Crohn's Disease for 10 years. Need dietary suggestions!

[Lightfoot]

I'm 53 and have suffered with Crohn's for about 10 years, tried hundreds of things to overcome it, but still in pain, mostly on my right side below my ribs, but below my left ribs too. I have never had diarrhea like some folks complain of, but sometimes blood in my stools.
 I went on a Primal diet last December 15th of 2008, then had a consultation with Aajonus on January 31st of 2009. He said my biggest issues are Crohn's and Lymphatic Congestion.
 When I began Primal eating I weighed 170 pounds, but after 3 months it increased to 185, then by August to 192. I'm 6 foot 3 inches, so this is a good sign. But my Crohn's pain is still 100%, with no sign of improvement.
 I just did a bit of a fast, so I'm starting over now and thinking about leaving out the milk, butter, cream, cheese and honey. I was eating some fruit before, but I'm also going to cut out all sugar. So no dairy, honey or fruit. I was thinking of basing my new approach to healing on meat, fish and eggs, with some green juice, with no nightshades
 If anyone out there has healed Crohn's, or can suggest any helpful ideas for dealing with inflamed intestines, I am interested.
~~~~~Thanks~~~  Lightfoot

[TylerDurden]

You seem to be doing fine so far. The main thing is to get rid of any dairy or grains as they are the worst culprits re Crohn's.

[goodsamaritan]

Ken Presner says he cured himself of Crohn's and other diseases.

Maybe he can teach you things beyond diet http://zap.intergate.ca/crohn.html

When I had some lower bowel inflammations what helped me was fully cooked fatty pork. (Think of it as medicine).

Of course I went back to raw afterwards.

[lex_rooker]

Lightfoot,
Your approach sounds pretty good but I'd ditch the green juice as well.  It will only cause you problems. I initially thought as you did and consumed freshly made green drinks, (often up to a quart per day) to be assured that I was getting all those important vitamins that only come from plants.  All I ever got for my trouble was bloating and loose smelly stools. I'd focus on red meats with plently of fat (75%-85% of diet) with eggs and fish (about 15%-25% of diet) to round things out.  Cook your meats as little as possible and drink water instead of milk or juices.

There are many of us that have been eating exclusively meat, cooked either very rare or raw, with no plant based foods or dairy of any kind, and we have no signs of deficiencies after many years of eating this way.  You may also want to consider ordering grass fed meats as the fatty acid profile is significantly different from the grain finished meats you find in your local markets.  Omega 3 fatty acids are usually between 25% and 50% of grass fed animal fat but only 2%-3% of grain finished meats. Here's a link to some recent info on Omega 3 fatty acids vs heart disease.

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/omega-3-index-higher-better.html

Lex

[Lightfoot]

Goodsamaritin...by cooked pork fat do you mean like bacon strips?
   
 Lex...I'd love to say goodbye to that juicer and all that time & money. If I go on all meat fish and eggs, I have had some trouble moving my bowels in the past, maybe because of a prolapsed transverse colon. Is it just a matter of getting more bacteria in there, like with high meat?

[goodsamaritan]

With the cooked pork, I bought roasted cooked pork.
The ones that take hours to roast slowly.
See picture http://media.photobucket.com/image/baliwag%20liempo/dbshawarma/DSC02598.jpg
(I think of this as medicine. Just temporary.)

I did not think of bacon as usually bacon has chemicals in it.

[lex_rooker]

Lex...I'd love to say goodbye to that juicer and all that time & money. If I go on all meat fish and eggs, I have had some trouble moving my bowels in the past, maybe because of a prolapsed transverse colon. Is it just a matter of getting more bacteria in there, like with high meat?

A diet based on meat and fat will reduce the bacteria in the digestive tract by 80% to 90%.  Adding bacteria in the form of probiotics or high meat probably won't make much difference as there is just not enough food value left after digestion to support them.  Transition will cause your body to have to adpat and this may cause some cycling between constipation and loose bowls for a few weeks before things settle down. 

Also, remember that the amount of fecal material drops to about 1/3 of what it is when eating a large carb load so what you believe to be consitpation may just be the fact that there may not be enough bulk to trigger a bowl movement.  It is not unusual for people moving to a meat and fat based diet to only have a BM every 3 days or so.  As the bowls adjust to the smaller load then BMs become more frequent but much smaller volume.  For me it took about 3 years before I was having small movments every day rather than larger movements less often.

You also need to make sure you are eating enough fat as too much lean will cause constipation - especially in the beginning.

Lex

[TylerDurden]

I can't imagine it's healthy to have faeces sitting in the bowels for long periods for 3 years prior to full adaptation, still in the end I'm sure it was all fixed as the bowel got smaller in size over that time. For myself, I'd highly recommend the use of high-meat provided it's eaten in reasonably large amounts, not the marble-sized portions Aajonus advocates.

[Nicola]

I can't imagine it's healthy to have faeces sitting in the bowels for long periods for 3 years prior to full adaptation, still in the end I'm sure it was all fixed as the bowel got smaller in size over that time. For myself, I'd highly recommend the use of high-meat provided it's eaten in reasonably large amounts, not the marble-sized portions Aajonus advocates.

Tyler you like to give us all the idea that what YOU KNOW (believe to know) and what YOU DO is ? (what ever you believe you are). I could say eating at night is ..., why do you go out of your way to poo-poo people eating zerocarb??? and you mentioned not ever been able to eat this way if all you had was suet (you go on about marrow); why just not be satisfied that you have food?

How the hell do you know what your bowels have got in them - try drinking ionized water (I don't at the moment); you might just have a big shock!

Nicola

[pfw]

I'm actually trying ZC for crohn's at the moment. So far, so good.

The key to stopping crohn's is to stop the trigger. Wolfgang Lutz had success with a low carb diet, achieving remission in 80% of cases over a year, so it's a good idea to go low carb at least. Other recent research is pointing the finger at a particular bacteria, ubiquitous in humans, called klebsiella. Klebsiella produces an enzyme to break down starches which happens to contain protein sequences similar to those found in your intestinal collagen. If your body begins to have an immune response to that enzyme, the anti-bodies produced will also attack your intestinal wall, thus causing the auto-immune response that characterizes crohn's.

Cut out the starch, cut down on carbs, and your klebsiella population will plummet - and what remains won't be producing the trigger enzyme. Given time (Lutz claimed it took a year or so to see remission in 80% of patients on his diet), the immune response will cycle down. The SCD uses the same logic, though when you look at what some people do on the SCD you can see why it doesn't always work (nut-flour bread and such).

Good luck getting rid of your pain!

[Lightfoot]

-----Lex,  How about the ground Bison they sell at Ralph's Markets?  Or the fish at Trader Joe's? Only stores we have out where I live (Palm Desert area) are Clarks Nutrition, Henry's Farmers Markets and T.J.'s.

-----pfw,  zc?  Do you mean zero carbs?

[pfw]

Yes, ZC = zero carb.

That's just the term, though. It's probably better to call it "Carnivorous" as there's some carbohydrates in egg yolks and whatnot. I probably hit 0-10g carbs a day depending on what I eat that day.

After going through a pretty hairy transition, I gained 7-8lbs and my bowel movements have normalized. I'm in month 3 for what it's worth.

[PaleoPhil]

Tyler you like to give us all the idea that what YOU KNOW (believe to know) and what YOU DO is ? (what ever you believe you are). I could say eating at night is ..., why do you go out of your way to poo-poo people eating zerocarb??? and you mentioned not ever been able to eat this way if all you had was suet (you go on about marrow); why just not be satisfied that you have food?

How the hell do you know what your bowels have got in them - try drinking ionized water (I don't at the moment); you might just have a big shock!

Nicola

Nicola, I'm a carnivore and I thought Tyler's concern was a somewhat valid one, although Lex didn't say that his cycles of constipation and loose bowels continued for 3 years--just that the change in frequency didn't occur til then.

Other than keeping the fat levels up, Lex, do you have any other tips for dealing with the tendency toward constipation in the early period of adjustment?

[lex_rooker]

Other than keeping the fat levels up, Lex, do you have any other tips for dealing with the tendency toward constipation in the early period of adjustment?

Nope, I think you just have to stick it out.  We spend decades stretching our colons all out of proportion by eating high bulk low nutrition junk and then wonder why it takes a few months to get things working smoothly again when we suddenly reduce the bulk to 1/3.

There was also no magic switchover in BM frequency at 3 years.  Just a gradual transition over that period where BMs became continually more frequent on less and less volume until I was easily having 1 movement everyday - usually soon after eating my meal for the day.

Lex

[lex_rooker]

-----Lex,  How about the ground Bison they sell at Ralph's Markets?  Or the fish at Trader Joe's? Only stores we have out where I live (Palm Desert area) are Clarks Nutrition, Henry's Farmers Markets and T.J.'s.

Most meat, even at Trader Joe's and "health food" stores supply grain finished meats unless they specifically state otherwise on the package.  If the fish doesn't say "Ocean Caught" on the package it may well be farmed and feed fish chow which is grain based.  This is especially true for freshwater fish like trout, but even salmon are often farmed today.

When starting out, I purchased the best meat I could find, (usually ground meat with 22% to 30% fat), and then supplemented with 30 gel caps of inexpensive fish oil from Costco per day to help correct the fatty acid profile.  I did this because I wasn't sure I would continue this way of eating, however, once I committed to it, I purchased a small chest freezer and started ordering grass fed meats from Slankers & US Wellness Meats.

If I had Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis I might have gone grass fed at the outset.  My reasoning is that it is well known that many of the elements in the food the animal eats are also stored in the fat and flesh of the animal.  People who have an intolerance to wheat for example, often get an allergic reaction to eating meat that was fed wheat.  Since this may be an issue behind Crohn’s or UC, I would want to eliminate this as a possible source as well.

Most think that eating this way is expensive, however, I eat for less than $300 per month which is under $10 per day.  Since most people spend almost that much on a fast food lunch alone, I’d say it’s down right cheap.

Someone mentioned Lutz book and I would recommend it as well.  The title is “Life Without Bread”, by Christian B. Allan Ph.D. & Wolfgang Lutz M.D.

Lex

[Lightfoot]

So no one has to repeat what must have already been said plenty of times on this forum....could you guys post some links to somewhere, explaining as to how and why we can obtain vitamin c, minerals, vitamins, etc. on an exclusive diet of raw meat, fish and eggs?

[PaleoPhil]

Nope, I think you just have to stick it out.  We spend decades stretching our colons all out of proportion by eating high bulk low nutrition junk and then wonder why it takes a few months to get things working smoothly again when we suddenly reduce the bulk to 1/3. ...

I don't wonder why, just wondering about ways to smooth the transition. There is one other thing you mentioned, which is squatting on the toilet instead of throne-sitting. I wasn't satisfied with the stool in front of the toilet, so I thought about what design would work best and searched for it, finding pretty much what I had imagined in the Lilliput stool http://lillipad.co.nz/. I ordered one and I'll report how well it works for me and whether I think it's worth the money. Has anyone else tried it?

[lex_rooker]

So no one has to repeat what must have already been said plenty of times on this forum....could you guys post some links to somewhere, explaining as to how and why we can obtain vitamin c, minerals, vitamins, etc. on an exclusive diet of raw meat, fish and eggs?

Lightfoot,
I don't think anyone knows "how" or "why".  What I do know is that my personal doctor warned me 4 years ago when I started this dietary adventure that I was surely going to get beri-beri, scurvy, or show some other signs of deficiency, that my bones would crumble to dust due to lack of calcium, that my cholesterol would go through the roof, and that without lots of fiber in my diet I was risking colon cancer.

I assure you that I only eat meat and have friends on this forum and others that can confirm this fact.  I've had blood tests every year and they've continually improved.  I just had a DEXA bone density scan and it came out several percent above what was expected for my age and scored in the mid 90% range when compared to someone age 30 with peak bone density.  I've also had a colonoscopy and the gastroenterologist that performed the procedure said that my colon was in such good shape that I would have no need to have this procedure done again – I wasn’t going to die from colon cancer.

Others have followed the same path I’ve taken and achieved similar results.  None have had any signs of deficiencies and all have had significant improvement in their overall health.

My blood tests and DEXA scan results are posted in the first entry of my Journal.  Dr Kurt Harris, a radiologist, did a full analysis of the DEXA results which can be found here:
http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/9/22/bone-density-assessment.html

My journal also has much information in it as well so you might find my adventure interesting.

Peter’s Hyperlipid blog is a great resource and it can be found here.
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/

The Heart Scan blog is pretty good,
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/

And the Nephropal blog is well worth your time as well,
http://nephropal.blogspot.com/

That ought to keep you busy for a while,

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

I did post on a possible explanation for why unsalted meats prevent scurvy: http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/health/teeth-recovering-on-raf/msg18469/#msg18469

Lex, I'd like your take on whether there's merit in the bacteria connection or whether that's a dead end. Other hypotheses I've seen proposed:

> the small amounts of vitamin C in raw meats, but even cooked unsalted meats work, so that doesn't seem to explain it
> some effect of uric acid (http://www.carnivorehealth.com/main/2009/6/3/disease-of-civilization-scurvy-vitamin-c-deficiency.html)

Thanks for the Nephrology site link, Lex. I hadn't seen that one.

[Lightfoot]

Lex~~~ Thanks, that all sounds like great information. I have no problem eating raw meat, fish or eggs, but does it matter a lot if these sources from Slankers and U.S. Wellness are friozen?
 I have been buying Estancia beef lately, imported from Uraguay.
 Also, are there any good sources out there for unsalted dried meats?  ~~~Lightfoot

[TylerDurden]

Lex~~~ Thanks, that all sounds like great information. I have no problem eating raw meat, fish or eggs, but does it matter a lot if these sources from Slankers and U.S. Wellness are friozen?
 I have been buying Estancia beef lately, imported from Uraguay.
 Also, are there any good sources out there for unsalted dried meats?  ~~~Lightfoot

My own take:- freezing does damage to the cell-walls so that one should always eat the prefrozen meat as quickly as possible once it's thawed, so as to minimise nutrient-loss. Aside from that, a very small minority of people have complained of some side-effects from eating (thawed)prefrozen meats, but most RVAFers are OK with it, other than the fact that prefrozen meats generally don't taste as good as fresh, raw meats for various reasons.

Ordering via delivery from farms almost always guarantees that the meat is prefrozen(rarely just chilled) unless you have some special arrangement with the farmer and are not situated far from the farm for delivery purposes.

[lex_rooker]

Lex~~~ Thanks, that all sounds like great information. I have no problem eating raw meat, fish or eggs, but does it matter a lot if these sources from Slankers and U.S. Wellness are friozen?

Yes I receive all my meat frozen.  As Tyler points out, freezing does injure some cellular walls but so does ageing (letting the meat slightly rot and become more tender, this starts happening immediately once the animal is killed and you can't stop it), chewing, and digesting, etc.  If anything, freezing slows down decomposition.  It is also a natural process and occurs in our natural environment - example making a kill during the winter in most northern or southern latitudes.  We also freeze human eggs and sperm and then thaw and recombine them for in-vetro fertilization.  Yes, some are damaged, but most remain viable and able to create new life.  I'd hardly call freezing an issue when the alternative for most of us is supermarket fare which is often frozen anyway, or stored for weeks or months in a cryovac pak.  Many “fresh” supermarket eggs are up to 4 months old, and this surprises most people as well.

If you have a local source and can get a fresh kill then by all means take advantage of it.  If not, I know of no one who has been able to show that there is a true issue with frozen meat.  Most of what you get is anecdotal and theoretical nonsense with nothing in the real world to back it up.  Remember, our ancestors would make a kill, butcher it on the ground where it lay, and then consume the meat over several days/weeks while it rotted (in summer) or froze (in winter).  They survived and you and I are here as witness to the fact that eating frozen and/or rotting meat was acceptable food for our paleo ancestors, and got us where we are today.

Don’t obsess over the small stuff.  Get the big picture right, eating our proper food (red meat and fat) while making sure our food ate its proper food (grass), and you’ll be fine.  All the rest is window dressing.

Also, are there any good sources out there for unsalted dried meats?  ~~~Lightfoot

None that I’m aware of.  This is because it is illegal in the US to sell dehydrated meats like jerky that have not been heated to a minimum temperature of 150F before drying, and FSIS/USDA rules usually require some sort of preservative like salt as well.  If you want good uncooked dehydrated meat with no salt or other preservatives you must make it yourself.  That’s why I put together my Jerky and Pemmican Manuals.  By following these you can make your own.  Here’s the links courtesy of Sayta:

http://www.traditionaltx.us/images/JerkyDrierInstructions.pdf
http://www.traditionaltx.us/images/PEMMICAN.pdf

If I remember correctly you are in Palm Desert?  I’m in Norwalk, a bit east of Los Angeles.  If you’d like a sample of Slankers Ground meat I’d be happy to bring you some.  I’m retired so have plenty of free time and a drive to Palm Springs would be fun.

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

Remember, our ancestors would make a kill, butcher it on the ground where it lay, and then consume the meat over several days/weeks while it rotted (in summer) or froze (in winter).  They survived and you and I are here as witness to the fact that eating frozen and/or rotting meat was acceptable food for our paleo ancestors, and got us where we are today.

Heck, some of my relatives in rural Ireland were still eating this way as recently as the 1970s, when they got their first refrigerator/freezer. They used to buy meat or slaughter their own and then eat it at every meal until it was gone. When my father put their ice cream into the freezer, my great aunt said, "Oh, don't do that." My father asked why. "Because it'll get hard," she said, perplexed that he didn't understand the obvious.

[TylerDurden]

Just a minor correction:- as I pointed out in a previous discussion, the only reason sperm can survive freezing is because anti-freezing substances are added which prevent the cell-walls being ruptured by freezing.Without those substances, the sperm would be completely useless re fertilisation.

[lex_rooker]

Just a minor correction:- as I pointed out in a previous discussion, the only reason sperm can survive freezing is because anti-freezing substances are added which prevent the cell-walls being ruptured by freezing.Without those substances, the sperm would be completely useless re fertilisation.

Interesting.  If the physics of cellular distruction from freezing is due to the expansion of ice crystals from within the cell bursting the cellular walls, then how could adding an external substance possibly have any effect?  Unless you replace the water inside the cell with something that won't freeze and if you did this I would expect that such a substance would destroy the viability of the cell. 

This doesn't ring true to me.  Not that it's not true, it just seems to violate a couple of laws of physics.

Lex