re diet for crohn s ibd summary of thread a person has crohns raw vegetables cause problems unspecified steve holland replies patient may have mild obstruction avoid things that would plug her up crohn s has no dietary restriction in general in article apr aio jsc nasa gov spenser fudd jsc nasa gov s spenser aden wrote interesting statements simply because i have been told otherwise i m certainly not questioning steve s claims as for one i am not a doctor and i agree that foods don t bring on the recurrence of crohn s but inflammation can be either mildly or drastically enhanced due to food the feeling obout this has changed in the gi community the current feeling is that inflammation is not induced by food there is even evidence that patients deprived of food have mucosal atrophy due to lack of stimulation of intestinal growth factors there is now interest in providing small amounts of nasogastric feeding to patients on iv nutrition but i digress symptoms can be drastically enhanced by food but not inflammation having had one major obstruction resulting in resection is that a good enough caveat i was told that a low residue diet is called for basically the idea is that if there is inflammation of the gut which may not be realized by the patient any residue in the system can be caught in the folds of inflammation and constantly irritate thus exacerbating the problem therefore anything that doesn t digest completely by the point of common inflammation should be avoided with what i ve been told is typical crohn s of the terminal ileum my diet should be low residue consisting of completely out never again items o corn kernel husk doesn t digest most of us know this o popcorn same o dried dehydrated fruit and fruit skins o nuts very tough when it comes to giving up some fudge the low residue diet is appropriate for you if you still have obstructions again it is not felt that food causes inflammation these foods are avoided because they may get stuck i d go ahead and have the fudge though discouraged greatly o raw vegetables too fibrous o wheat and raw grain breads o exotic lettuce iceberg is ok since it s apparently mostly water o greens turnip mustard kale etc o little seeds like sesame try getting an arby s without it o long grain and wild rice husky o beans you ll generate enough gas alone without them o basically anything that requires heavy digestive processing i was told that the more processed the food the better rather ironic in this day and age the whole point is preventative you want to give your system as little chance to inflame as possible i was told that among the numerous things that were heavily discouraged i only listed a few to try the ones i wanted and see how i felt if it s bad don t do it again remember though that this was while i was in remission for veggies cook the daylights out of them i prefer steaming i think it s cooks more thoroughly you re mileage may vary as with anything else check with your doctor don t just take my word but this is the info i ve been given and it may be a starting point for discussion good luck spencer makes an especially good point in having an observant and informed patient would that many patients be able to tell what causes them problems the digestive processing idea is changing but if a food causes problems avoid them be sure that the foods are tested a second time to be sure the food is a real cause crohn s commonly causes intermittent symptoms and some patients end up with severly restricted diets that take months to renormalize there was a good article in the ccfa newsletter recently that discussed the issue of dietary restriction of fiber it would be worth reading to anyone with an interest in crohn s and as i always say when dealing with crohn s as does spencer good luck steve holland
