A Non-SCD Healing Diet - feeling better after 15 days - updated

Wow!
So good to hear!
Please keep posting your progress.

Interesting. I seem to have found relief going the opposite way. I have cut out almost all carbs and eat a predominantly fat and protein diet. Things are looking pretty good at the moment. Haven't felt this good in a long, long time. Even started working out again this week.

After reading Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories as well as Life without Bread I am firmly convinced that we (the western diet) has too high a percentage of carbohydrate. Especially regarding refined carbs. I do think saturated fat has been unnecessarily demonized. Taubes' book was meticulously well cited and well researched and I believe time will show that he was on to something.

Hi Becky - if you find that you are sensitive to Fish Oil (it can give you a little gas), then switch to Flax Oil, or try to do some of each. Flax Oil seems easier on your system but not as effective as Fish Oil because only part of it gets transformed into DHA. I went full-on with Fish Oil the first 3 days and was in agony. So now I alternate Fish - Flax and have no problem.

Can't wait to hear what you think of the book and how you feel once you get into it.

Thats great to hear. I think that is the book that Zanne is always talking about, I could be wrong though. I can eat cheese, but only motzarella cheese. But I already eat alot of fish, chicken, and turkey. I found red meat is really bad for me too, so I avoid that now. I am so glad you are feeling so much better.

Thanks for sharing!

Gail*Nanners*

Thx Suzanne. I will check that one out.

 

This Non-SCDiet book of James Scala is really good, I have read a LOT due to diets and Crohns, and I also use some of the SCD stuff, like the SCD yogurt, because it's loaded with benefitting probiotics. But the link that fun-guy have copied further up is really exciting to read, the blog owner is so well educated and has a lot of knowledge, and I want to point out that

this guy actually knows his science, and he writes about anti - inflammatory diets.

Here's the link about the anti - inflammatory diet, I am sure there is something to read for everybody:

http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com/search/label/anti-inflammatory%20diet

He points out some of the food that we daily are eating which causes inflammation in the guts, and he also points out simple things to do to reduce the inflammation.

One of them is using fish liver oil containing omega 3 and vitamin D, and avoiding all oil containing omega 6.

Flax seed oil is loaded with omega 3 and doesn't have the fish oil taste. But it's also containing omega 6. Omega 6 is making inflammation. So is grains from bread. /Bee 

Just wanted to share some discoveries... A Science Daily story that suggested that fat cells which secrete saturated fat into the blood may be responsible for chronic inflammation which results in "metabolic syndrome" in the obese made me wonder about a possible role in Crohn's. It turns out that one of the original defining characteristics of Crohn's was mesenchymal fat wrapping the intestines. This fat plays a large role in the modification of the intestinal inflammation that occurs in Crohn's and contributes a significant part of the TNF and other inflammatory markers that we get in Crohn's. It is also strongly associated with inflammation, strictures and bowel resections (100% of bowel resections have associated enchymal fat deposits). For details, see:
http://www.practicalgastro.com/pdf/June06/ArsenescuArticle.pdf

After a bunch of searching, another article described "visceral fat", which includes mesenchymal fat, in a bit more detail. The thing that the second article reported was that visceral fat consumes twice as much glucose as regular subcutaneous fat. Moreover, when weight was lost while maintaining a low glycemic index diet, visceral fat was lost first. Thus, a loss of about 5 - 10% of body weight substantially reduced this visceral fat. It is striking that the SCD diet is directed at avoiding starches and sugars and other sources of polysaccherides which supply blood sugars. This is exactly the kind of low glycemic index diet that reduces visceral fat. This second article was discussing metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance in the obese, but the information also applies in the case of enchymal fat deposits in Crohn's. For more, see page 14 (Implications of Controlling Dietary Carbohydrates) of:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1743-7075-1-12.pdf

There is a great deal of other relevant detail, but it may be unnecessary.

Sorry, it's due to all those papers that I've been reading - believe it or not, my post was supposed to be more in layman's terms. I guess I'll have to try again.

The nub of those articles is that the internal fat (the fat wrapping the intestines - one criterion for Crohn's is 50% fat wrapping of the intestines or more) is a major contributor to inflammation. The second article shows that it is possible to reduce that fat selectively by losing weight while on a low glycemic index diet (diabetics will know all about that). It seems to be a bit too much of a coincidence that the bias of the SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet) plan results in a very low glycemic index diet. The second article says that losing 5 - 10% of your weight would be enough to benefit. One drawback is that the fat is also first to return once a low Glycemic Index diet is stopped.

BTW, the fat in question will not show up on a colonoscopy because it is wrapped around the intestines on the outside (the side away from the digestion side). It would only show up during surgery or on a MRI.

Someone recently posted about having that fat on the outside of the intestine removed during their recent resection.