Try to follow the FODMAP plan!

I got my results and I have both gastritis and collagenous colitis. I have been prescribed Budesonide and my doctor expects great improvement before I follow up Tuesday. I have already limited my diet immensely, to mainly chicken and rice, softer foods. But I have always been a picky eater but this is taking it to a whole new level.

Yes I was diagnosed with BAM. My prescription has been changed. I am now taking Colesevelam for
bile acid malabsorption.

I also have tortuous bowel, 3 extra twisted folded loops in my sigmoid colon, and like you a lot of diarrhea since about 30yrs old. The older i get, the worse it is since the bowel atrophies as you age...and i am close to 70. I suppose it also depends where your elongations are but here is what I have done. 1) I kept a meticulous food diary of everything that went in and what came out for 4 yrs (thats a lot of time lol). Also I checked my transit time first by eating a lot of beets at a meal to see how long it took to come out the other end. This helped know my transit time so that i could relate it to what i ate and the result at the other end. 2) I found that a high percentage of Soluable fiber foods (not Insoluable fiber which can be irritating) at every single meal was important, although a mix of different types of fibers is generally healthy. Also not to break down the soluable fiber by over cooking it. High soluable fiber is in oatmeal, root vegetables, hard crispy flesh fresh apples etc. Insoluable is in hard husks, skins, roughage, which can irritate an already irritated bowel. 3) Avoid strong spices, herbs ok and any other kind of irritant ie alcohol, vinegar, pepper, citrus etc. 4) Some fat/oil (tsp?) at each meal to keep things moving. 4) Keep drinking and keep moving when able.
Also there are somewhat different diets that work better with different blood types in general. So if you know your blood type that helps for food trials. I am blood type A so grains in general work well (but not a lot of animal food) whereas not for blood type 0 which doesnt do well with a lot of starch but good with meat. In the mornings I eat oatmeal, boiled prunes, heaping tbsp ground chia, a crisp apple half peeled, carrot/beet/parsnip lightly roasted and chewed to a pulp, scrambled egg. Morning meal seems especially important. I think they are discovering now that cooled resistant starches (refrigerated after cooking) are also helpful for the colon. These are starches that resist digestion in the small bowel and make it to the colon. So particular soluable fibers that are also resistant starches may be helpful. At one point i had GF noodles that were elastic and gummy from some kind of additive or combination of additives not listed that must have created some kind of resistant starch that made it to the colon and helped both form and stretched to move through twists. If the additive is 1% or less it is not required to be listed in Canada. Those noodles had brought me out of 7yrs of diarrhea but they changed them and they arent the same consistency anymore and so no longer work.

ps. Also take a good human sourced probiotic like Genestra Intensive/IBS at the end of first big meal of day to help maintain healthy microbiome. It has only the main microbes common to everyone. Also cooking your own meals from scratch during food trials helps determine what is working or not working. Bought food items have many ingredients and additives so it is complicated to figure out. Warning: Psyllium fiber generally does not work well with this condition and can cause impacted bowel from turning into hard ball in colon. This happened to me and I landed in Emerg. It could not be removed with enemas because of twists. Eventually it came out with great pain and bleeding.

Hello! Newly diagnosed tortuous colon at 74! I have struggled with constipation/gut pain/diverticulitis for 20 years, but had a 12 hour gastric bleed/mucous mix in November to get a colonoscopy yesterday!
Interesting reading your comments- now I begin to journal and worry about the kids and grandkids that ended up with infrequent bowel movements, as it seems to be familial. Any other tips for the newbie?

ps. If you do go Gluten Free, stay away form US grown rice products that happens to be in a lot of things. Pretty much all US grown rice is high in arsenic as Consumer Reports pointed out and now governments are trying to pass bills to regulate it. Arsenic was used in pesticides years ago and since rice grows in wet soil it absorbs a lot of it. Rice from India or Pakistan is fine since they never used arsenic in pesticides.

How! New here. I was informed, only by reading my colonoscopy results that I have a tortuous colon. Nobody has ever said anything about this to me, including numerous Gastro doctors. I didn’t know it could have such an negative impact on my life. I’ve gone for years using laxatives, prescription medications like Linzess, enemas, colon cleansers, and the last prescription I got was for Enulose which made my symptoms 1000 times worse. I’ve since stopped everything and am doing a gut healing reset with really bland foods. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. I was supposed to see a PA tomorrow to discuss testing for bacteria like SIB, but they canceled it saying that I need to see an MD. I’ve already seen many doctors and a colonoscopy 6 years ago which was perfect. Such a big part of me is angry that nobody explained this to me. They just kept throwing meds at me. I read a comment from somebody else on here who said if one more doctor asked me if I eat enough fiber and drink enough water I was going to scream as well! This is an anatomical problem that nobody has explained to me until I started looking this up on ChatGPT.

Hi Hana2
Me again. Here are some of the foods I can tolerate without diarrhea or problems. I started out with rice, potatoes, chicken, mild fish, and then tried adding new foods to see what would happen. I can now have spaghetti and butter, mild white bread, tuna salad, scrambled eggs, plain yogurt, and I keep adding things one at a time. I hope you can do the same.
Margot