What Diet Helps Lymphocytic Colitis?

Lymphocyctic colitis is a type of inflammatory bowel disorder that can cause all kinds of stresses, ranging from the physical stress of the symptoms to the psychological stress of not knowing whether your next meal will result in embarrassing digestive disturbances. While lymphocytic colitis can be treated with medication, the first step is likely a change in lifestyle, aiming to re-engineer your diet along more colitis-friendly terms.

Elimination Diet

Understand that an elimination diet is normally the best way to deal with lymphocytic colitis. An elimination diet is simply a diet where you make efforts to identify and subsequently eliminate those "trigger" foods that serve to upset your gastrointestinal tract. While there are many foods and food types that serve as common triggers for nearly everyone with colitis, there are also likely a number of triggers that are specific to your individual case, so some detective work is in order.

Common Triggers

Eliminate consumption of the most common lymphocytic colitis triggers to begin your foray into resolving your condition naturally. According to the medical experts at EMedTV.com, the first step should be the elimination of high levels of fat in the diet. Note that this includes eliminating not only a high level of fat intake across the entire day but also meals that are disproportionately high in fat. In general, aim to consume no more than 30 percent of your total calories from fat, split evenly across your daily meals. The next step is elimination of dairy (lactose) products and caffeine, as both of these substances tend to irritate the digestive tract, bringing on an outbreak of colitis symptoms. If removing dairy and caffeine from your diet is difficult at first, strive to cut back heavily: Limit yourself to no more than two cups of coffee throughout the day and no more than two or three servings of products containing lactose.

Food Journal

Keep a regular food journal as the final step in your anti-colitis diet. In the journal, write down all the foods you eat throughout each day, along with a running commentary on your current symptoms. Over time, this will create a dietary map that you can use to establish correlations between certain food types (and specific foods) and an outbreak of colitis symptoms. Once you discover these unique problem foods, you can them add them to your elimination list, further reducing the symptoms of colitis.