmas. Everything I ate ran right through me in the most painful way possible, and I had lost 40 pounds. During my “holiday” in the hospital, I worked with my doctors on suggested new drug regimens, but spent half my time online researching nutrition and holistic ways to fight my disease.

 Figuring It All Out: 2014

One of the first resources I found was Forks Over Knives. Although the film did not specifically speak to ulcerative colitis, it referenced many chronic “Western diseases,” why these diseases are more prevalent in areas where meat and processed food consumption is high, and how a whole-food plant-based diet could change the course of the current health crisis plaguing our society.

I wanted to know more. How could changing our diet potentially help mitigate my ongoing battle with UC, and put Andrew, our four-year-old daughter, and myself in prevention mode for some of the most common diseases of our time? Once we started to dive into the research, it was almost too easy to be motivated to make a big life change.

Motivated by Plants: 2015

On New Year’s Day 2015, we embraced a whole-food plant-based lifestyle, and it was clear there was no turning back. I quickly realized that I had not felt “healthy” in a very long time. Even when my UC symptoms were “in remission,” each day, I felt tenderness and bloating in my belly by mid-afternoon and a lethargy that seemed unaffected by my diet choices. I was also told my body would likely not be healthy enough to have any more children, which was heartbreaking after the loss we had experienced the previous year.

When we switched to a whole-food, plant-based lifestyle low in sugar and processed grains, all my bloating and pain disappeared. And miraculously, last April my doctors told me my labs showed incredible improvement and that I was healthy enough to try for another baby. I became pregnant shortly after, and we had a healthy, hefty baby boy in January!

Our New Way of Life

I won’t say it has been a complete breeze. We’ve had a few false starts and hiccups—“What!? These veggie burgers aren’t vegan?” But all in all, it has been easier than we anticipated, even for my burger-loving husband and my mac-and-cheese-guzzling toddler. We are all happy and hardy with our new food choices. We feel energized, fueled, and motivated to exercise regularly and passionately attend to all the responsibilities of daily life. Most important, we love the food we create together as a family, and the genuine feeling of reward from the meals we share together every day.

The post From Rock Bottom With Ulcerative Colitis to Pain-Free in One Year on a Plant-Based Diet appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

Seven years ago I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disease that causes severe abdominal pain, thousands of tiny sores in the colon, and bloody watery stools. My gastroenterologist also removed several pre-cancerous tubular adenomas at the time of my diagnosis. Sometimes I would have to go to the bathroom 30 times a day. At times I couldn’t leave the house and had a difficult time sleeping because I was so sick and in so much pain.

I was 28 at the time. I was put on a super-high dose of a prescription steroid and lots of other heavy-duty prescription drugs to control the disease. Significant weight gain is common on high doses of steroids; and so on the drugs, I went from a healthy weight of 125 pounds to over 200 pounds in nine months. I also developed horrible acne and grew facial hair. I felt crazy and was not a nice person to be around. I would cry when I looked in the mirror.

After I started feeling a bit better, I was able to lose all the extra weight. I worked out 2 hours a day at the gym for a year and at the end of the year I ran a half marathon. I have since had a colonoscopy every year and have often had to go back on prednisone or other terrible drugs in order to get my recurring colitis symptoms under control. Every time my weight would balloon. I would feel miserable again and have to work hard to get it back off. It was like a terrible roller coaster and I couldn’t get off.

One weekend, my brother Abe was staying with me and we watched Forks Over Knives. I didn’t really pay attention to it at the time because I was watching kids, making dinner and generally uninterested. Fast forward to January 2012. Our family had just returned from Disneyland, where we had a fast food nightmare vacation. I felt like crap, was sluggish and had no energy. I thought of the film Forks Over Knives again. I decided to re-watch it, this time with my eyes wide open. I realized maybe I could heal myself by changing my diet. I talked with my spouse and we agreed to go on a whole-food, plant-based diet as a family.

Since January I’ve lost the 20 extra pounds I was carrying around without dieting or counting calories. I don’t have to work to maintain my weight anymore. I am completely off prescription drugs and my ulcerative colitis is in full remission. I’ve never felt better and I know all of this is a direct result of my diet. I wish I would have known years ago that I could heal my own body with what I was putting into my mouth. It’s really amazing that the cure I was looking for was harnessed through plants.

[Editor’s Note: More from Somer.]

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