Mona, I can tell you that one thing that will not improve your gut health is having lots of alkaline substances going into your gastrointestinal tract !
Your stomach is acid not just to help in breaking down foods into chyme - which is vital by the way, so you will really disrupt nutrition absorption - but also to filter out bacteria. In essence, an alkaline stomach or gut is just an easy beachhead for any bacteria that want to get deep into the body. The gases you talk of are as a result of bacteria that are producing either methane or sulfides; normally not a problem, but if your intestinal flora is less diverse than usual (and alkaline substances will make that problem worse, IMHO) then you will end up with larger colonies of fewer types of more aggressive bacteria. I would guess that the inflammatory process makes things worse, it certainly does with me; any day I have gas, I write off my day. Time to hit the peppermint tea. My (amateur, non-medical) suggestion to you would be to take a much higher dosage of probiotics - a wider variety of strains if possible - and expect diarrhoea to begin with as the nasties get killed off and expelled, with a gradual improvement over the long term as the gaseous bacteria stop producing so many nasty free radicals etc.
Armbuster, I know little of detoxification, so cannot comment directly on the product you mention. But I do know that viruses are something that have never to my knowledge been suggested as being implicated in causing Crohn's Disease, except perhaps indirectly as a trigger for expression of a contributory gene. I would be more inclined to be looking at anti-MAP triple antibiotic therapy, what I believe is known as RMAT therapy. The microbiology picture there (
in my totally unqualified opinion !) is beginning to seem quite compelling; ie that many current medications like Humira and Remicade and even some antibiotics such as ciproflaxin, cause an alteration in immune system function that leads to further activity by strains of bacteria (Mycobacteria avium Paratuberculosis spp) that actively infect and then lurk inside macrophages and cause over expression of inflammatory genes in the gut and elsewhere, leading to further damage and infective activity. Even the fact that dairymen and other workers with cattle have a lower incidence of CD than usual (the smallpox/cowpox idea) and that MAP is known to survive in pasteurised milk, as well as being widespread in the food chain and ecology, tends to support this theory.
But I read all that stuff late at night, so don't take my word for it !
