naturopathic view --- why thyroid malfunction? gut dysbiosis and/or blood sugar problems. let's work with the body to correct those root causes. side BENEFITS are numerous
In general, I’m in favor of considering new or unconventional treatments for Crohn’s or “emerging science” as you call it. After all, the effective therapies we have now for Crohn’s and other diseases all got their start as new or unproven treatments at one time or another. However, I favor them for further study and eventually for controlled clinical trials to prove whether they actually work and to characterize the side effects and other risks associated with them. It is risky to promote “emerging science” for immediate, wide-spread, and uncontrolled use, especially for serious diseases that often produce serious and often permanent disability.
I also acknowledge your passion and eagerness to help others find solutions to their medical conditions as you did for yours. I applaud your admirable energy and willingness to help. But having said that, I see several red flags in your approach.
Red Flags:
Universal Panacea – it’s a rare and valuable drug or therapy that can successfully treat more than one medical condition. And it’s even rarer to find one like say aspirin that can help with as many as three. The long history of medical science teaches us that it never turns out to be true when over-the-top claims are made for miraculous cures for a long list of diseases, especially diseases that have little or nothing in common.
These kinds of extravagant claims of a single therapy curing Crohn’s, IBS, RA, lupus, high blood pressure, thyroid disease, long COVID, diabetes, obesity, cancer, cardiovascular and central nervous system disorders, etc. throw us right back into the era of the traveling patent medicine shows of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Those bogus doctors and their harmful snake oil medications had largely been put out of business by the mid-20th century. But unfortunately, the advent of the internet as an uncontrolled purveyor of all manner of nonsense has enabled them to proliferate once again.
Low Quality of Evidence – The highest form of scientific evidence for a medical therapy is a controlled, prospective, randomized, double-blind clinical trial. The altering of gut dysbiosis as a way to treat Crohn’s disease has had exactly zero success in meeting that rigorous standard. Instead we are left with: 1) a few preliminary studies - often very small, retrospective, and poorly designed, 2) some animal studies using animals that don’t have human Crohn’s disease, 3) quack theories by “doctors” trying to sell you their elixir and/or book, and 4) the worst of all: testimonials.
Testimonials are lowest form of scientific evidence because they are not scientific at all. It doesn’t matter how absurd a theory or therapy may be, you can always find someone willing to say it cured their disease. If you put forth the theory of say rubbing monkey dung on a patient’s head under the light of a full moon would cure their Crohn’s, or cancer, or what have you, I’m sure you could find someone, somewhere willing to swear that it worked wonders for them.
Testimony may be admissible in a court of law, but for purposes of establishing a scientific theory as fact, testimonials are worth exactly zero. When you click on some doc’s website where she/he is promoting a new miracle cure that mainstream medicine hasn’t discovered yet, and there is a section or link or tab marked “Testimonials,” run the other way. Relying on testimonials to promote a cure means the cure hasn’t got any real data behind it.
The True Believer – We've seen this movie before. You are not the first new member to come on the forum and energetically tell everyone that they have found THE solution to Crohn’s disease. A few years ago MAP was all the rage. The forum was bombed with MAP posts from true believers. Anti-MAP antibiotic therapy. MAP vaccines. MAP, MAP, and more MAP. MAP is still around but it has since come back down to earth.
We also had a round or two of Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) fervor. LDN was the Cure du Jour for a while. But like MAP it hasn’t panned out and instead has faded back into an experimental, low-level niche therapy.
Just a few months ago we had a new member come on the forum and carpet bomb us with multiple posts telling of his own miraculous Crohn’s cure. His personal cure story was supplemented with some weak data from small, lousy studies and some theory being pushed by a professor of Neuroscience. So what was this miracle Crohn’s cure? Beef. The miraculous cure was to eat a diet that consisted of 100% beef. No other meats and no food of plant origin at all. Swore that the beef diet was the wave of the future for Crohn’s – a true cure at last.
So erase “100% beef diet” and write “leaky gut/dysbiosis” in its place and we have a description of the phase we are currently passing through.
So as I say, I’m in favor of new approaches and unconventional treatments. But until they are proven by actual rigorous clinical trials, it is best not to be pushing widespread use of these “emerging” therapies. Your leaky gut/dysbiosis theory has some merit and may be worthy of further study, but right now there are just too many unknowns, and way too many red flags.
