It can be very discouraging to not have all of the tools you need to find your way out of the forest only to discover there is something missing that prevents you from using them to actually find your way out of the forest. You wind up walking around in circles and are never really clear what you did wrong or where to turn next.That is the issue we have had when looking for information related to Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and specifically Ulcerative Colitis (UC).

Of course, as with most of the wanderers we have come across, we started with our doctor who referred us to a gastroenterologist. After some rounds with Prednozone and Asacol, our son had a great summer. Shortly after returning to school, he went into a flare and after a few misteps found himself in a situation that was somewhat resistant to medical treatment. Our doctor seemed to be at a loss and with no real direction, I started to search the internet for anything I could find related to Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).

That was when I started to read about all of the people who have been bouncing around from medication to medication, some of who wound up with colectomies. I started to get really scared. As I kept reading, I discovered people who had been miraculously cured just by changing their diet! But then, that turned out to not be everyone. Then maybe just a few. Then the truth was revealed. We would have to adjust the diet in almost every way depending upon our specific needs. Back to square one.

Well, not quite square one. I have been looking at the specific claims in the Specific Carb Diet (SCD), the comments on popular Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) websites, studies published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, articles from the American Medical Association (AMA) and The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). I have been looking for the intersections that will help set some clear ground rules for determining the best diet for the individual.

There is also the question of pharmaceutical and surgical solutions when needed. There have been studies that have indicated a significant increase in efficacy of steroid treatments when combined with specific changes in diet. Anecdotal evidence at a preliminary level suggests similar efficacy of steroids and the Specific Carb Diet (SCD). The initial conclusion could be that neither one nor the other is the best way to go but rather a combination of the two. That is one of the questions we seek to answer.

But how do we arrive at the answers when the mainstream medical community absolves itself of any real dietary input and the dieticians want to charge you $60 to $150 dollars to tell you how you can be cured without medicine? This website is an attempt to bring the two together under one roof. It is my hope that by examining both sides of the equation we will find a solution we can all use.