Crohns Disease Diet To Gain Weight

If you are a sufferer, finding a suitable Crohns disease diet to gain weight can be a serious challenge. It is vital to stick to a nutritious diet and avoid any foods that seem to worsen the symptoms.

Until now no Crohns disease diet treatment has been proven effective for preventing or treating the disease and reliable dietary rules to improve a sufferer's symptoms have been difficult to find. Some people find that their symptoms can be made worse by drinking milk or alcohol, eating hot or fried food for example.

However, a new book written by Mark Anastasi offers a completely new approach. Instead of medication and fighting the symptoms, you start thinking about health and treating the cause.
This new holistic approach looks very promising and focuses on the modern human diet. For centuries our diet consisted of basic, natural foodstuffs such as water, seeds, nuts, grasses, herbs, roots, fruits, vegetables and cereals.

In our twenty-first century diet, sugar, sweets, biscuits, crisps, chocolate, cola and soft drinks, fats & oils, cigarettes and alcohol, pharmaceutical drugs, chemicals, pesticides, and preservatives have replaced many of these.

For those unfortunate people who are suffering from Crohn's disease, this new approach through dietary change may, at last, offer a long-term cure. Instead of treating the symptoms it may be better to treat the root cause.

Conventional medical research into the treatment Crohn's disease has also taken an interesting step forward due to work being carried out in the U.K. If a new theory being researched at the University College in London is confirmed then the widely accepted theory that an overactive immune system causes the damaging inflammation, could be turned on its head and that the opposite may be correct.

Their research suggests a weaker-than-normal immune response triggers the bowel inflammation that leads to Crohn's disease. If this is the case then they believe that the use of medications like the drug Viagra may prove beneficial in treating the bowel disorder by stimulating an increase in blood flow to the affected area.

This debilitating disease is often diagnosed in late teens or early twenties and can have a dramatic effect on the quality of life enjoyed by the sufferer. With no clearly definable cause and no absolute cure there is still much work needed. Statistics indicate that heredity plays a part in some 20% - 25% of cases and incidences are higher in some more isolated communities with higher levels of inter-marriage.

Earlier research carried out also indicated that a relative of the tuberculosis germ, Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis, or MAP, might be implicated. This theory goes back to 1913 when a similarity between human Crohn's disease and the animal disease known as Johne's disease was highlighted.

In 1996 the discovery of a gene known as NOD2 was found to play a significant part in incidences of Crohn's in some people. Exactly what role this gene plays is still unclear, but it appears to play some part in disturbing the balance between intestinal flora and the immune system.

In conventional medical treatment of the disease, drugs are prescribed to control the disease, rather than provide the elusive cure. When severe flair-ups occur cortisone based drugs are used, but they do often cause severe side effects and should only be used for short periods. Biological agents that stimulate a particular part of the immune system are also being tested in a bid to replace steroids.