Radical methods, ulcerative colitis and me
When you go looking for "natural" solutions to IBD — ulcerative colitis or Crohn's — you quickly land on the radical: long fasts, ice baths, extreme protocols. I tried all of it. And I learned something a little humbling: radical helped me less than boring did.
Why the radical is so tempting
An extreme method ticks three boxes at once. It's fast: you feel like you're acting hard, right now. It gives a sense of control: it's you choosing to suffer a bit. And it makes a good story to tell.
The problem is that none of those three things have anything to do with effectiveness. I pushed fasts well past reasonable, chained intense ice baths, tried to "optimize" even my breathing. Same pattern every time: a spike of motivation, then my body pushing back, then giving up.
I was 12 years old the first time someone told me this. A small table-tennis tournament: instead of playing it calm, I wanted to win every point with a flashy shot. Crushing defeat. My brother: "stop attacking all the time, play it soft." I didn't want to be consistent. I wanted to be brilliant.
How I catch myself forcing it today
The most reliable sign: when I start measuring. Timing, comparing, chasing a record. The day a practice meant to calm me turns into a competition with my own body is the day I've gone off track. That's when I scale back, or stop for a while, and start again "like day one": no goal, no stopwatch, no judgment.
Because you can do a good thing the wrong way. That sentence applies to fasting, to cold exposure, to exercise, and to pretty much everything else.
What actually works, and it's disappointingly ordinary
A moderate, regular fast rather than multi-day fasts. A short cold shower, often, rather than a heroic ice bath. Gentle but consistent exercise. Nothing spectacular, nothing worth bragging about. Just small things repeated every day — and that's exactly what gave me a stability the extreme experiments never did.
Looking back…
Balance and consistency beat excess, every time. Progressing in small steps is less glorious, but it holds over time — and with a chronic illness, what holds over time is the only thing that matters.
Important: this is my personal experience, not medical advice. Extended fasting, cold exposure and dietary changes carry real contraindications, especially with IBD. Get a professional opinion before turning any of this into a routine.
The full detail of these experiments — what helped, what went wrong — is on my journey page and in the book UC: Living Without Medication.