Stale Bread Crohn's Cure?

So a while ago there was this article that was posted that talked about how a 78 year old man named Roy Anderson who had Crohn's for over 40 years. over in Ireland was able to relieve his Crohn's pain by eating stale bread.

How he actually made his treatment by taking sliced bread for seven days and poured milk over the stale bread and heated it in the microwave before he ate it. It is important to point out that he didn't eat anything the day before in order for probably the treatment to be more effective. The article also mentions that 90% of severe Crohn's patients improved after going on a special liquid diet.  The liquid diet is the basic nutrients which starves bacteria in the colon. Right after he act the bread he didn't have any pain and had normal bowel movements.

The fact that Roy Anderson has gone a year without any stomach pain is quite interesting. It would be curious for other Crohn's patients to try this in order to see if it has any benefit. I don't think it will help everyone who has Crohn's but could possibly help some Crohn's patients. A doctor in one of the article I read said he didn't believe it would help anyone else. It would be interesting to have a small group of patients try this to see if it is effective and helps symptoms. What is interesting is that many Crohn's patients try to stay away from carbohydrates and this treatment would be taking an aged carbohydrate. I personally doubt stale bread will help cure Crohn's (although I would like to see what a colonoscopy of this guy looked like before and after treatment).

Health Update and C Difficle Cure

I am not sure if I am entering another flare or not. Although, I am not a GI I think eating a brownie sundae both Friday night and Saturday night did not help. I am working this week on my diet to see if I can shake it off. My stools are somewhat loose however I don’t have much pain. The pain I had in the last flare up I was staying up at night and could feel the stabbing pain in my stomach. There have been some instances where I have had a flare for one day and then the next day I am perfectly fine. Next week I see my GI and I have a bunch of questions for him so hopefully that will help.

In somewhat IBD related news there now might be a possible cure for c. difficle with “fake” stools. Researcher Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe and her research team created an artificial stool which is grown in the Robo-gut (looks like vanilla milkshake). The procedure is seen as a super probotic. Normally fecal transplants are done which can knock out the c.diff but is not pleasant for patients. Doing the fecal transplant repopulates a person’s colon.

When I was in the hospital my father was 110% sure I had c.diff. He kept asking the doctors to run stool analysis tests and he researched the way stool analysis had to be done and my GI told him that he was pretty sure it was Crohn’s before the colonoscopy and then confirmed I had Crohn’s after.

I would love to see this tried first in more people with c.diff and then people with IBD to see if there is any help it can provide. The problem is often times these things can take years to get onto the market because of approval, compliance, regulation, and other burdensome requirements.

  

Cure For Crohn's: Eating Bark Help Crohn's?

I recently came across this story which talks about a woman named Marlene Barnes who is a 72 year old woman who has Crohn’s disease and has had it for 48 years. She got it when she was only 14 and had to get part of her colon removed.

This story gets interesting as Barnes cutting bark off trees, letting it dry, and grounding it up in her home.  I have a few issues with this story. First, her doctor claims she has “no evidence of the active disease”. This could just simply mean that her Crohn’s is in remission and is not active. What I would want a GI to do is to examine her colonoscopy compared to someone who doesn’t have Crohn’s and see how different they are. Second, this is only one person who has one body that is different from everybody else. I would want to see some large scale trials done to see the safety of this and whether or not it is effective. I do hope tree bark does help those with Crohn’s however until the data arrives I will be otherwise unconvinced.

This leads me to a larger point of people believing everything they here. As the commercial says “Where did you hear that? The Internet”. We can’t believe everything we see, hear, until there is some hard evidence to back it up and more than one trial to prove it was not just a fluke or luck. I hope the CCFA will look into this and possibly look at doing trails. Marlene Barnes could be sitting on a gold mine if this really works. I know I would be barking away if it was shown to be both effective and safe!