Dietary Approach

The dietary approach is defined by 3 steps:

 
 
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1 - Elimination

As mentioned in ‘Mission’, our approach is essentially a subtractive one aimed at taking out all potential food agents which *may* be eliciting an inflammatory (or harmful) response.  This necessarily means casting the net wide. Many, even the majority, of the foods taken out may not be a problem for you. In the short-term this doesn’t matter. You need to start ‘extreme’ - this means ignoring much of the mainstream advice about so-called healthy eating. The most important aim is resolution of symptoms; if you want a cure it needs to be effective. Taking out one food at a time (gluten, wheat, dairy, alcohol, sugar, etc), takes too long and doesn’t work. If you’re having a flare-up it needs to be resolved quickly. Further, using a piecemeal approach is not fully committing.

 
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2 - Resolution

We want the elimination phase to lead to: resolution of symptoms; and resolution of the underlying disease process.

Assessing the former is reasonably straightforward – everyday experience will indicate if the (properly applied) dietary approach is working. To get a figure on your symptoms you can use the Crohn’s Disease Activity Index (CDAI) or the Ulcerative Colitis Activity Index - these are not universally used measures but you may find them interesting.

 
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3 - Reintroduction

If your symptoms have gone, you feel fine, and your IBD is under control, why would you want reintroduce other foods?

1/ As mentioned earlier, the elimination diet is likely to be cutting out many foods which are perfectly ok for you to eat. Unless you have an extreme intolerance, sticking to an elimination diet forever is depriving yourself unnecessarily.

2/ Major health organisations argue that going meat-only, low-carbohydrate, or cutting out fruit and vegetables means your diet would be lacking in essential nutrients. Whether this is true or not, we regard eating a wider range of food as a nutritional ‘insurance policy’. As long as those foods are not causing a deleterious or inflammatory reaction we can’t see a reason not to eat them.