Yes its possible, read up on the Dr McDougall program he promotes a vegan diet, some of the people on that board have crohns/colitis and found good success with his diet. Its basically low fat, high carb vegan diet.
Hi, glad you mention this.
Dr. Mc dougal, and Dr.Fuhrman both recommend a Vegan diet. They both based their diets on "The China Study", recently they made a movie: Forkes Over Knives, another movie " Fat Sick and Nearly dead illustrates how Joe gets rid of his Chronic Autoimmune symptoms following Dr.Fuhrman's protocol.
I hated most meat(I only like ribs and heavily seasoned meats). The problem was I had so much abdominal pain, constipation, hemorrhoids, gas and bloating.
Once I started eating according to Dr.Fuhrmans protocol, I have been doing so much better.
Dr.Mcdougal, bases his diet on Starches, He wrote the Starch Solution, Dr.Fuhrman basis his diet on Nutrition. He encourages people to eat high nutrient foods like Kale. He explains all this in his book" Eat to Live".
It is really easy to do, because it is soooo worth it.
Good Luck
It just seems to me that it's a diet tailored to be good for you, ignoring the intricacies of IBD. It's like... Eat brocolli all day every day, because it's good for you. And of course, because it's good for you, it MUST help your immune system. So it MUST help IBD patients..
is this why the vegetatian diets of these people will work for a while?
DEAN ORNISH , MD: Limits sugar, corn syrup, white flour, margarine, vegetable oil, alcohol and any processed food with more than two grams of fat. Program involves smoking cessation, peer support, stress management and exercise.
CALDWELL ESSELSTYN, MD: Forbids vegetable oils, refined grains, white flour, and products made from enriched flour such as bread, pasta, bagels and baked goods. Uses statins to bring patients' cholesterol levels below 150.
JOHN MCDOUGALL , MD: Limits white flour, refined grains, sugar-coated cereals, soft drinks, processed carbohydrates, fruit juice and vegetable oils.
NEAL BARNA RD, MD: Forbids vegetable oils, high-glycemic foods, high fructose corn syrup, caloric sweeteners and fried starches like potato chips and french fries.
JOEL FUHRMAN , MD: Excludes refined foods, including vegetable oils.
Getting rid of empty and refined foods, especially vegetable oils—the common denominator in all these plant-based prescriptions—will make for improvements in almost everyone. But long term, without nutrient-dense animal foods, deficiencies will emerge.
source
http://www.westonaprice.org/vegetarianism-and-plant-foods/the-china-study-myth
-I am not sure what the danger is in trying something even if it helps for a while, where I know that there are thousands of people whom have been helped. Dr.F has helped many ppl with IBD.
-I do not see why I should be eating a lot of meat when I see so many ppl around me getting sicker by the day.
P.S: Having the right bacterium balance in the gut is crucial. So taking a powerful Probiotic is essential.
If you go on a vegetarian diet you're going to either need to supplement or use soy. It's the only way to get your protein and B12 without resorting to meat or dairy. A veggy diet is very lacking in protein.
I know everyone tolerates foods differently, but for me, I started working with a health coach a little over a year ago, began eliminating sugar, gluten (to see if that helped at all), dairy, and yes, meat also....I do however eat good quality fish and alaskan salmon and some tuna fish occasionally..I sprinkle hemp seeds on my salads for protein, eat quinoa (works okay for me) for a perfect protein and drink almond milk smoothies with frozen bananas, sugar free peanut butter and a little cocoa...I eat larrabars for mid morning snacks at work, millet bread toasted with earth balance butter...I'm tolerating most of this okay....I still have a few things I can't part with though, but overall I feel better with this lifestyle.
Problem with vegans mindset and arguments I think is that most think it must be healthy cause it's plants or something, or do it for ideological reasons.
Part of reason we are at the top of the food chain is meat, our body is built to digest meat, we have a very short GI tract, reason is we are meat eaters. We have the biggest brain of any animal, part of the reason, meat again. Vegetarian diets are low in protein, low in energy because of low calorie intake. You can live pretty healthy on low carb diets, you can not live healthy on low protein intake. Function of carbs = 1, energy. Function of amino-acids from protein = thousands. Meat has creatine, micronutrients you can never find in plants.
Vegetarian diets miss many essential amino-acids, you can not get them anywhere as complete as from your meat, one protein is not another protein, meat provides complete proteins, a vegetarian diet does not.
Maybe you don't want to eat cow meat or some other meat, but no meat at all, you will never ever get the amino-acids you need, no matter what supplements you use, meat is the best and most complete way to get your protein.
Then people say to avoid soy too, because it's not "natural", which is fine if you eat meat, but as a vegan? I want to know, how are you going to get all your amino-acids if you don't eat any protein at all. Going to live on green tea and salads?
Every time they test people who are vegans, they see they are too low on vitamin D, too low on amino-acids. People with crohn are already often nutrient deficient, vegan diet on top of that has the potential to make it much worse than it already is, I do not understand the arguments behind wanting to be a vegan if you have crohn.
Ideological reasons I don't understand either, I hear them all the time from vegetarians. We, humans, are on the top of the food chain, not any other animal, if we were vegans we would have never gotten on the top of the food chain, reason we are there is because we know how to kill other animals. Monkeys that we descent from are big meat eaters, vegetarian is not natural, it is unnatural.
It is a myth that vegetarian diets miss essential amino-acids. Plant proteins are complete. Have you ever looked into it? How much protein do you think we need?
really?
It took me 2 seconds to find these studies in my bookmarks and it will take me 10 minutes to find 10 more.
I can also show you studies where there are serious vitamin and other micronutrient deficincies amongst vegetarians.
And these are healthy people where uptake is optimal, which is often not the case for someone with crohn, these deficiencies will only be that much worse for someone with crohn.
As far as IBD is concerned, we all know that some things work for us, others don't. If meat was that nutritionally complete and healing, wouldn't it make a significant difference for each of us?
Unatural.....i don't think so, this is how i've evolved!
we evolved into vegetarians? last I checked I thought we were omnivores
How "natural" is your vegetarian diet exactly if you need to start supplementing to even get adequate levels of vitamin D, B12, calcium, amino-acids, calories in general, and all the other deficiencies they find in vegans.
The reason people feel pumped after eating meat is not because it's in their head, it's because they get adequate amino-acids, B complex and creatine, and they manage to stay much longer in an anabolic state than vegans.
High calorie intake helps for crohn btw.
Who says it doesn't, the small intestine uses glutamine (an amino-acid) extensively to repair itself, and meat is the best way to receive adequate glutamine, plants are much lower in glutamine, and their bioavailability is much lower.
There are so many people with Crohn's who eat meat and take supplemental glutamine.
glutamine in free form is very unstable, even though I use glutamine supplement, it becomes unstable very fast in any solution (also in EN) and at room temperature, glutamine is meat is not unstable because it's not in free form
there is so much wrong with vegan diets when people think they can just supplement everything left and right an all will fall magically into place, no it won't, most vegans are amino deficient, and no amount of supplementing can replace complete proteins found in meat
Well informed vegans are very healthy individuals.
No problem with vegans, but I don't understand crohn vegans.
here are amino acids and how they work to mitigate crohn:
Glutamine (accelerates healing of the small intestine http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2378557)
Isoleucine (enhances human beta defensin http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?t=40557)
Gluthatione (protects intestine from oxidative stress http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?t=40455)
Arginine (promotes healing of ulcers http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9246059)
you can not get all those easily from plants, even if you start looking at plants that are high protein, there are specific amino-acids that aren't available to vegetarians, and the bioavailability of the plant diet is extremely low which means you would need to eat a truck full of them to even get them digested
for all the natural claims vegetarians make about their diet, even though there is nothing natural about being a herbivore when we are an omnivore, it is extremely unhealthy, the vegan diets in the study below are almost 10% higher in carbs than people who eat meat, which is higher in protein
study of 38000 people
vegetarian diets are high in carbs (fructose from all the fruit I can only guess) low in protein, and low in calorie intake in general, if you wanted to increase calorie intake to get at the same level of meat eaters your amount of carb intake would have to increase
some people think they can eat low carbs and do vegetarian, no, you have 3 things to get your calories from, either you get them from carbs, from fat or from protein, a low carb vegetarian diet that has enough calories for someone with crohn is impossible, since you can never get the protein and nutrients from plants or fruit without the carbs
you can supplement with protein powders, but you're going to be low on enzymes to digest them if you get massive amounts of protein from powders, and most protein powder found in shops is either casein cause it's cheap as hell (all those medical brands use casein, just cause they're cheap), or from whey, which is very expensive if you want no lactose and no milk fat (most companies are not truthful about it), you can get it from albumin, but you need a lot of enzymes to digest it, much easier would be meat and powder
(all those amino-acid supplements are all from casein or leftover whey, again for price reason, casein is super cheap for companies, it's exactly the same as buying cheap protein powder, and you usually get free disgusting lactose on top of it, it usually has 1 or 2% carbs, that's the lactose)
and if you're going to supplement protein, why the hell not just eat some meat so you actually learn how to break it down
no, we don't, we have been told it many times but that doesn't make it true, for example.....Don't we all know how well cancer, osteoporis, cardiovascular dieases,etc...and animal products are related?
when i talk about rebuttals i'm not talking about some dipshit that presses the 'like' button,
i'm talking people who looked at the data and asked if the evidence said what was claimed by the author.
"Like Neo in the movie the Matrix, you have a choice, take the blue pill and believe what you want to believe, take the red pill and you will be exposed to the reality of the world we live in. The China Study is the red pill."
give me a break
no, we don't, we have been told it many times but that doesn't make it true, for example.....
Systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials of the effects of low carbohydrate diets on cardiovascular risk factors
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2012.01021.x/abstract
and to summarise the summary
"LCD (low carb diet) was shown to have favourable effects on body weight and major cardiovascular risk factors"
Phosphate decreases urine calcium and increases calcium balance: a meta-analysis of the osteoporosis acid-ash diet hypothesis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19754972
"Dietary advice that dairy products, meats, and grains are detrimental to bone health due to "acidic" phosphate content needs reassessment. There is no evidence that higher phosphate intakes are detrimental to bone health."
Is there a role for carbohydrate restriction in the treatment and prevention of cancer?
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/pdf/1743-7075-8-75.pdf
"Over the last years, evidence has accumulated suggesting that by systematically reducing the amount of dietary carbohydrates (CHOs) one could suppress, or at least delay, the emergence of cancer, and that proliferation of already existing tumor cells could be slowed down"
and lastly, if you want to know how they come up with the epidemiological studies and headlines
Meat and Colon Cancer with Robb Wolf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy0NHVZ3OF4
If anyone is really interested in how they come up with headlines like this....
"Atkins Diet: Low-Carb Diet Linked To Heart Disease And Stroke Risk"
derived from studies likes this
"Low carbohydrate-high protein diet and incidence of cardiovascular diseases in Swedish women: prospective cohort study"
http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e4026
then read this
"Are Low-Carb Diets Killing Sweden?"
http://rawfoodsos.com/2012/07/01/bad-science-strikes-again/
it's long,but it's good
To answer an earlier question
"Just trying to figure out why some people dislike vegetarianism/veganism so much."
Because of the few smug misinformed vegan/vegetarians that repeat all the lies and misinformation about meat eaters.
I don't want to come across as anti vegetarian, heck - i was one for 10 years.
I'm sure it is possible to be a vegetarian (to go back to the thread title), but it doesn't automatically confer health. A vegetarian who avoids inflammatory foods will probably do better,
I just feel the need to respond to Zarr and then i'll shut up
"Meat eater" covers a huge range of people from "raw-vegans who eat meat" to low-fat to high-fat to vegiphobics, some eat CAFO, some organic, and more besides.
It's like saying that someone who eats a diet of processed vegetarian mush from the supermarket is the same as an organic raw food vegan
" however the effects on long-term health are unknown."
this adds nothing to either sides argument, it is merely there to cover the authors ass if anything should turn up in the future.
There is an enormous amount of information about hunter-gatherer societies and what happens to their health after the introduction of neolithic foods.
"When it comes to Crohn's and the SCD or anything similar to that, the intro-diet brings relief to many people but you can't stay on the intro-diet all your life"
What part of 'intro-diet' don't you understand?
You move from 'intro' to the regular diet that can be sustained indefinitely.
I like the way you will use a purely epidemiological study that you agree with as evidence and misrepresent a review of data by selecting words at random.
"Ketosis, really? A diet meant to control extreme cases of epilepsy and which is otherwise contraindicated. ".
A healthy person moves into partial ketosis every night, it is perfectly normal and perfectly healthy.
Ketogenic diets have proven effective for all sorts of conditions, but need to be carefully planned because if not understood and implemented, can lead to malnutrition (like some vegetarian/vegan diets)
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2011/02/ketogenic-diets-i-ways-to-make-a-diet-ketogenic/
Our bodies are evolved to be that way, we burn fat for energy and the small amount of glucose needed for brain function is drawn from protien. This has been going on for millions of years.
We can live indefinitely without carbohydrates but not without fat.
"The internet is full of information on ketosis and it's ill effects."
the internet is full of porn too, it doesn't prove anything
Long-term effects of a ketogenic diet in obese patients
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2716748/
CONCLUSIONS:
The present study shows the beneficial effects of a long-term ketogenic diet. It significantly reduced the body weight and body mass index of the patients. Furthermore, it decreased the level of triglycerides, LDL cholesterol and blood glucose, and increased the level of HDL cholesterol. Administering a ketogenic diet for a relatively longer period of time did not produce any significant side effects in the patients. Therefore, the present study confirms that it is safe to use a ketogenic diet for a longer period of time than previously demonstrated.
"The china study is worth a read! I haven't gone vegan since I read the book but I must acknowledge that it does make some good points!"
The book is toilet paper, drawing almost nothing except cherry-picked invalid correlations from the original "Diet, Life-style and Mortality in China' epidemiological study, and using the title 'China Study' to deceive you into thinking that it is based upon said study.
When the data in the original study is analysed it shows far greater correlations between wheat and cancer than meat.
"Why does Campbell indict animal foods in cardiovascular disease (correlation of +1 for animal protein and -11 for fish protein), yet fail to mention that wheat flour has a correlation of +67 with heart attacks and coronary heart disease, and plant protein correlates at +25 with these conditions?" - denise minger, rawfoodsos
Much of cambell's book is base on the effect of an isolated milk protein in rats, and drew the conclusion that all animal proteins would have the same effect (even though his own experiments showed fish protein to have a protective effect).
"And Campbell and his team conclude:
"[A] 20% menhaden oil diet, rich in omega 3 fatty acids, produced a significant decrease in the development of both the size and number of preneoplastic lesions when compared to a 20% corn oil diet rich in omega 6 fatty acids. This study provides evidence that fish oils, rich in omega 3 fatty acids, may have potential as inhibitory agents in cancer development."
Remember how Campbell said, summarizing this research, that “nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decreased tumor development”? Last I checked, fish oil ain’t no plant food."
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/
so, to sum up my rant, go veg if you want, but avoid wheat and sugar, vegetable oil and processed food
I am very familiar with all the vegetarian arguments, and they can be convincing untill you look a bit deeper, but we are always convinced by what we want to believe (you and me).
This study says that x, so it supports my opinion
This study shows that x, so we can draw conclusion y, which may or may not be contrary to my unscientific opinion z
"While I think it's great that you're all contributing to answers: you're doing it like idiots."
ouch, told off for expressing opinions on an online forum,
"This isn't philosophy, we do not pose arguments. We give evidence, and make suggestions related to the evidence."
Right, showing studies (give evidence) that support an hypothesis (make suggestions) is philosophy..
whatever
"There are these things called statistics, and we use them to draw conclusions about things."
Like Ancel Keys in "Atherosclerosis: a problem in newer public health" study that started off the unscientific anti-fat paranoia?
Turns out he had 22 countries to pick from but these 6 gave him the results that he wanted.
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.co.nz/2009/02/cholesterol-presentation-between.html
(By the way, i often use 3 or 4 pages of google results to find the ones i want)
Hmmmmmm, i'm starting to understand science of which you speak,
"This study shows that x, so we can draw conclusion y, which may or may not be contrary to my unscientific opinion z"
If we have two studies that attempt to draw opposing conclusions (not our conclusions, those of the authors) may we have your permission to discuss them?
"you're really just showing that you have no idea how statistics and science work"
i understand how science works, and it's quite different from how science should work, but once you leave high school you might learn about the real world
Anyone can google and it just shows when you pull "facts" from the first page of google that you really don't know anything. I think RFarmer was looking for first hand knowledge and experience as to whether or not it can be done. I believe Dustykat's daughter is on a strict vegan diet and I also believe (from what I've heard) she's doing quite well on it.
"Thank you for copying a bit more out of your schoolbooks, it sure adds a lot to the conversation."
Why is it that everytime comes up with info somebody doesn't like, they say to "pull more stuff out of their textbook"? So wait, you're saying that I'm going to school and paying a shit ton of money not only on tuition, but also buying multiple overpriced textbooks to learn from scientific research and studied facts when I could just listen to the guys on the street? Wow, I could save a lot of money!
I know this thread doesn't particularly say that I pulled stuff from a textbook but I had the same thing when a few angry people in the addiction thread didnlt like that I could fill them in with legitimate info that took time to study and then published instead of their "homie on the street told me this when I bought heroin off of him".
If he got his info from a textbook, its there for a reason! Those aren't opinions, they're facts!
Vegetarian diets miss many essential amino-acids, you can not get them anywhere as complete as from your meat, one protein is not another protein, meat provides complete proteins, a vegetarian diet does not.
Oh no nothing like that, I actually do not like broccoli.
The reason Dr.F recommends high nutrient food does a lot more to our body then lose weight. For people who need to lose weight there is a different protocol.
I read his book: Eat to Live, saw him on PBS, then I joined his website. There is a similar member support website like this one, there are Newsletters about IBD, Arthritis, Diabetes etc... There is a small fee for that. If you pay more then you get to Ask the Doctor, so people prescribe for a short time to that, get all there questions answered and then go back to the lower fee membership.
People have joined from all over the world. He is not going to tell you eat broccoli and I promise you the moon. There are recipes on the website, and there is a whole community helping out with support for creating healthy delicious meals.
I am doing so much better that I feel like I got my life back, I am pretty much in remission, I take no medications for Crohn's, and have not for one year. I can't say that I was the whole year symptom free, I had one bad flare due to a long water fast that I should not have done, but I consulted with Dr.F and all I took was high doses of fish oils and VSL#3. In the past I was on many meds, I had terrible side effects.:ybatty:
I ate according to his Crohn's Protocol, just as Hugh wrote. He does go more into depth about how to prepare your food depending on the fact whether you have blood in your stool and or how many times you go to theoo:
You can always read his book, email him and decide then.
I wish you all the best.
What is VSL #3?
Well, thanks for all your input guys, but it's left me at another question...
what the hell am I supposed to eat?
No sugar, ok. No oil, ok. Less meat? Well, I wanted to be veg anyways. No grains? Wut?
That leaves:
veggies
fruit
Of which most are known to not be good for us.
I'm just gonna start eating dirt.
Well, thanks for all your input guys, but it's left me at another question...
what the hell am I supposed to eat?
No sugar, ok. No oil, ok. Less meat? Well, I wanted to be veg anyways. No grains? Wut?
That leaves:
veggies
fruit
Of which most are known to not be good for us.
I'm just gonna start eating dirt.
Can I do it? I know there's tons of people who're gonna say "yeah probably, just eat lots of lentils"...
I actually want to plan out a diet.
I need protein, because I need to get in shape.
But I can't force myself to eat meat anymore.
wat do
Yes its possible, read up on the Dr McDougall program he promotes a vegan diet, some of the people on that board have crohns/colitis and found good success with his diet. Its basically low fat, high carb vegan diet.