The official line on Crohn’s disease is that there is “no known cure.” In my previous post I described how easily I found contrary evidence — in that case, a girl who with the help of her mom made dietary changes that got rid of her Crohn’s symptoms in weeks. She has been symptom-free for more than seven years. An existence proof.
There are many other examples. I asked Reid Kimball for links. Here they are:
A website that collects success stories: https://scdlifestyle.com/
category/specific- carbohydrate-diet-success- stories/page/4/ Facebook groups: SCD – https://www.facebook.com/
groups/2215406763/ GAPS – https://www.facebook.com/groups/thegapsdiet/ Reid’s website https://crohnsend.com, Jay “CrohnsBoy” Baluk https://crohnsboy.com/ and Jini Patel Thompson https://listentoyourgut.com/ are more examples.
The official website of the SCD has a testimonials section: https://btvc.webfactional.com/
book-reviews/listing/
Are these people cured or are they simply controlling their illness better by eating a strict diet?
Seth: I agree, it’s a grey area. After I come down with scurvy, I am careful to eat a diet that contains enough Vitamin C and never get scurvy again. Is that controlling my illness by eating a strict diet? People usually say that Vitamin C cures scurvy. I suppose I should ask people who say Crohn’s has “no known cure” what they mean.
I was told that my osteo-arthritis was incurable and that I was heading for an early hip replacement (I was 37 at the time). Now, four years later, I’d say it’s ‘cured’ and my method was a gut healing diet (GAPS diet, actually). That was very restrictive for about 4 months and now I just try to stay away from certain foods and I’m ok. I tend to think of these things more as hypersensitivities which require long-term management – it’s probably a combination of genetic profile + metabolic damage caused by long term consumption of foods you are not genetically designed to eat so much of. A sort of low-level allergy.
As a ‘side-effect’ my depression disappeared and has never recurred to the same level – I just don’t have the level of ‘low’ that used to exist in my brain.
Seth: This supports my belief that the foods that make your brain work best will turn out to make the rest of your body work best and vice versa.
Scurvy is not a chronic autoimmune disease. Scurvy IS vitamin c deficiency. Generally “curing” an ai is actually putting symptoms in remission and keeping them there.
Seth: I was under the impression that scurvy was caused by Vitamin C deficiency. If taking a drug once/month puts your symptoms in remission, but as soon as you stop the drug your symptoms come back, are you cured? I believe people would say no.
Please don’t use the word “cure” in association with dietary management of Crohn’s; it’s no more of a cure than is a gluten-free diet for celiacs. You don’t fix the root problem.
That said, for >4-1/2 years, I have been on an SCD-type diet, and found complete relief after tweaking it in. Specifically, I lean towards a meat-heavy, grain-free diet with plenty of Gottschall-type yogurt. Carbohydrate restriction helps more than anything; I find I do best with lots of fatty beef, but (of course) the diarrhea needs to stop first.
After about a year on the SCD, I found the works of Dr. Wolfgang Lutz, who found a low-carb diet worked wonders for Crohn’s. I combined the two, and have found complete relief. The only times I have problems are when I stray from the diet, either by accident (usually when testing new food products), or during experiments.
My weight is normal, I have had *no* diarrhea for more than 4 years now, no bleeding, and have a labor-intensive job that requires my lifting almost 150% of my own body weight. But the disease is still there, and if I eat the wrong thing, it comes to the surface promptly. But since I don’t eat the wrong things except on rare occasions, my blood values are normal, my fecal calprotectin is normal- I’m waiting to get another colonoscopy done, but I am confident the results will be very good.
The root of the disease is in grains, and secondarily to sugars. Complicating this is a massive imbalance in the intestinal flora- which is why probiotics help, and fecal “transplants” cause marked relief in many. Too many antibiotics, not enough fermented foods, too many sugars, WAY too much starch- and not enough vitamin D.
For the love of all things holy, PLEASE take your vitamin D if you have Crohn’s, even if you get sunlight. Take 2,000 to 5,000 IU vitamin D every day.
Our friend’s daughter’s gastroenterolgist says 1) there’s no scientific proof that the SCD diet relieves symptoms and 2) online testimonials are self-selected to cover only positive outcomes. This doctor practices at the #1 rated children’s hospital in the world.
He may merely be callous and intellectually uncurious but he is the patient-facing representative for an evil system. That he is paid a vast amount of money and the recipient of much professional adulation is maddening.
I guess the definition of ‘cured’ is quite broad. I mean, what is it really? No symptoms, no matter what you do? No symptoms when you do what most people do?
I consider my arthritis (and my depression) cured, even though I’m pretty sure they will recur if I decided to eat like my sister does for any length of time. Her way is not healthy, although for the moment she ‘seems’ to be getting away with it.
Find the cause and deal with it, then you are cured. Maybe it’s a psychological thing – people don’t want to feel different, and if they have to live differently to others, they still feel ‘sick’ or ‘faulty’.
@Peter, testing special diets is, unfortunately, never going to be a well-funded area. There is no big, expensive drug to market at the end of it, and if you implicate a big part of the food industry (e.g. grains), they will bite back with quite a bit of well-funded force.