Published review - Evidence-Based Dietary Advice for Patients With Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Good article covers a lot of ground in one place, most of which we have discussed in the past,

 interesting they mention no info on vegetarians and UC, and as we know there are some vegetarians on this site.

They also mention high meat/fat diet as a problem, yet all these studies on an increase in meat in the diet

fail to mention the converse. If you are eating more meat then it is likely that you are eating less of something

else,perhaps veggies or starches.

Also shows that they are really working somewhat in the dark on diet, and gut microbes.

Old Mike

My UC must be an outlier according to this article.

Diet modification was the only thing that put me on the path to remission. Rx meds never did anything to help (except mesalamine enemas) and it took a long trial-and-error to find out what diet did produce remission for me.

Almost everything they say about diet not helping UC is wrong in my case. The article does say that diet mod. helps Crohns which I've read before but my diagnosis has never been borderline or questionable.

Red meat? My colon loves it.
Fats? Ditto.
Dairy? Colon hated dairy until remission, now it's OK but only after a couple no-dairy years.
Gluten? Out and my healing began.

Diet mod. is not easy and if I could have gotten better any other way (except biological meds or surgery) I would have gladly done it.

PK
I hear ya on veggies, I LOVE them and was a vegetarian when UC came to stay. Even now I lean toward more low fiber veggies than meat and have meatless days as much as I can. But the gut rules.

Post Edited (imagardener2) : 12/11/2013 9:45:51 AM (GMT-7)

Now here is an interesting interview on the American gut project.

Here is a quote not sure right or wrong,the docs know the bacteria eat the mucus the question

might be,are they really supposed to be eating that much of it,or not.  Are we starving our bacteria.

Would love to see an actual study on this,have to read the whole thing perhaps the info is there.

Then again vegetarians get UC you would think they feed the bacteria well.

Old Mike

http://chriskresser.com/you-are-what-your-bacteria-eat-the-importance-of-feeding-your-microbiome-with-jeff-leach

" And Justin will tell you that once you start starving your bacteria, you don’t deliver enough substrates, resistant starch and non-starch polysaccharides, when you don’t deliver enough of that stuff from plants, the bacteria have to eat something, so they start eating you."

"Jeff Leach:  They eat your mucous lining in your colon, and it’s thought that maybe once you start to degrade that protective barrier, you then expose it to potential problems."

 

1) I have that Chris Kresser podcast bookmarked for reference because I end up going back to it every single day for verification purposes. The gut project results of Tatertot Tim was the driver of my resistant starch thread. He is going to work in the comments section of that podcast and has some very informative tips for anyone that's interested in changing gut flora so as to reduce the future risk of disease and pathogens.

2) Jeff Leach and his fellow collaborators are doing incredible work on the American Gut Project and they deserve a nobel prize for it. Not just because of the implications it has on the primary prevention realm of medicine, but because it might benefit people that are trying to overcome disease right now and seeking to live longer lives. I encourage people to keep up with the results of the project. It can be put into application almost immediately by doctors, but it's not going to happen because they'd be out of business and pharmaceutical companies would lose their shareholders.

3) I thank you for posting that medscape review because it's heading in an appropriate direction for disease treatment and prevention, but it has some issues worth pointing out. I think it would take me a while to break down the glaring inaccuracies in it. Paul Jaminet and Shou-Ching Jaminet would rip the authors a new one if someone told them to critique it. In the interest of time, I'll summarize the things that struck out to me:
- The elemental diet works in the short term, but fails in the long run because there is evidence to suggest that it initially corrects gut dysbiosis, but fails to maintain this correction when people switch back to standard diets (which most CD patients end up doing anyway). Elaine Gottschall has a section in her SCD book explaining why.
- On meats - virtually all of the studies on meats (including red) are observational and flawed. There's no question that meat is a requirement for humans, but quality is key here. Nearly all factory farmed meats are carcinogenic by virtue of the ammonia ridden ingredients required for sanitization. Antibiotic concentrations, soy feed, growth factors fed to the Animals are the drivers of the meat-disease connection, not the meat themselves. Red meats from pastured animals raised without antibiotics have beneficial and protective factors like CLA and omega3s.
- What I said above applies to dairy from factory farmed Animals as well. The inflammatory beta casein a2 is prevalent in 99% of factory farmed cows in the United States.
- The studies on the Mediterranean diet as preventative care pretty much disprove what they said about fats. It's the PUFAs and sugars that pave the way for inflammatory diseases, not saturated / monounsaturated fats. I don't think it's right to push low fat diets when the evidence clearly stacks up against it. The colon needs a sustainable source of SCFAs (butyrate) to repair the gut lining.

Post Edited (StealthGuardian) : 12/11/2013 12:32:20 PM (GMT-7)

Replying to say thanks and also to promote the link to the top of page 1.

Conquer UC said...
Yep i got that medscape article in my email.
All i got to say is that there needs to be alot more research, it's still ambiguous at this stage as to what helps and what doesn't.
Crohns is a bit more straightforward; but UC as always is not clearcut.

@SG: you said " The inflammatory beta casein a2 is prevalent in 99% of factory farmed cows in the United States." Did you mean a1? A2 is actually anti inflammatory. See nourishinghope.com/2011/02/udderly-new-insight-about-milk-and-autism-an-emerging-new-hypothesis-on-a1-and-a2-betacasein/

Whoops. Good catch. I meant A1 beta casein.

Conquer UC said...
No worries :D

Lucky in australia we have a2 milk easily found in supermarkets. The interesting thing is: a2 milk does NOT mean the cows are grass fed!! So you could buy organic milk from grassfed cows but it may STILL upset your digestive system because it is a1 milk!
So when buying milk you need to look for: 1) organic 2) grass fed 3) a2 protein 4) good luck finding that.

From personal experience though: the a2 part is the most important. Unless you are drinking litres of milk per day i would not worry about the organic or grassfed part. But with the a1 part you get negative side effects even from just 1 glass.

It's anecdotal, but I know people who had issues with a1, but tolerate a2.

That being said, it's possible to avoid this issue altogether by consuming sheep or goat dairy, as those are all a2. This is probably the reason why people have better tolerance to goat milk or cheese.