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Ketogenic diet??
- Thread starter Crohnical
- Start date
Ketogenic diet is used to treat severe seizures where you eat minimal types amounts of food to get your body to produce ketones in your urine .
Ketones are not a good thing
Any extreme diet such as this needs to be closely monitored by your doctor so it does not do more harm than good
Ketones are not a good thing
Any extreme diet such as this needs to be closely monitored by your doctor so it does not do more harm than good
kiny
Well-known member
Eating nothing but lean meat is dangerous for your liver (too much excess nitrogen). If you actually did this, you would develop scurvy and eventually die from this diet (protein poisoning). Keto diets include fats.
Doesn't make much sense to call it that. By just eating meat you completely restrict yourself of ascorbic acid, which is able to mitigate intestinal inflammation. Low ascorbate levels are common in crohn's disease patients, and has been linked to intestinal inflammation in several diseases.
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I forgot to mention that this diet was for 30 days. Do you think that will harm?
I would not try a keto diet unless you have a doctor supervising or the doctor recommends a dietician who can supervise. I would also see if there is any solid research on specifically using it with Crohns. Did the book cite peer-review studies?
I understand the interest because it's being touted a solution to so many things. As MLP mentioned there is solid research on it being useful for seizure disorders. I haven't read anything about it being useful for Crohn's. The gut microbiome is so important I would think it makes more sense to do a more anti-inflammatory mediterranean diet with a large variety of vegetables and avoiding processed foods as much as possible. There is research to suggest food additives like emulsifiers and thickeners are problematic to the intestines.
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Keto is the dietary fad of the moment. Remember starch blockers? Or how about the Scarsdale Diet? Or the Beverly Hills Diet? Or the Blood Type Diet? The list of failed fad diets is endless.
Avoiding gluten as though it were cyanide was the dietary panacea of just a few years ago. Now it's fading fast. Avoiding gluten is still very important for patients who actually have celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, but gluten's turn as the magical answer to any and all dietary questions appears to be over - replaced at least partially by Keto.
These dietary fads are meant to sell books and sometimes special diet foods or supplements. There is seldom very much real science behind them.
Avoiding gluten as though it were cyanide was the dietary panacea of just a few years ago. Now it's fading fast. Avoiding gluten is still very important for patients who actually have celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, but gluten's turn as the magical answer to any and all dietary questions appears to be over - replaced at least partially by Keto.
These dietary fads are meant to sell books and sometimes special diet foods or supplements. There is seldom very much real science behind them.
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I have never heard of just meat and water for Crohn’s, as others have said, you’d get scurvy eventually. There is a chronic fatigue group I came across when researching low blood pressure problems which claim a paleo-ketogenic diet is generally helpful but they include a lot of fats and tons of supplements- which the doctor advocating also sells - which you could either view as helpful for chronic fatigue people or a conflict of interest- and the doc in charge has just been struck off for views about a recovery notorious health pandemic- but if you are still wanting to try them google dr myhill in the UK to see what you are supposed to eat alongside meat and what vitamins and minerals to take as well
I have found IBD-AID quite helpful if you want a general anti inflammatory diet with some (small) evidence base
SCD and CDED I think also have a bit of research (not a great deal) SCD probably the most popular also the hardest - although if you have been doing just meat and water I guess it will seem like a delicious feast in comparison
Good luck whatever you decide
I have found IBD-AID quite helpful if you want a general anti inflammatory diet with some (small) evidence base
SCD and CDED I think also have a bit of research (not a great deal) SCD probably the most popular also the hardest - although if you have been doing just meat and water I guess it will seem like a delicious feast in comparison
Good luck whatever you decide
I don't want to hijack the thread, but I did want to mention the whole gluten thing is actually complicated and it is worth people doing a literature review to make informed decisions. Some things worth searching are glyphosate (from Round-up) on wheat and other crops, difficulty of digesting our modern-day form of gluten, dysbiosis, etc. It is not just about whether you have Celiac or not or gluten intolerance or an allergy. Many diets recommended for autoimmune disorders remove gluten. (I did it for my Hashimoto's disease and it helped a lot. Even my endocrinologist went gluten-free for his autoimmune issues). Nobody should hop on the gluten-free -processed food-bandwagon and perhaps the popularity of gluten-free processed foods is fading fast, but I don't think gluten-free is fading fast.
There's a Harvard psychiatrist currently doing some important research with Keto who is a big proponent of it for inflammation, but I suspect the form of keto he is using is more nutritionally sound than just beef and water. I haven't seen any studies looking at keto with Crohn' (ETA-edited to add)....but I did just find this mention of a small study looking at keto and gut inflammation: https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/...crobiome-and-potentially-reduce-inflammation/.
Keep in mind it is not as easy to fund studies looking at foods and special diets as it is to fund a study looking at the efficacy of medications alone. Our food supply is problematic in so many ways from the processed foods to what we spray on the foods we grow and potentially how we alter them.
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Certain fibers can be beneficial to gi health and IBD. Soluble fiber can be used to create butyrate, a.k.a. butyric acid, by the good bacteria in the intestine, and this helps inflammation and inhibits pathogens.
Red meat can be high in heme iron, and neu5gc, which can promote inflammation, and its very low in omega 3 DHA which can lower inflammation but is high in some fish.
So depending on the precise definition of ketogenic diet which you are referring to, I recall it means high fat/protein and low carb which usually leads to a lower fiber diet in general.
The idea that keto diet is a heathier then a well balanced diet, isnt really supported by science. I do recall it is a short term option used for epilepsy though. But some fiber can be detrimental to ibd, as they can feed some bad microbes, so following an elimination diet is something I recommend to determine problematic foods.
Red meat can be high in heme iron, and neu5gc, which can promote inflammation, and its very low in omega 3 DHA which can lower inflammation but is high in some fish.
So depending on the precise definition of ketogenic diet which you are referring to, I recall it means high fat/protein and low carb which usually leads to a lower fiber diet in general.
The idea that keto diet is a heathier then a well balanced diet, isnt really supported by science. I do recall it is a short term option used for epilepsy though. But some fiber can be detrimental to ibd, as they can feed some bad microbes, so following an elimination diet is something I recommend to determine problematic foods.
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- Location
- Fort Lauderdale
I believe that other than less crappy foods (ultra processed, additives) no one really knows. That's why so many different opinions.
Well, my husband has been diagnosed with Crohn's 15 years ago and has been on every medication under the sun. Healthcare is free here in the UK, so he just took what he was given without thinking about it too much. Lately medication wasn't working anymore and we ran out of options. We heard about medical diets and switched to the keto diet. My husband is now in remission... We haven't even started the medical diet yet, we just started with keto to clean up our diet before starting the proper diet. If you're interested, the diet we're gonna start is called the GAPS diet. There's nothing dangerous about the keto diet, loads of people are on it across the globe, it's only extremely dangerous for pharmaceutical companies, because when you cut carbs and sugar from your diet, a lot of auto-immune diseases get healed, no need for drugs. I started the diet just to support my other half, and it healed my migraines and chronic fatigue... So please, don't take it lightly and think this is just a fad, but do some research into medical diets, like GAPS or the specific carbohydrate diet, cause that's what the doctors use to prescribe their patients before the big drugs companies came about.
I'm glad you have seen improvements.
I guess it also depends on what you or your husbands diet was like before you changed it to Keto. If your diet was not that great, then perhaps any other slightly more healthy diet could have helped your health improve. And this is the difficulty in believing laymen testimonial reports vs educated doctors and scientists, its nearly impossible to build a reliable knowledge base on such vagueness and little detail or specifics.
Ive used diet almost 100% for the last 15 years and little to no drugs for Crohn's. I still struggle with many related problems though, although I maintained 1 bowel movement per day on average the entire time. I use concepts from all different types of diets but mainly Specific carbohydrate diet, but also elimination diet to determine problematic foods. I also use supplements, herbs and fermented foods, and again, this is a general description with little specific details.
So I would generally advise against keto, because it's generalizing about carbohydrates, and fiber is classified as a carbohydrate and yet fiber has shown to be protective for almost every health problem you could think of. but sucrose and hi fructose corn syrup, which are also carbohydrates, yet they have the exact opposite effect on health problems, they will usually worsen your health. So over simplifying a diet as low carb, and saying it's healthy, is a dangerous thing to do.Probably better to describe a healthy diet as, low in refined sugars and high in healthy fats and proteins, and better yet, high in fiber.
To complicate matters even more, some fibers and fermentable substances in food can make symptoms worse for people with gi disorders, thats where the fod map diet comes it to apply this concept, so that is why I say my diet uses all these concepts, and thats just science, and of the world, and not an oversimplification or a fad diet. This is also why I try to use the concept of an elimination diet as well, with slow careful changes, and taking notes as much as I can.
Here is a case report from the U.S. National library of Medicine, of someone who followed an Atkins like diet that is low-carb that developed ulcerative colitis, suggesting the diet somehow led to the health problem, but keep in mind a case report isn't the highest level of certainty in scientific evidence, but considering other evidence that exists, it's reasonable to believe the low carb diet may have something to do with it and most likely the tendency for low-carb diets to be low in fiber.
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My adult son who has Crohns ( in remission on inflectra) has been on a medical ketogenic diet for 8 weeks for another condition. He counts and limits net carbs ( total carbs - fiber) and must eat a lot of fat. Meat is actually limited in his diet and he eats some veggies and berries. We find it expensive and time-consuming ( think planning meals, checking blood ketones, buying MCT oil, avocados, macadamia nuts, making keto bread). I do not think it would be possible for him to tolerate this diet if his Crohns were active because of the high fat, and nuts and restriction of foods w carbs that he finds easiest to eat if he is in a Crohns flare. Also, since my son is normal weight, it’s much harder to become and stay ketotic than for people who are overweight. He has had no improvement in his condition thus far. Everyone is different and perhaps this diet could be helpful for someone. It excludes certain foods because of their carb content so if those foods were the problem, the diet might work but not because of ketosis.
Just to clarify my previous post, we haven't read anywhere that the keto diet is good for Crohn's, but we effectively follow loosely a keto diet at the moment as we clean up our diets in preparation to starting the GAPS Diet or the Specicific Carbohydrate Diet (which we read are effective in curing Crohn's disease. There has been a lot of research on it, especially SCD). We stopped eating carbs, sugar and processed food, which to me now looks a lot like a keto diet as we mainly eat meat, veggies and dairy products (cheeses and yogurt). But we don't follow a strict keto diet at all, we don't check how much fat/protein we eat or anything like that. We have already seen an improvement, in that my husband is off medication (the side effects were horrendous we had to stop) and he's doing fine, whereas usually off medication he cannot function. And since we read a lot on GAPS and SCD, we know now which foods are best for his gut, so when he did have a minor flare up, my husband ate nothing but chicken soup (boiled chicken with carrots and onions and chicken stock) for a day and he got better that dah. Usually after a flare up he would eat mashed potatoes and be in bed for a few days. So it's been very helpful to educate ourselves in the best nutrition for him, as we had no idea which foods were inflammatory and which ones were soothing to the gut.
We don't find the diet to be difficult to follow at the moment, we eat as much as we want, but just foods that are good for our guts. It is a bit more expensive because junk food is so cheap, but overall it's okay. Better pay the farmer than the pharmacist as they say. We do have cravings, but it's decreasing.
So I'm not recommending a keto diet, but saying diets do help. If you haven't heard about it before, research the SCD and the GAPS diet. I wish we had heard about that years ago. I hope this is helpful to someone.
We don't find the diet to be difficult to follow at the moment, we eat as much as we want, but just foods that are good for our guts. It is a bit more expensive because junk food is so cheap, but overall it's okay. Better pay the farmer than the pharmacist as they say. We do have cravings, but it's decreasing.
So I'm not recommending a keto diet, but saying diets do help. If you haven't heard about it before, research the SCD and the GAPS diet. I wish we had heard about that years ago. I hope this is helpful to someone.
When you say your husband is doing fine
Is that good bloodwork/scans /scopes or just feels better ?
Feeling better is a great thing but without healing /improved bloods/pink healthy biopsy results many have been fooled by feeling better on the outside while havoc is running rampant inside .
Please make sure his Gi is closely monitoring those things.
Also understand there is no cure for Crohn’s disease
Is that good bloodwork/scans /scopes or just feels better ?
Feeling better is a great thing but without healing /improved bloods/pink healthy biopsy results many have been fooled by feeling better on the outside while havoc is running rampant inside .
Please make sure his Gi is closely monitoring those things.
Also understand there is no cure for Crohn’s disease