Let’s hear it for kefir as a natural treatment for microscopic colitis: This stuff works! Microscopic colitis has no known cure, and treatments include natural and pharmaceutical. However, treatment for microscopic colitis is hit or miss, and often nothing works to alleviate symptoms.
If you want to go the natural route with microscopic colitis treatment, I urge you to try kefir. This is a probiotic drink — but wait — perhaps you’ve already tried probiotics in pill form to naturally treat your microscopic colitis. And they probably had no effect whatsoever. Don’t let this fool you!
I have microscopic colitis and it did not respond at all to probiotics in pill form. However…every time I drink Kefir for more than a few days, the symptoms just about clear up. This beverage is yogurt in drinkable form. It’s thick like a milkshake and comes in different flavors. However, I’ve been drinking only the plain. Flavored varieties contain more sugars, and for all we know, this can interfere with the treatment process.
First try the plain kefir. Whole Foods and Vitamin Cottage carry two or three different brands. The Whole Foods near you may even have an organic brand. But for now, don’t get caught up with whether or not it’s organic. Just buy the plain, and drink two cups (about 16 ounces) a day. No more. No less, though I have not yet experimented with how effective less might be.
When on Kefir, I hardly have any diarrhea, and my stools look closer to normal. They are not as “dispersable,” and contain noticeably less undigested food matter. The stool color is often normal, and so is the caliber, shape and solidity. What’s most important to me is that there is a reduction in undigested food in my stools. It’s good to know that when I eat almonds, which are very healthy, that most aren’t passing right through me.
When I stop drinking kefir, the symptoms of microscopic colitis return: in my case, diarrhea nearly daily, at times twice a day, and lots of undigested food in my stools. I go back on the probiotic drink, and these symptoms practically disappear.
The reason I’ve been on and off kefir is because, among a few other reasons, I wanted to prepare for a food sensitivity test, and wanted the microscopic colitis to be more in progress so that the stool sample could reflect it for the analysis. Thus, I went off it for a week. The first time I went off the kefir was because I thought the microscopic colitis has spontaneously resolved.
What I didn’t realize was that the kefir had subdued it. Not long after quitting the beverage, the symptoms returned. Within several days of resuming kefir, the symptoms again subsided. This cycle has happened several times now, and it can’t be coincidence.
In conclusion, start drinking kefir today as a natural treatment for microscopic colitis, which, I might add, cannot be diagnosed with certainty unless you’ve had a colonoscopy — and tissue samples from your large colon are taken for analysis via microscope.
