Same old problem too many words and no-one will read it, too few and it is too ambiguous,
Loving the way diet brings out the passion in people, totally bewildered by the hostility,
There is ample 'evidence' of the help that diet provides on this forum alone.
If a 'cure' is the only reason that you would consider diet then forget it.
If symptom reduction and management along with better health and wellbeing is of interest then give it a go.
Structured approaches like GAPS/SCP are a good starting point as they have introduction phases that are designed to suit people with intestinal difficulty, It can be personalised as your 'inner awareness develops. Others diets like pegan, Paleo AI, perfect health etc are worth looking into but keep in mind you can't just start eating cabbage or nuts and expect everything to 'flow smoothly'
my point about the multitude of crohns related diets are the difficulty of Mr average sticking to them,the likely expense and availability of ingredients and the lack of proof they make any difference
All the Crohn's diets that i'm aware of tend to centre on the role of carbs and there is some evidence from small studies, and a huge body of anecdotal evidence, to support them.
And other diets revolving around 'clean eating' but including certain carbs (but never wheat) also show lengthened remission and improved quality of life
One main observation is that by removing all carbs you remove grains and in particular gluten containing grains. I find the work coming out regarding the role of gluten (and similar compounds in other grains) in immune dysfunction fascinating and I hope it leads somewhere.
Another is that by starving the bacteria that feed on carbs there is the possibility of other species that are more helpful gaining a stronger position.
There is plenty more showing that different people have trouble digesting different sugars and different bacteria will ferment the undigested cards in different ways in different individuals (fodmaps helps many with this).
There is astrong and growing body of evidence supporting fecal transplants but , as they don't really know what they are doing, it is still pretty hit and miss. Nevertheless it (and other research) supports the concept that gut bacteria play a major role in this and probably most immune dysfunction and chronic diseases.
I have no interest in diets that involve expensive ingredients although I did what most people do when they start paleo/SCD. I replaced grains with nut flours and 'legal' imitations of the foods I was familiar with.
This is completely unnecessary but quite understandable, It takes a while to adjust a template for our own situation.
I no longer really think in terms of this or that disease too much, An analogy, overly simplistic as it is....You give 1000 unfit people some shoes and get them to run around, some will get fitter, some will get blisters (these will be in different places, but there will be similar groupings) some of them will dehydrate, some of them will pull muscles, some will damage joints, some might have heart attacks.
Why should food affect us all the same way?
I,ve found that my dr clinic nurse recommend as varied a diet as possible is best and that seems good advice.
I would totally agree, but with one huge caveat. If a food is harming you don't eat it.
One of the main ways to check this is an elimination diet (and it is not foolproof and harmful effects can take weeks or months to manifest).
All the 'healing diets that I spruik (SCD, Paleo, Fodmaps, Gaps, PHD) recommend some form of elimination/staged reintroduction along with (except for FODMAPS) avoidance of 'toxic' foods.
Interestingly, what we consider a 'varied diet' in the west tends to be huge amounts of the same four ingredients reconstituted with a variety of chemical flavourings packaged in bright wrappers.
I loved this photo shoot of food
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~cbabroad...ood for a Week Around the World in Photos.pdf
I think I prefer Ecuador (and i'd eat the potatoes). All the western ones are wheat, sugar, corn and soy with flavour and chemicals.
salads,fruit and veggies used to be a serious test for me and now are fine so how does that work?doesn,t the tedium of sticking to one eating regime drive you nuts?the drugs work eventually,hopefully and I,m well aware that lots of people they don,t help much,fingers crossed for a big breakthrough.
There is a big difference between foods causing harmful bacterial overgrowth and cascades of immune dysfunction, and foods that cause pain and discomfort as they travel through an ulcerated colon, or foods that cause bloating and gas as they are devoured by an overgrowth of bacteria.
- We focus all our efforts on the latter because that is the pain we feel.
Tedium, no. I eat lamb and potatoes and veg (I should eat Veg with a little lamb and potatoes according to Dr Hyman) almost every night. After 4 years I still love it. Favourite is kofta – lamb mince (what you guys call hamburger? - but without all the fillers and grain) mixed with grated carrot and onion and parsley – so its half veg to begin with.
I make vegetable juice and then dehydrate the pulp with chia seeds to make crackers and eat them with avocado.
I'm adding pulses and legumes back in slowly (bean sprouts mainly)
I get plenty of variety,
My 'regime' is far more varied than most peoples even though 99% of the meat I eat is lamb
I long ago stopped thinking that technology would cure the problems caused by technology, all it does is mask it until a bigger problem develops
I don,t accept any responsibility for getting crohns it's a disease like many others which have no easily diagnosed reason for catching it.i got diagnosed after a highly stressed winter at work(100 hour weeks)in which I got badly burned and then managed to catch shingles which is viral and not bacterial.
I don't blame myself either, After a lifetime of undiagnosed digestive and immune issues it was stress that pushed me into diagnosable illness.
Diet IS ONLY A PART OF IT, but it is a big part and probably the easiest to take control of (no, really, I mean that)
The favourite fall the diet one doesn,t really apply don,t eat a lot of processed food pretty much everything made from scratch chicken,fish lots of veggies a lot of which were home grown.i think your doing yourself a dis-service blaming lifestyle.
I used to be an organic vegetarian, then organic semi-veg(low meat). but I thought grains were healthy. My arthritis has gone since I stopped eating wheat.
Crohn's is widely accepted that it is a multi-factorial disease, but all agree that environment (lifestyle) is one of those factors. The other main factor is genetics and the effect of environment on genetic expression is well documented. Personally, I think you do yourself a disservice by denying lifestyle (and I mean that in a polite supportive and conciliatory sort of way)
P.s leaky gut is unproven
Leaky gut (Intestinal permeability)is proven, leaky gut syndrome is still under debate.
The debate is now -Leaky gut exists, but is it bad for you?
India, the world's second most populous country, with a population of over 1.2 billion has around 500 million vegetarians. They seem to have a low rate of Crohn's even thought they eat carbs.
Doesn't matter how any debate progresses, people cling to the little 'factoids' that suit there arguments.
Firstly rates of Crohn's in india are going up sharply, totally invalidating the 'genetic argument'.
Reducing carbs is a big part of the technique to bring gut bacteria back to normal in diets like SCD/GAPS. Doesn't mean the carbs are the cause, just that they perpetuate the problem.
To stretch that analogy abit further (possibly to breaking point). Once one of those runners has a blister or a sprain the first thing to do is to get them to stop. Some might need a dressing or padding, some might need training, some might need surgery, whatever. The first thing is to stop running until you work out how to do it without causing damage.
All these diets are an intervention that aims to short circuit a cascade.
Abnormal gut flora is a documented phenomena associated with IBD, changing gut flora will change the disease.
All this hostility that it is "not a cure so don't bother", take the meds instead....Well they are not a cure either and can have many adverse effects.
