Diverticulitis Diets - Contrasting Advice

Advice about diverticulitis diets divides into two main themes. One approach works best for people who are fighting a crisis situation. The second approach - 180 degrees from the first -- works best when you're not in a crisis and your primary goal is to prevent a future crisis from starting.

In good times, you look to your colon to fulfill a pair of important processes: it optimizes your body's water level, and it collects vitamins that your body needs. It handles material using catastalsis as the method.

You could say that catastalsis causes diverticulitis. Catastalsis is the muscles around the colon wall working together to move material along. If catastalsis squeezes too hard (because your diet is too low in fiber and you're constipated) then there's a good chance that a pouch will pop out through the colon wall.

Doctors call a pouch a "diverticula." The disease of having pouches is called "diverticulosis". Pouches have become more and more common in today's society, because we eat too much processed food and we don't get the fiber that we used to. More than half of all people develop diverticula by the time we're fifty years old, but the vast majority of people don't experience any problems from them.

Diverticulitis crises happen because material gets stuck in a pouch, causing a tear and making the area infected. Doctors call this condition "diverticulitis". Diverticulitis attacks, then, are the times when damaged diverticula bring you sharp pain, bloody stools, constipation/diarrhea, and health risks. The risks can be severe, so be sure to consult your doctor if you're in crisis.

The Crisis Diverticulitis Diet

When you're in a diverticulitis crisis, you want to give your colon a break. You want to stop catastalsis, so you want to cut all fiber out of your diet. It's pretty much impossible to eliminate every bit of fiber from your diet, so experts generally recommend a daily maximum of ten grams.

When you're eliminating fiber from your diet, fill your diet with broths, cooked fruit, and skinned vegetables. Stay away from yogurts and anything containing small seeds.

Once the crisis has passed, you can gradually add more fiber as your colon recovers.

When You're Not in a Crisis

Your high fiber diet will cut the odds of a future diverticulitis crisis. Increased dietary fiber allows catastalsis to operate at a lower pressure because more water is absorbed into the food that you eat.

Diverticulitis diets with large amounts of fiber bring other health benefits as well. High fiber means less "bad" cholesterol in your blood, so you cut your risk of heart disease. Dietary fiber moderates changes in blood sugar, so you're less likely to develop diabetes. Fiber is also linked to weight loss, and some research says it lowers the possibility that you'll develop cancer.

You'll most likely be advised to get 30 to 40 grams of fiber each day. Commercial packaged foods are allowed to advertise that they have "high fiber" if they have more than five grams of fiber in each serving, which means you can plan on eating 6 or 8 servings each day.

You can also get a lot of fiber from foods like bran muffins, cooked cereals, and beans. Surprisingly large amounts of fiber are inside snack foods like apples and bananas, bran-loaded crackers, and apricots.

You might also check out a fiber supplement, preferably one that contains probiotics. A supplement will help you meet your nutrition goals, meet your fiber goals, and still eat the other foods that you love.