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What do you think of when you hear about the Paleo diet?

This is more for people who don't currently follow a Paleo diet. I'm wondering what everyone else's thoughts are when they hear about the Paleo diet. Does it have a negative, positive, or neutral connotation to you?
 

Jennifer

Adminstrator
Staff member
Location
SLO
For me personally whenever I hear "diet" in general it seems far too focused on being an alternative to medication when what I believe it should be what you follow while in a flare to help reduce symptoms. During remission diets are not needed. Of course eating healthy is good for everyone but I have in no way seen a connection between food and flares when it comes to MY illness. I'm aware that others feel differently.

So I guess the short answer for me would be that Paleo diet has a negative ring to it just because it feels like people are trying to convert you into their religion practically. I usually just pretend I'm not home.

My diet during a flare only is the low residue diet.
 

CrohnsChicago

Super Moderator
These words come to mind when I think Paleo:

Raw (some of it),
bland,
hard to digest,
roughage,
expensive,
torture

***I forgot to add impractical***

lol.
 
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Gianni

Moderator
Diets are extremely important whether while on a flare up or not. The Paleo diet to me and FOR ME is an imperfect diet.

The key to deciding whether or not paleo is right for you is to track your lineage and try and figure out how your ancestors lived. The principal behind the paleolithic diet is that humans consumed these readily available vegetation and meats for a 2 million year period. However many human species had not developed eating meat until 200,000 years ago since the change from erectus to sapiens. One of the main issues with the paleo diet is that is causes heart disease in many of the followers. These particular humans weren't meant to see such high level of animal cholesterol and it effected their hearts. It's clear among these cases that they had not developed a heavy meat diet in their ancestral past.

After doing months of research into my own past, i figured out a large section of my ancestors were Italian and had more than likely migrated their from North Africa. But also i found i had strong roots in early native american life, whom most likely migrated from south America influencing a strong plant based diet.

So for me i could not find any ancestors in the northern hemisphere and cold parts of the world ( where most likely humans needed meat in order to survive) Take for example eskimos, now any modern eskimo american would most likely find great benefit in a strong fish heavy paleo diet because that is precisely what their ancestors ate.

Finding a strong influence of a plant based diet i decided to go vegan and adopt an 80% raw diet as-well. I couldn't be happier with my decision as i can absolutely tell a difference. My flare up at the time quickly went into remission and it wasn't any normal flare up, i had fistulas, ulcers and even abscesses.(And i did it without medication!!) And now even in remission i do realize diet is extremely important, why would a diet only help you gain remission and do nothing else for you afterwords... that makes absolutely no sense.

I for one am 100% sure crohn's is cure-able through diet and I'm out to prove it. Just because the medical community refuses to accept a cure doesn't mean non allopathic approaches won't work as well. People need to start trusting mother nature instead of the amateur medical community. Through this diet I am extremely confident i will never see a crohns flare up again.

So what do you do? ... RESEARCH. Find out where your family came from and when i say came from i don't mean ask where your grandparents were born... go back, way back in history and then cross reference them with the projected migratory patterns humans most likely made. I know it's alot of work but to me I think what you get out of it will be extremely valuable.
 
Thanks for all of the honest responses so far. The reason for my question is because some of my family and friends seem to have such a hard time grasping why I follow the diet that I do. I just wondered why there seems to be such a negative association with Paleo, for some people.
 

Jennifer

Adminstrator
Staff member
Location
SLO
Family members huh? That is strange. See most of us have already been diagnosed and have tried many different diets so our current view of diets really should be different from those who don't suffer from IBD at all. A lot of my family members pushed for diets a lot when I wasn't feeling well saying that that was my only problem. So to hear people not liking the Paleo diet seems a bit odd to me. I like the idea of a more primal diet and it does make a lot of sense if you wanted to eat healthy in general. Maybe its because it allows too much meat and when people think "diet" they think veggies only? I'm not so sure. What it really sounds like is a lack of knowledge about the diet and perhaps they need a more dumbed down explanation of it.
 

rygon

Moderator
I dont think of anything tbh, Ive heard it being kicked around but never thought enough about it to look it up to understand what it is. I guess if more ppl or more evidence showed it work i'd be more inclined
 
I started the Paleo Diet about 9 months ago and I was symptom free for a goo while I was strict on the diet and I felt great. For the past couple of months Ive slowly drifted away from the diet because I work two jobs and I am in grad school and havnt had the time to cook all my meals like I used to. As a result I have had to go on Pentassa and Entocort because the pain came back from the crohns. Do you have any suggestions on how to stay on the Paleo diet easier? I realize this isnt why you posted this thread but I was just wondering if I could get your input.
 
I recently tried a plant-based diet for three months and as the weeks progressed, I became more and more tired. I guess I wasn't getting enough of something I needed. I'm now back to my old way of eating (no red meat, no pork) which includes turkey, fruits, vegetables and kiefer and am feeling better.
 
I started the Paleo Diet about 9 months ago and I was symptom free for a goo while I was strict on the diet and I felt great. For the past couple of months Ive slowly drifted away from the diet because I work two jobs and I am in grad school and havnt had the time to cook all my meals like I used to. As a result I have had to go on Pentassa and Entocort because the pain came back from the crohns. Do you have any suggestions on how to stay on the Paleo diet easier? I realize this isnt why you posted this thread but I was just wondering if I could get your input.
Hi Sam- It is tough sometimes as it does take a lot of preparation. I would suggest that you dedicate some time on a day off to prepare your food for the week. You can make larger quantities and freeze it for later use. Also, the crockpot can be very helpful if you are really busy. Hope that helps a little.
 

Jennifer

Adminstrator
Staff member
Location
SLO
I recently tried a plant-based diet for three months and as the weeks progressed, I became more and more tired. I guess I wasn't getting enough of something I needed. I'm now back to my old way of eating (no red meat, no pork) which includes turkey, fruits, vegetables and kiefer and am feeling better.
I heard that its common to feel tired when you go 100% onto this diet and that you're supposed to just power through it. Personally it sounds risky to do that to yourself cause its easy to say that your body is just getting used to the diet and eliminating toxins etc and to just tough it out when the reality is that you may be doing harm to yourself by not getting the nutrition your body needs like you mentioned. Just be careful with whatever you do.
 
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