Plant-based diet leads to Crohn's disease remission, according to case study

I read that case report.

To say it is flawed would be a massive understatement.

But look at the authors - people who promote vegan diets, including Dr. Neal Barnard, whose background is in psychiatry.

Then look at the journal, and see that just a few months ago its entire editorial board quit under protest because its publishor was publishing papers when the authors would pay him. That's right, the authors would pay to get their paper published in Nutrients (and other journals owned by the same person).

Then look at the case report and see that he stayed on his infusions while he made his dietary changes. Notice too that they can't confirm any of his dietary changes; it's all based solely on what he told them.

Notice too that they didn't do a colonoscopy after one year on the infusions, so they don't know whether his continuing symptoms at the time were due to lingering inflammation or to IBS-related causes.

This article is nothing but paid propaganda from the pro-vegan camp.

I might write a lot more detail later if I have the time.

It occurred to me that my reply could be read as an attack on Andrina for posting this study.

That's not the case. I apologize to Andrina for making it possibly look that way.

I'm actually kind of glad you shared it, because it allows me to vent!

The reason I reacted strongly is that a well-meaning person I know, who is always pushing a vegan diet, sent this to me a couple of days ago. I spent a good bit of time yesterday trying to find out why a supposedly respectable journal felt this one-person anecdote was in any way noteworthy and worth publishing. That's when I found out just how shady some of these journals can be, with authors paying to have their "studies" or "case reports" published. It's nothing but advertising hidden in science journals.

This particular one is advertising from the PCRM (physician's committee for responsible medicine, the group formed by Dr. Barnard - a vegan-pushing psychiatrist by training who wrote up a case report on a single Crohn's patient. That in itself should raise red flags.)

There are case reports out there of practically every dietary change imaginable leading to a remission of IBD. Some of those dietary changes were the opposite of eating plant-based.

As we all know, placebo controlled clinical trials consistently show somewhere near 30% of patients improve *on the placebo.*

I myself have gone in and out of remission multiple times over the years without medical intervention and without any changes to diet. (By many definitions I eat a "plant-based diet," but I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan.)

No respectable gastroenterology journal or IBD journal would have published this.

Plant-based diets may have many health benefits. They may even benefit IBD, but that isn't known. And Dr. Barnard is cherry-picking and misrepresenting the current state of knowledge in order to further his agenda, not to further actual science about the topic.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/open-access-editors-resign-after-alleged-pressure-publish-mediocre-papers

I once tried going "vegetarian" when I met my wife, as she was one too. I spent a lot of time on pasta, as I couldn't eat salads and raw veggies. I ended up getting really sick and was lacking in a lot of nutrients, so I had to reintroduce meat to my diet.

As with anything with this disease, I have learned that we all have different levels of the disease, that effects different parts of our intestinal tract, and that a very unique sets of foods are triggers for each of us. No one person is the same here, and no one treatment is a fix-all either. I think that is why it is such a difficult task to find medicines that work, or even a cure.