The IBD-AID Diet

I just recently discovered a new evolution in the SCD diet trend - the IBD-AID Diet.

http://www.umassmed.edu/nutrition/ibd/ibdaid/

This diet is like the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, (SCD), but with more attention toward building up your gut biome, the importance of which recent research has brought out.

After people started talking about how important it is to build up your good gut flora, I became concerned that GAPS Diet, the SCD diet and others that eliminate food for bacteria, might be harmful to your gut flora.

Apparently, diversity and health in your gut flora is associated with less Crohn's disease.

After so many years on the GAPS Diet, and the SCD, I was concerned that I was starving the bugs that might help me.

The IBD-AID Diet seems to address this issue. It even allows a grain! Oats are allowed on the diet, with the evidence that oats selectively feed good flora.

Apparently the diet has tested well in clinical trials, with some people going into remission or able to eliminate some of their drugs.

When the GAPS Diet Doesn't Work, What Do You Do?

Our family first learned about the GAPS Diet in December 2012 from Dr. Mercola's website, in an article like this:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/05/12/dr-campbell-mcbride-on-gaps.aspx

It is often recommended for autism, but also for Crohn's disease as well.

We started in January 2013, but skipped to the full GAPS diet, and didn't do the intro or the progression upwards. We did the full GAPS diet for an entire year, with no improvements in illness level. In fact, toward the end of 2013, the illness level in the family got worse.

In 2014, we decided to do the GAPS diet right, and began with the Intro part of the diet. I had improvements in the amount of diarrhea I had, but other people in the family got severe Crohn's flares. I do not believe this was caused by the GAPS diet; there were some other factors at work. But the point is that the GAPS diet did not stop that from happening, and didn't treat it.

So, someone could say that the GAPS diet did not work for us. But I think there are many valuable things about the diet that make sense.

1. Bone broth is very healing to the gut lining.
2. The elimination diet enables you to carefully monitor food intolerances
3. The food is very nutrient dense.
4. Fermented foods introduce good bacteria into the state of dysbiosis.
5. The specific carbohydrate aspect of the diet helps eliminate bad bacteria growth.

All these things sound great in theory, but for our family, something more powerful is needed. We are still looking.

Did the GAPS Diet work for you? If not, what other things did you use to improve your Crohn's disease?