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Hello, everyone!
With permission from Seth at www.healingcrow.com, I am forwarding his
thoughts on the book, "Breaking The Vicious Cycle".
My husband, who has Crohn's Disease, and I (I have Celiac Disease) have
been following this way of eating for almost a year with the most
phenomenal success. We feel we have our lives back after a long time of
going downhill and feeling out of control. My Mother, brother, and
several others that I know personally, have regained their health,
energy and vitality since changing their eating habits in this way also.
I urge you all to check out the SCDiet which is not only gluten-free,
but also free of most preservatives, additives, etc. Since those of us
with CD have weakened immune systems, we need to eliminate more in our
diets than just gluten to regain our health. I'm also hearing that most
CDers are not feeling really great by just eliminating gluten. I urge
you to check out www.scdkitchen.com and the "customer reviews" on
Breaking The Vicious Cycle at www.amazon.com. to learn more about what
we call "our miracle diet". Hope you can benefit from the following from
Seth.
Kay in Austin
Seth's comments:
Have you thoroughly read through the book entitled "Breaking the Vicious
Cycle" by Elaine Gottschall? The book recommends a diet called the Specific
Carbohydrate Diet that has helped thousands upon thousands of other people
with CD and/or IBD. If you read the book, you'll see that a similar theme
that is found in "Listen to Your Gut" can also be found in this book.
Although the diet seems to help the majority of people who try it, it
doesn't work for everyone. The author recommends giving it a try and wait
and see. So what has worked wonders for thousands of people, won't
necessarily work for you. However, since it has helped numerous people, it
is definitely worth a try in my opinion.
Even though the diet seems very strict at first, the book clearly states
that not all the allowed foods are for everyone. In fact, once you get
stabilized on the beginning diet, then you should slowly introduce new foods
(not gluten, if you have Celiac Disease, however). If any of these foods
bother you, then you should stay away from that food for a while.
Eventually, once/if you have recovered, you can even start reintroducing
some of the "illegal" food items. The author recommends waiting one full
year before doing this, but I know of some people that have made the
transition sooner. Frankly, I wouldn't want to eat these other foods based
on the scientific findings I have read showing them to be detrimental to
human health.
I subscribe to a philosophy about human nutrition that is based on
anthropology, genetics, mathematics, and others that is called Paleolithic
Nutrition. This philosophy of nutrition takes a fresh look at the human
species and treats him/her just like any other animal. For instance, if we
first encountered tigers - we might find that a tiger, based on the fossil
record, similar animals, its physiology, etc - is best suited to eat the
diet of a carnivore. If we could find some packs of tigers in the wild, we
might be able to study their diets and see what they are fit to eat. This
line of reasoning has been used with humans to come up with what is called a
paleolithic diet. Basically, it allows any food that we are genetically
adapted to eat in the wild. When using this ideology towards nutrition, we
find some surprising facts. For one, our Paleolithic ancestors were much
taller than previously thought. The fossil record shows a sudden decrease in
height and bone health after our ancestors starting eating grains. The
reason I bring this up is that many people think that the SCD must be
unhealthy because it cuts out large categories of foods - especially grains!
However, if you read about paleolithic nutrition, you'll find that grains
are in fact not very healthy at all. In fact, most of the foods forbidden
on the SCD were not part of our ancestors' healthy diet. If we look for
humans' in the wild we can get a glimspe as to what our preferred foods
should be. My favorite example is the Inuit (eskimo). They lived on a
carnivores diet and thrived until recently. Their health declined as they
ate more and more modern day processed foods - grains, breads, sugars, etc.
Some great resources on the Inuit are the books published by Viljamur
Stefansson on the subject (he has several). There are many others, but I
think he has the most experience with them that I can find.
There are of course a few discrepancies. For instance, a strict
paleolithic diet would not allow the use of fermented foods or any dairy
products. However, the SCD is based on experience not ideaology, which
is wise because no model is infallible. I firmly believe that fermented
diary and other products help those with IBD tremendously. However, I
have met a few people that have recovered from IBD and other chronic
illnesses from a strict paleolithic diet alone without fermented foods.
A gastroenterologist named Walter Voegtlin, was a firm believer in
paleolithic nutrition. He also felt that fermented dairy products were
very similar to the foods that our ancestors ate (meat, fat, etc) and
would pose no problem to the GI tract. If we look to the "wild" we find
many tribes of humans that are extremely healthy and regularly consume
fermented dairy products. The Caucasians are one and there are several
in Africa.
The SCD also allows the use of saccharine (an artificial sweetener) -
another Paleolithic Diet no no (say that five times fast). Anyway, as
humans we can get addicted to sweet things. The diet can be difficult
enough by eliminating many foods that we are addicted to, such as grains
and chocolate. Also, many people cannot tolerate honey on the SCD,
especially in the beginning or even up to the first two years or so- or
maybe never. The warns against large amounts of honey for good reason.
So allowing an artificial sweetener that cannot feed bad bugs is a nice
crutch to have when learning the ropes of the SCD. I do not know of any
wild tribes that consume saccharine or any other artificial sweetener
for that matter, but saccharine has been around for over 100 years and
we should know its effects on the human body by now. The same cannot be
said for other artificial sweeteners. With saccharine, you know what
you're getting at least.
The SCD also allows some legumes. This is the biggest clash between the
SCD and a paleolithic diet. Personally, I do not eat legumes (even
peanuts) because I believe they are not healthy. However, many people on
the SCD do eat them and tolerate them well. Many subscribers to various
cultures suggest that we may be able to "detoxify" legumes by soaking
them, advice the SCD subscribes to as well.
But wait, as Yoda would say..."There is another..."A third diet, called a
low carbohydrate diet was made popular by the charismatic Dr. Atkins. By
definition, this diet is low in carbohydrates - the amount depends on the
diet - for Atkins it can be as little as 20 grams or less. In my opinion,
this type of diet is neither healthy nor unhealthy. If you were to eat whole
foods that were naturally low in carbs (meat, greens, etc) then I
would say this is healthy. But if you were to survive on the Atkin's Bake
mixes and other processed foods, then I would say this is unhealthy. So it
really is what you make of it.
An Austrian clinician, by the name of Wolfgang Lutz, has been using a
low carbohydrate diet to treat many different "diseases of civilization"
that include IBD. He has treated far less patients than the SCD, but he
has specific numbers based on his patients. His diet alone can help
bring about remission in the majority of cases with IBD. His numbers
suggest that UC takes longer to heal than does CD, but that both are
positively affected by diet. If you read through his other papers,
you'll see that he has a paleolithic diet slant to his opinions. He is
another subscriber to the paleolithic nutrition ideology. He allows
small amounts of bread in his diet, but based on his other papers I
imagine this is the same sort of compromise that the SCD has with
saccharine. Some people refuse to go on any diet if they can't have
their bread! Some people need sweet things. Addictions are funny
animals. I was strongly addicted to Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia and it
took a while to break the habit. Even though I no longer drink Diet
Coke, I know that I am still addicted to the stuff - it is something I
must fight every day. But addictions are just as much psychological as
well as physiological - take chocolate for example. Woman in the US
claim to be physically addicted to chocolate, but woman of different
cultures that do consume chocolate are not. So anyway, if I have a point
- which I'm not sure I do, it would be that regardless of whether the
SCD heals your IBD or not, it is an extremely healthy diet. The diet
does not exclude medications, so why not give it a try? If it works as
is, then you'll join the ranks of thousands of others. If it doesn't,
that is too bad and you should move on and try something else. If you
get some improvement - but not total improvement, then experiment with
the different foods and see if you can make it better - that is what the
books describes and it seems to work for a majority of others. The
author of the book has the wisdom to realize that no diet will work for
everyone - but she does give us a great place to start from by
eliminating most of the foods that cause the majority of the problems
and giving us a working model to figure out what other foods we might
eat. Whether by coincidence or rational thought, the same foods allowed
on the SCD also mirror the foods of our paleolithic ancestors. I find it
amazing that two schools of thought can arrive at the same conclusion
using totally different perspectives and studies.
Seth
Main site URL: www.healingcrow.com
Related Sites: www.scdiet.org and www.scdrecipe.com
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