Just thought this study would help someone. I have been following a diet similar to this for 7 years and have never had an obstruction, almost always have had diarrhea under control with little to no medications except lialda and pentasa on occasion.
The diet in this study is kind of like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet because simple sugars are removed, but SCD advises removing starches and complex carbs which also contain the most soluble fiber which have shown benefit for the GI system, so I never agreed with all the SCD guidelines. Oats are probably the best grain for IBD I believe, they contain beta glucan which is also found in medicinal mushrooms. Soluble fiber is preferred food for the good bacteria in the gut.
The diet in this study is kind of like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet because simple sugars are removed, but SCD advises removing starches and complex carbs which also contain the most soluble fiber which have shown benefit for the GI system, so I never agreed with all the SCD guidelines. Oats are probably the best grain for IBD I believe, they contain beta glucan which is also found in medicinal mushrooms. Soluble fiber is preferred food for the good bacteria in the gut.
Thirty-two patients with Crohn's disease were treated with a fibre-rich, unrefined-carbohydrate diet in addition to conventional management and followed for a mean of four years and four months. Their clinical course was
compared retrospectively with that of 32 matched patients who had received no dietary instruction. Hospital admissions were significantly fewer and shorter in the diet-treated patients, who spent a total of 111 days in
hospital compared with 533 days in the non-diet-treated control group. Whereas five of the controls required intestinal operation, only one diet-treated patient needed surgery. This is in strong contrast to general
experience with this disease. Treatment with a fibre-rich, unrefined-carbohydrate diet appears to have a favourable effect on the course of
Crohn's disease and does not lead to intestinal obstruction.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1596427/pdf/brmedj00093-0016.pdfIn a mean follow-up of 52 months only one of the 32 diet treated
patients required major surgery (and in him the indication was present before starting the diet), which contrasts with the usual tendency for patients with Crohn's disease to need operations. In a large American study with a mean follow-up of 42 months5 operations were needed by over half the patients.
The risk of reoperation varies in different series between 5-5 and 16-50' per year.7 12-14 In the nine diet-treated patients who had had a resection, no reoperations were required during a mean follow-up period of 55 months.
It is unlikely that the controls had unusually severe disease since only 1600 underwent surgery (4°0 per year). Nevertheless, they received five times as much hospital treatment as the diet treated patients. The latter seldom needed treatment in hospital, spending on average less than one day per year in hospital. Our data challenge the traditional recommendation of a low residue diet in the treatment of Crohn's disease.