Intermittent fasting would make it harder to gain as you'd have to eat a lot more during the times you eat. If someone has trouble eating enough already, then they're not going to be able to eat extra. If you can eat a lot extra, then you wouldn't be having any trouble gaining weight.
And I'm not sure I understand how fasting cures inflammation/bacteria overgrowth. Do you have links to papers/studies/whatever that show how that works? I'm genuinely asking - not saying you're wrong. When my doctors thought I had SIBO they gave me a load of antibiotics, and would never have dreamed of suggesting I fast. My surgeons had me on bowel rest while my intestine healed from surgery - is that the kind of thing you mean? (I had TPN during that time.) Also how do you know the underlying cause of your weight loss?
I can link you some threads but you can find all I've found searching MAP bacteria and AIEC on this forum and reading the first 2 pages of results.
If you have trouble with appetite / gaining weight, I'm of the opinion that your diet is not Crohn's friendly and you're going to suffer until it is.
I'm also of the belief that you can enter remission through controlled diet. I'm not saying cure it, but be 100% symptom free without medications.
Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2877178/
Now the problem is, if you're not eating a Crohn's safe diet, and you're not a-symptomatic, many of the therapeutic foods you need to be eating you won't be able to tolerate.
It's important to draw a line between trigger foods - ones that make Crohn's worse as a product of their chemistry - and sensitivities - foods that your unhealthy digestive system cannot handle in their current state.
A trigger food would be wheat, a sensitivity would be like fiber, or fat, as high-fat diets are preferable for Crohn's but many struggle with high fat. This is because their digestion isn't working properly due to inflammation and possibly dysbiosis.
The first thing they'll need to do is go on an ultra clean diet until they can reach remission. This may include fasting. For me chicken eggs and dairy let me reach this, it's hard to say what will work for everyone but generally:
-Low to no carb. No simple sugars at all.
-Limit fiber
-Limit greasy foods. If eggs are safe, boil or poach them rather than frying
If you're BARELY eating but you feel completely asymptomatic, this is still preferable to eating 2000 calories and being sick, continue this for 1-2 weeks and begin to incorporate more fat in the form of butter, coconut and extra-virgin olive oil.
I'm digressing a bit on the diet part, I'll give more details on what makes a good CD diet and why if you want, but I'll explain the causality which leads us to the why.
We have a LOT of evidence to suggest Crohn's symptoms are caused by two bacteria. MAP and AIEC.
I may have misunderstood the exact process but this is roughly how it works: Crohn's is a faulty function of our immune system that allows these bacteria to enter our macrophages (the immune cells that normally consume and kill bacteria) and live there while sending out messages requesting a TNF response, so they stimulate an overactive immune response. A weak immune system leading to an overactive response, this summarizes the symptoms to a T.
In order to kill the bacteria very special anti-biotics are required, three of them or more at the same time. Each serves a different purpose.
http://www.redhillbio.com/RHB-104
MAP is a slow-dividing bacteria and most antibiotics attack the bacteria during cell division. Because of this, special antibiotics that can penetrate the protective layer of the cell outside of division are necessary.
It's believed that lauric acid found in coconut oil can dissolve the lipid barrier protecting the bacteria allowing us to naturally combat it.
Consuming large amounts of sugars can quickly breed these harmful bacteria allowing their populations to expand.
http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?t=44806
So an ideal Crohn's diet starves the bacteria of food while enabling our body to kill it.
That's where this post comes in, but the user didn't post much citation.
http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?t=52151
The idea is to promote peptides which help fight the bacteria, and to induce autophagy via fasting
User wildbill_52280 posted this:
its not just map thats a problem,there may be a few bacteria that can survive within a cell and persist due to autophagy defects in genes, or even without defects.
stimulating autophagy may eliminate them, i have used resveratrol to do this and i believe it was successfull. did not cause a remission tho.
Fasting or caloric restriction is your best bet for getting a remission, it also stimulates the process of autophagy. autophagy is the process which the body uses to get rid of intracellular pathogens. but this isnt how a Caloric restriction would cause a remission, caloric restriction dramatically lowers inflammation too, and its this that may cause a remission because the inflammation which produces nitrate as a byproduct is what allows the raise in enerobacteria in crohns, as this physiological change fertilizes their growth. by dramatically lowering inflammation, these bacteria will disappear.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-0...-bacteria.html
couldn't have any worse side effects than some of the other "therapies" I've done/taken. Thank you again for the diet idea and the support. Prayers of health to you!
