My Advice to You
My Advice
My advice to you is first and foremost, follow your doctor's advice. Do not stop taking any of your prescribed drugs without his knowledge and consent. I am not a doctor, I am not medically qualified and nothing on this site should be taken to be medical advice.
Dietary Advice
Having said all of the above, it would not hurt to try removing lactose from your diet, to see if it has any effect on extending the time that you are in remission, or indeed induces a remission. Pay special attention to your diet to ensure that you continue to get enough calcium, especially given that steroids used to treat Crohn's can cause osteoporosis. With Sam, I buy the Lactofree range of products as he is unimpressed with soya milk and soya based yoghurts.You do not need to be extreme about the products you exclude. For example, I have bought Sam plain chocolate which although does not have milk listed as an ingredient, is not guaranteed to be milk free as products containing milk are made on the same production line. I think the MAP bacteria needs more than a molecule of lactose to survive. We are not talking allergies here. However, milk chocolate is sadly no longer a food you should eat.
Sam also finds it helpful to avoid heavily spiced food, and he has swapped the wholemeal bread the family eats for white bread, which he finds makes his poo a better consistency.
Read the Labels
It is not always obvious which foods contain lactose. There is no alternative but to read the ingredients labels. I even found lactose in Tesco tomato source! Any of the following ingredients mean that lactose is contained in the product:- Butter, butter oil, butter milk
- Casein, caseinates
- Cheese
- Cow's milk
- Cream
- Curd
- Ghee (used in Indian cookery)
- Lactalbumin
- Lactoglobulin
- Lactose
- Spreads
- Milk solids
- Rennet
- Whey, whey powder, hydrolysed whey, whey syrup sweetener
- Yoghurt, fromage frais