Crohn's and Celiac/Gluten free

most doctors ignore any link of anything to diet, especially when it is gastrointestinal and would rather instead push pills cos that is what they get paid to do.

even if you do not have gluten sensitivities via bloodwork, it does not mean that you cannot benefit from trying a gluten free diet. i dont know about you, but knowing what i know now, i'd rather opt for dietary changes than take a pill and hope for the best and deal with the side effects. sure taking a pill is way easier and making dietary changes is difficult, but once you get used to it and begin to feel the benefit, you'll stick to it and it becomes easy because it is a habit. this can take several months though...

dont do soy. seriously, it is not a health food. Soybeans have been cleverly disguised as health foods and wrongly championed by the health industry as the near perfect food. As tragic as it may sound, if you take a good look at the research you will find that soybeans really are not that good for you. For starters soybeans are the number one genetically modified (GMO) crop in America. Roundup Ready soybeans have been genetically modified to include the herbicide Roundup in the actual soybean itself. Soybeans are high in phytates, which prevent the absorption of minerals. Soybeans contain natural toxins called “anti-nutrients” which are essentially enzyme inhibitors. Many research studies have linked soybeans to a long list of problems, including impaired thyroid and immune system functions, reproductive disorders, impeding the sexual maturation of boys while accelerating that of girls, promotion of kidney stones, and even cancer and heart disease. Soy milk is actually a waste product from the tofu making process. Someone figured out that if this waste product is processed some more with added ingredients they can sell it as a milk substitute. Soybeans are marketed to you at Japanese restaurants as edamame. The Asian culture, particularly the Japanese, can live just fine on soybeans since they have been doing so for generation upon generation whereas the rest of us have not. Plus they eat a much healthier diet that includes more vegetables, and they generally eat fermented versions of soy (tempeh, miso, natto, and tamari) that negates most if not all of the negative effects of soy. The unfermented version of soy is the one to stay away from. Unfortunately it is the unfermented version you will find in tofu, soy milk, soy protein isolates, soy ice cream, soybean oil, and many, many other soy derivative food products. And steer clear of hydrolyzed soy protein, which is a common ingredient in imitation foods.

Doctors are going by old research that studied high vs low fiber diets. They found no benefits from that kind of diet modification and so diets don't work as far as they're concerned. Of course, no researcher is going to risk their credibility by doing a trial of the SCD - that's just some amateur hokum diet. So diets don't do anything - unless you listen to the dozens of people on forums like this who have had good results from diet modifications. Then there are dietitians. The one I talked to was trying to get me to add lots of fiber to my diet. If I hadn't had a bunch of experience with the stuff that she was pushing, I might have tried it and been left wondering why the diet didn't help. When you get "experts" feeding you wrong information, you really have to have guts (no pun intended) to go against them, or to even think that they must be wrong.
/end of rant

Give it a try! I should probably do the same.

Just another vote here for the SCD! My son's GI team also told him to eat whatever he wanted. After that, it was not fun convincing him that maybe this diet thing was worth a try, but we moms are persistent! Thankfully, he gave it 100% and is in remission.

The mere fact that so many cookbooks have been written that are compliant with the diet says a lot to me. Here is a link with the top selling cookbooks for the SCD. I have "Eat Well, Feel Well" and "Recipes for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet" and I love them both!

http://www.lucyskitchenshop.com/cookbook.html

There are also lots of online sites for the SCD, too. Spooky, do you have those? Also, the book that explains the diet is called "Breaking the Vicious Cycle" by Elaine Gottschall.

Lastly, I agree with CrazyHarry on the soy issue. I've read the information he's read and gave it up completely except for the real, fermented stuff on occasion.

Good luck to you and keep us posted!

What neat information I gain from you guys! Thanks Kiwi!

I have decided to start my new diet in a few weeks. I am getting married in 3 weeks from Saturday and dont have the time or energy to invest in it fully right now. I dont want to "just avoid Gluten" cause I want to really see what this new diet does! And obviously a mostly gluten free diet isnt gluten free at all! :P

In the mean time...should I throw out all of my Soy Yogurt and Milk and just wait to heal or whats your advice? I am able to eat frozen yogurt at night with a small amount of issues but Milk in the morning is a BAD idea!

Thanks for this wealth of new information!

kiwikiwi,

that is very interesting that you say after going gluten free that the body can begin again digesting lactose. i was told by my first GI that like 99% of people with CD are lactose intolerant (it sure would have been nice of him to tell me when i was diagnosed instead of letting me figure out on my own for like 6 agonizing months!). so if i interpret what you said correctly, by going gluten free for some time you let the micro villi in the small bowel rebuild itself so the body can, with enough time, begin again to digest milk. it makes sense from the standpoint that (using the research presented in the scd) that with active disease, induced by a heavy processed food grain/gluten diet the micro villi are smooth, small and in worst cases virtually non existent. so if the micro villi are able to heal by a gluten free diet then the body would, to varying degrees, return to its proper working order.

thinking out loud without doing any research on that particular subject, my professional opinion would be perhaps. the body is amazing at healing itself, but it is normal to lose the ability to digest lactose to varying degrees as we grow up (we are the only species to drink milk past infancy). this fact alone makes me a little suspect on what you said, not that it cannot be true. that is an interesting point that i hope some one here knows more about cos i'll admit that right now i am too lazy to research this.

When I couldn't get approved for Humira, I stopped eating wheat, but didn't worry about the gluten presence in foods since I'm sure I do not have a gluten sensitivity. For a while I was wheat free, dairy free, corn syrup free, and did not eat a lot of vegetables or fruit I couldn't digest well.

The not eating wheat made a HUGE difference. I was eventually able to tolerate more sugars and fruits and vegetables, and even dairy. I am now on Humira, which has undoubtedly helped as well, and wheat (well plus bad stuff like corn syrup, though I do slip up sometimes) is the only thing that remains out of my diet.

I think for me my issues derived from the fiber matrix of the bread--I can tolerate fried foods (even though I shouldn't...) because the fiber matrix is broken down, but plain old bread would do a number on my intestines. I'm considering going on a strictly gluten-free diet, however I don't know if there will be additional benefits for me. I'm totally fine living without bread, but having to worry about eating out, my food touching gluten, various salad dressings etc. seems like unnecessary stress.

Overall, going wheat or gluten free will make you eat healthier by default. I can't just pick up any old thing and eat it, so I'm much more conscious of my choices.