NY Veggie said...
I used to eat dirt when I was a little kid, and ants, when I was digging with my little pail and shovel.. I thought the ants were chocolate sprinkles. LOL. So I had plenty of bacteria and all sorts of other goodies in my tummy from a very early age. I sit up straight most of the time and have good posture.
I have never had allergies (until I took a form of penicillin as an adult), nor have I had artificial sweeteners except from a few sticks of gum maybe 20 years ago. I did smoke cigarettes on and off but was never addicted to them.
No one in my family has IBD. My mother also has several autoimmune diseases but no one else in my family has them.
What I have always had is lots of stress,
and when one of my doctors actually got around to testing my Vitamin D levels when I was in my early 50's they were extremely low in the single digits. I was Dx'ed with several autoimmune diseases in the last few years. Only Crohn's affects my intestines. The other diseases affect other parts of me that have nothing to do with the digestive tract.
SO, speaking as someone who has been a vegetarian since I was 14 years old, always reading the labels of everything I ate, and avoiding most processed foods, but on the other hand has traveled quite a bit and has been exposed to all manner of dirt and germs.. most of what you have been proposing as a cause would not pertain to me.
I have read medical papers that have blamed Crohn's on NSAIDS in general, low Vitamin D levels, stress. and lousy diets.
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 55 years old. I didn't have symptoms until I was about 50 or so. I was either very lucky or something I was doing was putting off the inevitable. A famous GI doctor in NYC attributed my late onset to my healthy diet.
Let me propose this to all of you that keep asking this same question every other week or so. Once diagnosed with this disease you always have it, perhaps you've always had it anyway even before that and it is in our genes. If never eating chocolate again could make this disease go away I think we would all do it. But we all know it is much more complicated than that. I know we are all looking for answers but maybe we are asking the wrong questions. Until they find out if it is solely genetic or is based on environmental factors we are all spinning our wheels.
Researchers know there is a correlation between smoking and IBD (helpful for some that have UC and suppose to be detrimental for those with CD as it "can" make CD in the small intestines worse) nothing is written in stone of course, you may not have been addicted to smoking but even second-hand smoke, according to research can be a trigger for CDers.
Also, you say you ate dirt when you were a kid (many have but not all end up with an IBD) MAP is found in soild and water and much ressearch still needs to be done regarding MAP and IBD. It's improtant to realize that it's not EITHER one or the other, IBD is 2 parts, being predisposed to getting it (like genetically) AND it being triggered, so it will likely never be found to be either one or the other. My point is, don't expect the answer (if one is ever found) to be black and white, the immune system is very complex and thinking that the answer will be so black and white undermines the complexity of the immune system.