My symptoms include (1) gut pain, especially after eating,
Sounds like an inflammatory bowel disorder, such as ulcerative colitis, perhaps?
(2) bipolar, (3) OCD, and other things.
Not surprising. Research suggests they may very well be related to gut issues.
I've noticed in the past that when I go on a juice fast, my gut feels much happier and even more so my bipolar and OCD improve.
The dietary fiber and plant matter (non-starch polysaccharides, resistant dextrins, inulin, lignin, waxes, chitins, pectins, beta-glucans, and oligosaccharides) is likely fermenting in your colon and feeding your beneficial bacteria. This in turn is having a beneficial effect on your gut flora, which has been shown to stimulate the production of serotonin and other beneficial neurotransmitters.
Though, of course, some of that plant matter will be insoluble, which can have a negative impact on the gut lining. Soluble fiber and fermentable carbohydrates are better for supporting healthy gut flora without the negative impacts of insoluble fiber.
But a juice fast is hard on the body (even though I happier on it)--and it can induce rapid detox leading to muscle pain and other symptoms.
I just learned about something called an elemental diet which is another way to give the gut a rest. It's eating a liquid diet with all nutrients in pre-digested form.
There are other ways to give the gut a rest without resorting to an extreme synthetic/liquid diet. GAPS and SCD are more nourishing choices that tend to include bone broths, which are known to have a very therapeutic effect on the gut. These diets are excellent at restoring the gut. However, I wouldn't recommend GAPS or SCD for more than a few weeks or months.
Ideally, I would recommend a more balanced diet that aims to support a healthy gut flora and immune system. My favorite is the
Perfect Health Diet. The fermentable carbs (sweet potatoes, for instance)
feed the beneficial gut flora and
improve the muscosal integrity of the gut. The
results are very impressive.
Please pay note to the long list of positive experiences by those with mental issues:
Perfect Health Diet — Reader Results : Mental Health
and
Perfect Health Diet — Reader Results : Digestive Disorders
and
Perfect Health Diet — Reader Results : Fibromyalgia & CFS
We are talking about a wide range of health issues that this diet is helping with.
It's one way to starve bad bacteria in a SIBO (small intestine bacteria overgrowth) condition.
It's a bit of a myth that you can starve out bad bacteria over the long term. Most of these pathogens will form biofilms and hunker down while you attempt to starve yourself of food that nourishes your beneficial flora and your immune system.
Those diets that profess to "starve" out the bad bacteria also starve the good bacteria. The end result is a poorly functioning gut and a leaky gut, since the building blocks to support a robust and healthy gut flora are absent. In short, you will never
fully heal on those starvation diets.
I am not discounting the effectiveness of SCD or GAPS in terms of their ability to heal over the short term. Those diets
do work. But, most people should not be on those diets for long periods of time unless they are absolutely unable to tolerate anything else (which, in and of itself, may be proof that those diets do not offer full recoveries when adopted for the long term). A more balanced diet, such as the
Perfect Health Diet, is far more ideal for supporting overall health and gut integrity over the long term.
In general, the bulk of your
beneficial bacteria live on fermentable carbohydrates, such as
resistant starch (as well as those non-starch polysaccharides (NSP), resistant dextrins, inulin, lignin, waxes, chitins, pectins, beta-glucans, and oligosaccharides that were in your juices). If you don't feed your gut a well balanced diet with those fermentable substrates, your are starving the good
and the bad flora — and that isn't a long term solution. A better long term solution,
if possible, is to feed the beneficial bacteria and crowd out the bad bacteria.
I would highly recommend the
Perfect Health Diet, from personal experience. It fixes all sorts of health issues by eating a very well-balanced spread of macronutirents with high nutrient density. And the food tastes amazing.
If your gut is in terrible shape, I would read this four part series on Bowel Disorders by the author of the diet:
Bowel Disorders, Part I: About Gut Disease
Good luck!
(PS, if you do attempt to do the
Perfect Health Diet, I recommend you weigh your food and enter into a calorie tracker like
cronometer.com for the first few days to make sure you are eating the correct spread of macronutrients. Safe starches are very calorie sparse, so you have to eat a
lot of safe starches just to hit the right amount of carbs).