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Contact Information: Julie Beyer, MA, RD NutraConsults P.O. Box 210086 Auburn Hills, MI 48348 Email: Toll
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Making Confident Choices with Interstitial Cystitis By Julie Beyer, RD As the author of Confident Choices: Customizing the Interstitial Cystitis Diet and a dietitian who counsels IC patients, I am often asked where the research is to support dietary modification as a treatment for interstitial cystitis. The answer is simple: there isn?t much research, but hopefully there will be some in the future. In the meantime, the effects that various foods have on interstitial cystitis symptoms have been observed by patients and doctors for decades. Foods such as coffee, tea, sodas, alcoholic beverages, artificial sweeteners, tomatoes, strawberries, citrus fruits, and soy are frequently cited as triggers for IC symptoms. In fact, cranberry juice, often used as a natural remedy for bacterial urinary tract infections, is considered to be one of the worst offenders for IC. How Does Diet Affect IC Symptoms? There are many theories about how and why certain foods affect IC symptoms. Because specific foods can affect individual IC patients differently, some believe there may be an allergy component. Other foods, such as caffeinated products, MSG, and spices, may be chemical or physiological irritants. Ingestion of these foods usually triggers symptoms within minutes. Some IC patients attempt to avoid all acidic foods, because many of the common trigger foods are acidic in nature. The problem with this theory is that all foods and beverages are digested differently, and an acidic food may not contribute to acidic urine. For example, citrus fruits are very acidic, but actually cause urine to become slightly more alkaline, whereas cranberry juice can slightly acidify the urine. Both foods are commonly cited as bladder irritants in IC patients. Therefore, it isn?t likely that the pH of a food itself is as critical as the pH of the urine itself in triggering or avoiding symptoms of IC. Medical professionals will tell you that if you randomly checked the urine of several people, their urine pH will bounce around all day long. For people with healthy bladders, this variation in urine pH is not even noticeable. Think of it this way: The cells that make up your skin are similar to those that make up the lining of your bladder. If you pour either lemon juice (acid) or bleach (alkaline) over the back of your hand, you will not feel anything except a cool liquid. However, if you had an open sore on the back of your hand, pouring either lemon juice or bleach over the wound would cause you pain. Similarly, if the pH in urine is too low (acid) or too high (alkaline) when a person has wounds in their bladder, or their protective bladder lining is defective, the pain can be excruciating. On a side note, if you kept exposing
your hand to bleach or lemon juice (soaking in it, for example) you
will definitely begin to CAUSE your skin to become inflamed and
break down. Of course, we can always rinse off our hands and stop
the damage from progressing, but we will always be producing urine,
constantly exposing any damage to the bladder lining to variations
in urine pH. That is people who are trying to heal their bladders
with products like Elmiron should also follow a diet free of their
individual trigger foods. It is important for IC patients
to customize their good food/bad food list. What affects one patient
does not necessarily affect another. Most IC patients follow some
version of the traditional ?elimination diet? technique used with
allergy patients. Although the term ?elimination diet? can sound
intimidating, it is actually just a fancy way to organize the
testing of various foods. Patients begin by eating only those foods
reported by other IC patients and their physicians to be bladder
friendly, gradually testing one food then another while recording
their IC symptoms. Most patients find that they don?t have to
avoid as many foods as they once thought, allowing them to have a
well-balanced dietary intake.
Taking Control! Dietary modification can be a successful addition to a patient?s comprehensive treatment plan, giving patients some control of what can seem to be an uncontrollable situation. In fact, Over 92% of patients who responded to a February 2004 online survey done by the Interstitial Cystitis Association reported that certain foods or beverages make their symptoms worse, and over 84% of those patients reported some symptom relief by modifying their diet. I do not know of any other therapy for IC that can boast those numbers!
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