Diet and Health FAQ

Tagged As: Difficile Colitis

Question:
I am interested in finding out information about C. Difficile- Pseudomembranous Colitis. I have been battling it for 6 months now and now the Dr are talking about removing the rest of my colon ( I have a colostomy) If anyone knows a site where I can learn more it would be helpful.

Answer:
C. Difficile- Pseudomembranous Colitis usually occurs as a result of antibiotic overuse allowing a resistant strain of bacteria (C. Difficile) to let loose in the colon.  It is relatively rare, and usually very treatable. My GI once commented that I may have cured myself of a C. Diff. infection by taking natural yogurt with live cultures every day. I was taking it as part of the specific carbohydrate diet (SCD). You can read more about it at www.scdiet.org . He also told me that eating this type of yogurt was one of the best ways to reculture the bowel. If I were you I would cut out all sugars and starches for a while and eat a cup or so of plain yogurt with live cultures several times per day.  I guess your doc has already given you vancomycin with no effect? You might want to give the natural yogurt a try. Here's the reasoning: Probiotics produce many substances during their life cycle which change the pH of the environment in which they grow, and can inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria while creating an environment that is conducive to the good guys. When you take probiotics in a supplement form, there's a huge possibility that the environment in the intestines will be hostile to them and they will die, or at least they will not thrive.  If that happens you will not get much benefit from the substances that they produce (since they won't have much of an opportunity to produce them).  BUT, when you consume your probiotics in the form of yogurt, you are not only consuming the bacteria, but you are consuming the medium that the bacteria were grown in, where they have already had a chance to produce the substances that are so beneficial to us, and harmful to pathogens. I can't promise you that it will work, but I don't think it can do any harm, and seems worth a try.