Whole Foods To Heal Inflammatory Bowel Disease

If you prefer to stick with whole foods to heal inflammatory bowel disease (and your system can tolerate them), or you cannot afford to go on an elemental diet, or pay for the targeted healing supplements for IBD or IBS, then I have a few options for you that will not cost more than your regular grocery bill and should go a long way toward providing foundational healing for your digestive system and your whole body.

Ayurvedic IBD Diet

This diet was given to me in London, UK, by an Ayurvedic physician from India. A friend of mine had used one of his other diets to cure her asthma and so he came highly recommended. He told me to eat NOTHING but black bananas and live yoghurt for six weeks. By ‘black bananas’ I mean normal, yellow-skinned bananas that have been left on the counter to ripen until their skin turns black.

At the time, he didn’t explain, and I had no idea why this should work. But I went out and bought the stuff – and even managed to find home-cultured, live yoghurt at Neal’s Yard in Covent Garden. I managed one day on this diet. Because I positively gagged eating those black bananas. I’m texture-sensitive and have never liked thick, slimy things. Plus, I had never liked bananas (except in muffins or pancakes) and I never ate yoghurt!

It was a classic case of “if I knew then, what I know now…”

Here’s the thing that would have made this diet work for me: Throw the bananas and yoghurt in a blender on low speed and sweeten with stevia if required. Add liquid extracts (these are elemental) of caramel, chocolate, or strawberry for extra flavor variety. Voila!

Black Bananas & Live Yoghurt

The bananas need to be black, because in this state they are naturally pre-digested and so absorption is enhanced. They are also very alkaline.

Bananas are often called a “perfect food” and have a long history of use for digestive upsets. Bananas contain tryptophan; a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier. Bananas are also very high in potassium, yet low in salt, which helps with blood pressure. In fact, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the banana industry to make official claims for the fruit’s ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke. Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system (which directly benefits the gut by lowering stress).

Live (or homemade) yoghurt contains live enzymes which help with digestion. It also contains a good level of probiotics. So this is the best way to improve your gut microbiota if you cannot afford probiotics. Conventional store-bought yoghurt will not work for these purposes. So you either need to make it yourself, or buy it from a farm or other specialized vendor who uses the same culturing process you would use at home. If you ferment (culture) the yoghurt for 24 hours, it will also have no lactose remaining.

Ayurvedic IBD Shake

  • 1 black banana
  • 1 cup of live yoghurt
  • Add a tablespoon of organic, cold-pressed flax oil if you can afford it
  • Add stevia to sweeten if needed

Blend together on low speed
*Dilute with water if you want a thinner texture.

Here’s my own variation on this Ayurvedic shake – pumped up for a bit more nutrition…

Raw Nutrient Milkshake

  • 2 organic egg yolks OR 1 organic egg yolk & 1 organic whole egg
  • 1 cup raw milk or yoghurt (raw cow, sheep, goat or camel)
  • maple syrup to taste
  • 1 tsp – 1 tbsp Udo’s Oil
  • Optional: very ripe banana

*Note: If using banana, then blend banana and milk/yoghurt first, then add rest of ingredients
Blend on LOW speed for 5-10 seconds.

Healing Bone and Vegetable Broths

As I recommend in The IBD Remission Diet, also drink homemade bone broths between shakes to provide the healing gelatin for the GI tract and to provide taste variety (sweet-salty-sweet-salty etc.) and keep your appetite stimulated. If you’re vegetarian, or for variety, you can also drink homemade vegetable broth.

A great way to get in those extra healing fats is to leave some or all of the fat in your bone broth, or, stir in olive oil, coconut oil, or ghee (butter that has the lactose and milk proteins removed) to your soup. You can also add hydrolyzed collagen (use grass-fed only).

Traditional congee rice porridge with bone broth is also a great option. I recommend white or Haiga rice until the digestive tract is quite healed, as brown rice is not tolerated as well. Though some may argue that rice is not generally a healthy option, the low fiber content of white rice is what makes it a good choice when your digestive tract is weakened.

Now, let’s say you hate bananas and you cannot eat any dairy.

Jini’s Vegan IBD Diet Shake

In that case, I would try making shakes from avocado, fresh raw coconut water and a clean veggie protein (with no additives) with stevia for added sweetness if needed.

Avocados are very low in LDL cholesterol (the bad kind) and rich in Omega-3’s. They contain more than 25 essential nutrients, and are a very good source of vitamin E, good amounts of vitamin C, containing credible amounts of thiamine and riboflavin (B vitamins). Compared to the banana, an avocado has 60% more potassium. It is very low in sodium and very low in sugar.

Coconut water is such an amazing substance that it is used to replace blood plasma in third world countries where there is no blood bank available. Yes, you can hook coconut water up to your IV and put it straight into your veins! it is also higher in potassium than a banana and contains a near perfect balance of electrolytes – hence you can put it in your veins.

BUT you must make sure the coconut water you buy is fresh and raw – not from concentrate. They basically have to open the coconut and pour it in the container, then sell it to you. Sometimes you have to go to the company’s website to verify this as many use the words “fresh” and “nothing but fresh coconut water” on the label, but when you go to the site, they are either high-heat pasteurizing it, or it is from concentrate. A really good way to tell in the store, is if it says something on the package like: “Use within 2 days of opening” THEN you know it’s the real thing!

Blend together on low speed:

  • 1 cup fresh, whole, raw coconut water
  • 1 scoop clean vegan protein (no added greens, superfoods, fibre, etc.)
  • 1/4 to 1/2 avocado (if you need to gain weight, add more avocado)
  • Add stevia to sweeten if needed

Alternate these shakes with homemade vegetable broth. You can use any vegetable broth recipe you like, but Bieler Broth and the Medicinal Mushroom broth recipes from my IBD Remission Diet book are very good ones.

Variation: If you can eat bananas, but not dairy, then either replace the avocado in the recipe above with 1 banana and alternate between the two shakes, OR use this recipe:

Blend together on low speed:

  • 1 cup fresh, whole, raw coconut water
  • 1 scoop clean vegan protein (no added greens, superfoods, fibre, etc.)
  • 1/4 avocado
  • 1 black banana
  • Add stevia to sweeten if needed

One More Addition To All The Shakes

If you can afford about $14 for 50 servings, then also add 1/2 tsp (2,000 mg) of L-Glutamine to each of your shakes – it’s pretty tasteless, so easily tolerated. L-Glutamine is a free-form amino acid that’s very healing for the gastrointestinal tract. It is the primary nutrient for the mucosal lining of the intestine, so you get a lot of ‘bang for your buck’ with this supplement. If you’re suffering from diarrhea, then take the L-Glutamine between shakes, on an empty stomach – it causes water to be re-absorbed from the bowel.

What About Raw Juicing?

As I write in my books, it usually doesn’t work for people with inflammatory bowel disease to consume raw fruit or vegetable juices – because it causes diarrhea. Hence the absorption of nutrients is low and people often continue to lose weight and don’t have sufficient energy on a raw juice diet. And healing takes a LOT of energy! And protein.

If you tend towards constipation, you can definitely give raw juicing a try and throw in a scoop of whey or vegetable protein with each shake – to be used for wound repair and building muscle.

Once your digestive system has healed and you do not have diarrhea, you can definitely try juicing vegetables (not too much fruit due to the sugar content). Here is one of my favorite juicing recipes, simple, but delicious:

  • 1 small fennel (bulb, stalks and fronds)
  • 3 stalks of celery
  • 1 apple (cut into wedges)

How To Store Fresh Cut Avocado Without Browning

If you’re only using 1/4 avocado per shake, then you’ll want to know how to keep your cut avocado fresh between shakes.

Lemon juice stops avocado (and other cut fruits like apples or pears) from browning. If you squeeze some lemon juice in a small dish and place the avocado (cut side down) in the lemon juice, you will not need to use plastic wrap. As long as the entire cut surface of the avocado is flush against the lemon juice in the dish, it will stay fresh and green for a few days.

avocadosrubbedwithlemonjuice

 

avocados-storage

Probiotics

I understand that therapeutic quality probiotics can be very expensive and people on a tight budget often cannot afford to ingest them for the amount of time necessary to establish a good gut flora (which is crucial for healing IBD or IBS).

In that case, or if you want results faster, I urge you to consider using Jini’s Probiotic Retention Enema. This email from a reader shows the value of this protocol:

“The second positive impact was the implementation of Jini’s probiotic retention enema protocol. I first tried it after completing a 9 week stint on the absorb plus elemental diet. Despite the diet and the use of other supplements suggested in the LTYG book, I was still having some persistent physical symptoms (loose stool, blood, urgency) so I decided to give the probiotic enema a try. This protocol provided me very fast improvement of physical symptoms. Within a week my stool quality improved demonstrably and within a month my stool was fully formed and solid and there was almost no blood! I should also mention that the die-off symptoms lasted for an entire week after doing the enema so my gut must have been really toxic. I hope this feedback will be helpful. Thanks to you, Jini, and the entire LTYG team!” – G.Z.

The other thing you can try, to get a good intake of beneficial bacteria, is to ingest raw milk and/or yoghurt. Raw cow, goat, sheep or camel can all work well. Goat milk is the closest in composition to human breastmilk, but camel’s milk is also well-tolerated.

You can also slowly increase your tolerance to raw milk by starting with just a teaspoon of homemade raw yoghurt per day, gradually build up to a tablespoon, etc. But also take Natren probiotics at the same time, if you can, to continue to build your healthy gut flora.

You can also use the dairy-based Natren probiotics to gradually restore or increase tolerance to raw milk. Start with just a pinch of dairy-based powder, along with your regular dairy-free probiotics and gradually increase over a period of a few months.