Can I Eat Jello Before A Colonoscopy – . It’s true – no broken bones, no sprained ankles, nothing that has ever required me to see a doctor for anything other than preventative treatments and regular checkups. I was blessed.
The procedure itself was good and the doctor pronounced me totally healthy on the spot – he didn’t find any polyps or anything else to cause concern, so I’m in the clear for 10 years until I get to do it again.
Can I Eat Jello Before A Colonoscopy
The days leading up to the colonoscopy aren’t that great, of course. Even though I knew what to expect from watching my wife go through this process less than a year ago, I wasn’t looking forward to the prep phase. Nobody does.
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Since I have a lot of friends in their 40s who will be going through this in the near future, I want to share my experience of the five stages of colonoscopy preparation.
There is no avoiding it. As soon as someone older than 50 finds out you’ve had a colonoscopy, they’ll tell you about it…just like I’m doing now.
In the days and weeks leading up to it, the doctor’s office will make sure you know all the rules about not eating and when you have to take the (terrible) prep medication that clears out your system. You will look at what you are allowed to eat (almost nothing) for the whole day before the colonoscopy, when you have to take the prep medicine, when you have to stop drinking liquids and consuming anything… and it’s all terribly awful . You’ll tell yourself it’s going to be awful, and you’ll mostly be right.
The day before actually starts out fine. You’ll have your jello made and ready to eat, maybe you’ll have some popsicles too. And you’ll have clear liquids like apple juice or even Sprite – yes, that’s allowed. It turns out that Jello and Sprite are a better combo than you might expect, and if you consume enough of them, they can fill you up quite a bit for a while.
How To Have A Not Terrible Colonoscopy Prep
I got through breakfast and lunch on this menu, along with one popsicle for “snack” after lunch. It’s really not that bad. And then….
It hit me at about 1:30 pm. My stomach started growling loudly and when I went out to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door, I had only one thought:
I kept eating it, though, along with Sprite and apple juice. Then I went back to my desk and texted my entire family: “Can someone please get me a cheeseburger ASAP???”
Prep starts the night before your colonoscopy. There are apparently several different recipe prep kits you can get, but I was told to ask for suprep. It is apparently the least bad. When I had my first visit to the gastroenterologist about a month ago, I asked the physician’s assistant to prescribe suprep for me, and the immediate response I received was “good choice.”
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Unfortunately, that’s like saying you made a good choice by crashing your car into a shallow stream instead of hitting a tree.
Pleasant and what it does to you the rest of the night is terrible. It tastes like very, very salty cold medicine. Did I mention it tastes salty? And you must mix it with water and drink 16 oz of this concoction in an hour. (Suggestion: drink it all immediately and get over it. Don’t drag out the salty torture.) And then you also have to drink 32 ounces of plain water within an hour of finishing the suprep. You’ve pretty much got a one-way ticket to the bathroom no matter what.
Begins. For me, it took about 30 minutes for the Bowel Cleanout to start. Your timing may be different, but you will spend most of the night on the toilet and it is quite disgusting. And by the way, Stage 3 is over at this point – once the cleaning begins, you won’t starve. In fact, the idea of eating or drinking
One last note: You must take the same 16 oz. Suprep concoction the next morning, about four hours before your colonoscopy, and the fun begins all over again.
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This can happen during the night, or maybe (like me) the next morning – but at some point during all of this, your disgust will turn to amazement as you wonder…
If all goes well, you’ll be completely drained when the 4-hour window comes to an end. You will go to the hospital (or wherever you have the procedure) and you will not have the urge anymore. And hopefully, your colonoscopy will go as smoothly as mine.
I ended up losing three pounds over the course of two days – the prep day and the day of the procedure. It wasn’t even remotely fun, but I got through it…and you will too.
The most important thing: Do not put off your colonoscopy out of fear or any other reason. This is an important procedure and can save your life. Do it. You can eat green and yellow Jell-O before a colonoscopy, but stay away from red, orange and purple gelatins.
How You Can Make Colonoscopy Prep Easier
After you schedule a colonoscopy, your doctor will give you a list of instructions about what to eat and drink—and, perhaps more importantly, what
Following these instructions will help ensure that your large intestine is completely empty during the colonoscopy. If it isn’t, the doctor may not be able to clearly see and address potential colon abnormalities, which is the whole point of getting a colonoscopy in the first place.
Although doctors’ instructions may differ slightly from practice to practice, the list of foods and beverages to avoid before your colonoscopy will likely include red, purple, orange, and sometimes blue Jell-O or other gelatin brands, along with any fluids in the Hughes.
Eat yellow and green Jell-O, which means you can enjoy flavors like lemon, lime, pineapple and even pina colada. (But always check the ingredients label for red dye just to be sure.)
How To Prepare For A Colonoscopy
And while plain Jell-O isn’t actually offered by the Jell-O brand, you could make your own plain gelatin and add flavoring to it yourself—you’d just still want to make sure the flavoring you added didn’t include No. Red food dye in it.
The only reason for avoiding certain colored Jell-O (along with other similarly colored foods and drinks) before a colonoscopy is that the red food dye looks like blood in the colonoscopy camera view. It has nothing to do with the chemicals used to make certain food coloring.
“The hypothesis is that [red dye] can make it look like you’re bleeding, or stain the lining of the colon to make it harder to see some of the butterfly polyps,” says John H. Ashcraft, DO, chief of colon and rectal surgery at the University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City.
In fact, even relatively sophisticated technology still has a hard time distinguishing red food dye from blood, according to an October 2010 article published in the journal
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Worst-case scenario, the red food coloring could cause your doctor to miss or misinterpret something during the colonoscopy. Best case? Well, you’d have to go through the colonoscopy process all over again.
The official colonoscopy prep recommendations of the US Your colonoscopy doctor will provide more detailed guidelines.
You will also need to avoid eating any solid foods, including soup with bits of dried food or spice. And when it comes to liquids, you’ll need to stay away from alcoholic beverages and juices with pulp or nectars. It is always best to check the ingredient panel on food packaging beforehand to confirm that a given product does not contain red food dye.
) of clear liquids. You’ll want to drink more than just water and coffee or tea, because you’ll need a source of calories (read: energy) for the day of the colonoscopy. At the same time, you’ll lose a lot of fluid (thanks to the strong laxatives you’ll be taking), and you don’t want to get dehydrated.
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If you have diabetes, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center advises consuming only sugar-free liquids, ice cream or Jell-O.
Keep in mind that these are just general guidelines; The specific instructions you receive may vary slightly. Finally, if you’re not sure what’s good to eat as part of your clear liquid diet before your colonoscopy, check with your doctor’s office. “The final word is to follow the recommendations of the doctor who gave you the [colonoscopy] instructions,” Dr. Ashcraft says.
Is this an emergency? If you have serious medical symptoms, please see the National Library of Medicine’s list of signs you need emergency medical attention or call 911. A gastroenterologist, my first concern was that I would need a colonoscopy. Sure enough, the GI said she couldn’t tell me what was wrong until she took it
