Do You Recommend The Specific Carbohydrate Diet?

[Jeansy]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forum. I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in February and I have been gluten free ever since except for a couple of mistakes. The D stopped long ago, but by and large I am not feeling better. I'm still having pretty serious bowel activity and I typically have only minutes to get to a bathroom when I need one. Sorry for that detail.

I've also gained 10 lbs since February which is making me very uncomfortable. I'm worried that the weight gain isn't going to stop because I have put on all this weight while running around 20 miles a week.

I was wondering if people have had success with the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for weight loss and intestinal healing. I'm almost ready to try anything, but this diet seems very difficult to follow so any encouragement or advice you have would be appreciated!

Thank you!

[newlyfree]

Hi Jeansy, welcome to the board!

I went on the SCD to speed my recovery, and it helped me tremendously. Make sure to do the homemade yogurt if you can - I was scared of it at first but it helped my digestion a lot more than doing the diet without it.

I did lose about 7 pounds over 6 weeks on it, but I have a problem with nuts so I was cutting out a major source of calories in the diet. Also - not being allowed to eat anything processed or packaged... cooking everything from scratch with limited time to do so... my calorie intake had nowhere to go but down

That said, the SCD is not a weight-loss regimen per se, and you can still be getting lots of calories depending on your approach, but if it can reboot your insides and balance out the bugs in your gut, I would guess that your weight could normalize a bit.

The other thing to consider, though, i s a possible thyroid problem. It's not uncommon in Celiacs, and if you're running 20 miles a week and still gaining I think it's worth getting checked.

[Jeansy]

Hi newlyfree,

I will ask my doctor to check my thyroid. I was took so many tests before my celiac diagnosis that I think my thyroid was fine but it's worth double checking. As I sit here will my belly rolling over my belt I think definitely worth double checking!

Are you still following the SCD and if not how long did you manage to do it? It certainly will take me a lot of time to prepare the food and at my first read of the Vicious Cycle book I was a little confused about the order in which foods should be introduced. I guess I'll have to reread it and take notes! I have a 16 month old daughter and I always plan and prepare great things for her meals but there doesn't seem to be time for me to do the same for myself.

One last question (for now!). What do you think of the author's claim that some cases of Celiac Disease can be cured by following the SCD for a year? I'm sure that if I managed to follow the diet for an entire year I wouldn't go anywhere near gluten for fear of messing up my hard earned healthy intestines!

Thank you for your response and congratulations on the healing you accomplished with the diet!

[newlyfree]

Hi Jeansy -

I am just now starting to go off the diet (adding rice in now, seeing how that goes). I was on it for about 2 months.

The food introduction section confused me too! I couldn't find anything at all about introducing the yogurt, though there were several warnings to 'follow the advice for when to add the yogurt'

So I started with just meat, eggs and veggies for a couple of days (along the lines of the 'starter diet') then added in whatever I wanted after that. But it was two weeks before I got up the nerve to make the yogurt.

Oh - another thing, they talk about dry curd cottage cheese a lot, but I've only ever found it in the store as 'farmer's cheese', make sure it's the soft kind (looks kinda like ricotta) not the hard cheddar-ish kind.

As to curing Celiac with the diet... I think the author wrote a lot of the book before much of the current Celiac research had been done. It was revised in 2004 and then included references to current research, but I think the author still had a bias towards the older ideas on Celiac. Myself, I don't think can cure celiac, because no diet can change your genes, but it will make the symptoms go away.

[Sweetfudge]

Where can i find more information on the SCD? And how do you think it would work with me as a hypoglycemic? I don't know anything about it, so I am just asking.

[melrobsings]

What's SCD?

[newlyfree]

SCD is shorthand for "The Specific Carbohydrate Diet", published in the book "Breaking the Vicious Cycle" available at Amazon. It was written by a woman who used the diet to cure her daughter's colitis in the 50's.

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The diet restricts carbohydrate intake to those that are simplest to digest - eliminating grains, sugars (except honey, which is a monosaccharide), and starchy veggies. It also incorporates probiotics through yogurt and doesn't let you eat any packaged foods or artificial ingredients, also stuff that the body doesn't digest well.

I don't know anything about hypoglycemia, so I don't know if the diet would be helpful for that, but it does help speed the process of intestinal healing by giving your body a break from the more difficult-to-break-down foods.

[Jeansy]

I started to take a stab at concisely describing the diet and gave up. Nice job, newlyfree!