IBD (General)
Being aware of how you are feeling about your diet and what you are eating can be a valuable way of staying in control of your IBD symptoms. This important information can also be used to inform the ways your specialist amends your treatment plan to minimise flare-ups and prolong your periods of remission, and give you a better understanding of how to deal with your IBD.
The My IBD Care app has a diet tracking feature that allows you to track how you feel about the healthiness of what you eat each day. Doing this, along with keeping a food diary, will allow you to improve your diet plan and feel more in control of your IBD symptoms.
Using a simple diet tracker is the one step towards better IBD management
What you are eating and how it is sitting in your gut has a direct impact on whether you feel well or are experiencing flare-ups with your IBD. Using a diet tracker app, such as the feature in the My IBD Care app, will allow you to look back and see how your food choices impacted your symptoms afterward. For example if you ate healthily for a few days and then found yourself in a period of remission.
How the My IBD Care diet tracker works
How you feel about your diet, specifically how healthy you feel you are eating, is one of a set of daily records you can make using the My IBD Care app. Each day, or as often as you choose, you can record your response on a scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. You can do this for diet, as well as pain, mood, stress and other similar factors.
Although you don’t have to record this every day, it is recommended to do so as it makes it easier to see the link between your diet and its impact on your IBD symptoms. The more data you have about your diet, your mood, the medication you are taking, and other aspects that impact and reflect your IBD symptoms, the easier it is to see how you are doing and where adjustments are needed.
Diet tracking will help you build a better IBD diet plan
Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis diet plans are built around helping you to manage your IBD and stay in remission for as long as possible. These plans hinge on techniques around how you eat, such as small meals, and what you eat and drink, such as whether you get enough probiotics or drink a lot of fizzy drinks. This is a great basis for creating your IBD diet plan.
What triggers your IBD will partially depend on how your body reacts to certain foods. However, there are some common foods that are often noted by those living with IBD as causing flare-ups. These include: fatty or greasy foods, spicy foods, caffeinated drinks, sugary drinks, alcoholic drinks and raw, high fibre vegetables. Knowing this can help you be aware of what might trigger your IBD to flare-up, but only if you are tracking what you eat and how you felt afterward.
Keeping a food diary allows you to pinpoint what triggers flare-ups
The best way to know what foods are causing your IBD to flare-up is to keep a food diary, alongside tracking how you feel about your diet and your bowel movements. Looking back on what you ate and how well you were able to digest it, will allow you to refine your Crohn’s Disease or Ulcerative Colitis Diet plan. Over time, you’ll be able to create a list of foods that don’t cause issues – or at least give you an idea of what will cause flare-ups if you do decide to keep eating a certain food.
Combine diet tracking with other features of the My IBD Care app for a better understanding of your IBD
The My IBD Care app also includes other features for recording information related to managing your health when you have IBD, such as medications and appointments. For those living with Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, having all this information compiled easily and accessible will make reviewing your treatment more effective for your specialist. Some of the other app features include: medication tracking, mood and stress recording and more.
