Book Review: Confident Choices: Customizing the Interstitial Cystitis Diet

Confident Choices: Customizing the Interstitial Cystitis Diet
By Julie Beyer, RD
NutraConsults ©2005 ISBN 0-9767246-0-X

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 (http://cystitis.allinfoabout.com) 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: Customizing the Interstitial Cystitis Diet 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).