Re: healing

[Guest guest]

>

> Why does it take the gut so long to heal and that is a ongoing,lifetime ?

>

> When you cut yourself the body heals, but with the gut even after eating

> gf/scd takes a lifetime, doesnt it?

There's much more going on in the gut with IBD than a simple cut.

It's an autoimmune response where the immune system produces an

antibody that attacks collagen in the intestinal wall causing the

inflammation and ulcerations. Until that attack subsides healing

can't occur.

>

> When I started on SCD, I thought that the BTVC book said people could be

> completely healed (or even cured) within 1-2 years. It may even say

> that. However, it has finally sunk in that we are missing the capability

> to break down the complex carbs that have created our symptoms (just

> like diabetics are missing the capability to break down sugars).

Mostly. The branched polysaccharides are food to a specific bacteria

-- Klebsiella pnumoniae being the leading culprit -- so you need a

couple factors to get IBD:

- some genetic predisposition with your ability to breakdown certain

polysaccharides (although I'm not sure of this relevance)

- a population of Kp

- your body's humoral immunity response to pullulan, Kp's metabolic

by-product as it produces its enzyme (pullulanase) to degrade the

branched polysaccharides on which it feeds

- perhaps some other weakness or trigger event

- some involvement with HLA-B27 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HLA-B27)

If you're missing one of these components you may not get IBD.

> So ...

> even though we may be completely HEALED, if we start feeding our gut

> with the same things we ate before, the symptoms will come back and we

> will be sick again. Just like diabetics, if they start eating things

> they shouldn't, they will be sick.

While I agree that healed IBDers ought to think seriously before

adding too much starch back to their diet I believe there are cases

(Elaine's daughter being one of them) where people's IBD stays in

remission. To me that suggest there's more to it than just lacking a

digestive enzyme -- it's the combination of factors. I'd go so far as

to say that no human digests all the starch they consume, but they won

the genetic lottery and probably won't get IBD. They may get lots of

other things though...

> I just wish the medical community would embrace the science

> Elaine learned.

That would be nice :-) I will add that some more recent research by

Alan Ebringer et. al. explains a lot of what Elaine and Sidney Haas

proposed.

>

> 1. Bacteria - you usually clean a cut so it doesn't get infected. You can't

> disinfect your gut though, and there's all sorts of bacteria in there.

I don't think we're faced with an infection, at least not primarily.

> 2. Scarring - once the tissue is scarred and the villi are damaged (I don't

> think they can ever completely heal), it will have a daily effect on you for

> the rest of your life.

True enough but I think the effect is some reduction in nutrient

absorption not perpetuation of IBD symptoms.

--

Cheers,

DF in MA

UC June '07

SCD Nov '08