Customer Reviews

Confident Choices: Customizing the Interstitial Cystitis Diet

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As I've said before in my reviews to educate the passive reader, Interstitial cystitis is a chronic and debilitating disease of the urinary tract and bladder that affects approximately one million people. It may not be just one singular illness but one incorporating many different illnesses. There is an inflamed and irritated bladder wall that leads to many bladder symptoms. The bladder wall of an IC patient will have stiffening and scarring of the bladder, less bladder capacity as a result of the scarring, small pinpoint bleeding on the bladder (glomerulations) and ulcers in the bladder lining (Hunner's ulcers). 5-10% of IC sufferers will have Hunner's ulcers, the rest have a non-Hunner's type. So much isn't known about the illness, even though it has been around for a while now.

Most IC patients are put on a battery of medications and self help strategies. The #1 key factor in symptom management always seems to be diet. It is the main focus of books, and the diet pages on All Info About Interstitial Cystitis [...] get the most page views and emails. Everyone with IC seems to want to know more about how diet affects them and how they can get the diet to customize to them. Confident Choices seems to answer that call. I was impressed at the ease of the language, talking to the lay person in simple terms and attitude. The recipes recreated in the book were both simple to make and delicious upon fixing them to sample. I found that they did indeed work for me and did not cause me to "flare" (becoming symptomatic).

Julie Beyer is a registered dietitian and health educator that became diligent about the IC diet when she was diagnosed with the disease. Throughout her exchanges with other ICer's, she became acutely aware of what is important to the average IC patient and focused on how to customize the standard elimination diet that so many of IC patients need. At 15 chapters, this book is filled with not only recipes and explanation of the diet, but with worksheets and questions for the patient as well. With it in a convenient spiralbound binding, you can theoretically undo the book and copy the worksheet pages over and over again to use with your doctor or specialist. It is a very helpful book that I found to be an enjoyable read while learning more about the diet than I knew prior to opening the pages.

I look forward to the new printings of this book and any future offerings from this author. You can find more about her at her website.

After having been recently diagnosed with IC, my doctor highly recommended going on the IC diet. I looked up what was available online and came up with this book. I purchased it and was very pleased when I got it. The book explains trigger foods that are most common for flare-ups and how to try adding possible alright foods slowly back into the diet. There is research and explanations explaining the latest research on the illness. Recipes. Addresses and online pages to go to for more information. It's a must have for the newly diagnosed IC patient.