An introduction to me and my blog

Hi. A bit about me to start with.

I am a musician... well I was... am I still? A classical clarinet player. Playing with orchestras and teaching in schools. Last summer I decided to retrain as a lawyer. I am currently studying for my degree and teaching clarinet and saxophone.

Two years ago I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. After not a great start with treatment I managed to get referred to a brilliant hospital and was relatively quickly in remission. I weaned myself off all medication. Then at Christmas I had a couple of drinks... and back to square one. I was gutted!

This time has been different though... the magical steroids did not work! They improved things but they didn't make the symptoms go away. The hospital said to go back to them... which I really didn't want to do as I knew the next step was immunosuppressants. So, I started googling.

Eventually (a couple of weeks ago) I stumbled upon a website, www.ihaveuc.com and loads of people on it were talking about the specific carbohydrate diet. The diet is based on probiotic levels in the gut. This grabbed my attention because I am aware that trials have been done with probiotics and the results are looking good.

So, I decided to give it a go.

I am now on day 11 of the diet and it is going very well. Most of my symptoms have totally gone! My energy levels are high - though that might be the steroids... and I am surprisingly enjoying cooking all my food from scratch.

Since the diet is a bit of an experiment, and there may be many people out there who would like to know what the diet feels like from the inside I thought I would start this blog. I plan to write in it how I am feeling and how the diet affects my health and my life. I also plan to add recipes - like my delicious coconut flapjack that I invented yesterday.

The book for this diet says that if you do this diet for two years you will be cured and then be able to eat any foods and remain symptom free! I wonder... its hard to believe that right now.

Join me as I tackle living in a world of convenience food and alcohol, whilst avoiding just that. I have many food trials coming up... such as mine and Michael's wedding - dinner at a beautiful restaurant (how will they take my diet?) plus no champagne or wedding cake for me :-( - my honeymoon in Costa Rica (I am most worried about the airport food!) - a residential training weekend - could be interesting - and many more tricky times.

I am looking forward to the challenges. How hard can it be to limit your food when you are on a dream trip to Costa Rica? Let's find out...