Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Intestinal Health Through Diet

First off, This is my first paperback purchase from Amazon. I purchased it used for $7.39 from ClickGoodwill in Indianapolis through Amazon. The book came very quickly and was in excellent shape. I am a Kindle Book buyer, but I decided to purchase this in paperback because it has about 80 pages of recipes.This has turned out to be both a review of the book and the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD).I purchased this book 3 ½ months ago and for the last 2 ½ months, I have been trying the SCD that the author, Elaine Gottshall, developed. During the month that I was not on the diet, I was trying to eat up all the “illegal foods” in my frig and pantry—and that’s a lot (I also gave bags of staples away). Here is a list of SOME of the many types of food that are illegal on the SCD: sugar (honey and saccharin allowed, but probably not stevia which the author states has a molecular structure resembling a steroid), all grains, starch (including many vegetables and beans), liquid dairy, some cheeses, soy, processed foods, canned vegetables, most foods that have additives, beer, and for those who bake no yeast or baking powder, and the list goes on. Yogurt is a healing staple of this diet, but must be homemade in a 24-hour process.Mrs. Gottshall, originally published this book in 1994. It was updated, I believe, in 2010 posthumously (2005), but not the Kindle version. The SCD is recommended for GI disorders, celiac disease, and autism; but has also been helpful in other disorders/diseases. The purpose for me in trying this diet is gut-healing, especially acid reflux. I believe Mrs. Gottshall’s research, first described by Sidney V. Haas to treat celiac disease, is very sound. The reading, at times, is very scientific, and difficult to understand, but mostly even the unscientific mind, like mind, can get the gest. I was originally attracted to this book because there are three types of illegal foods that I believe have damaged my gut: lots of sugary foods, lots of flours (especially multi-grain breads), and starch (especially from potatoes). Baked potatoes and toast were my go-to foods because I was too lazy to cook.This diet is done in stages. There are few “legal foods” that are allowed during the Introductory Stage. The remaining five stages return legal foods slowly—by type of food and method of cooking (including raw). This is done because certain foods and methods of cooking are very hard for the system to digest. Also, it allows time for the system to heal itself of the damage done. Some people will need to remain at different stages of the SCD for the rest of their life; others will be able to eat at the highest stages of SCD; and still others will be able to add illegal foods in moderate amounts; or these latter people may need to return to the SCD intermittently.The SCD is difficult to follow especially in the earlier stages. I had bouts when my system was trying to get rid of all the bad stuff (part of the way the diet works). I had times when I fell off the wagon, and once again experienced all the gas and bloating and reflux, etc. I am not a good cook, and I had to learn to cook different foods in different cooking methods. It was difficult grocery shopping to ensure that I was not purchasing anything that had illegal foods. For about 2 or 3 weeks I spent about an hour each time (seriously) looking over the coffee creamers for a creamer that was legal—going over the same creamers week after week as if they were suddenly going to change their additives ☹Sometimes the recipes are not well written, but some of them are unexpectedly very good. Sometimes foods are missing. Sometimes the oven temperature or oven time is missing. Thankfully, for a diet that I had never heard of before, there were several websites. Recommend starting with BreakingTheViciousCycle.info/ and PecanBread.com/ which is an excellent site, showing all the stages, what can be eaten at each stage, and recipes for each stage (mostly? from Mrs. Gottshall’s book).Despite the problems with incomplete recipes I am rating this book with 5 stars because I think it is so valuable.

My daughter was diagnosed with mild-to-moderate Crohn's disease nearly four months ago, via endoscopy/biopsy. No treatments worked. As of three weeks ago, she was a steroid - dependent (prednisone - dependent) Crohn's case. The sole option that our pediatrician was offering us was to start chemotherapy (6MP) to try to reduce the prednisone dosing. If you're a parent, and you've been here, you know exactly the despair we felt.The SCD was like flipping the off switch on her disease. The day after starting the SCD, her fever disappeared. After four days, essentially all symptoms were resolved (other than those that are plausibly side-effects of the steroids). Two weeks later, bloodwork showed zero markers for inflammation. Three weeks, still fine.I'm a scientist, I work in health services research, I understand the potential for mistaking spontaneous remission for the effect of a treatment. But this change was so abrupt and so clear, against an extended history of no definite effect of any treatment, that I'm convinced. This diet worked, for my daughter, full stop.That said, I'll offer some advice. We looked at and dismissed the SCD early on in my daughter's disease. And it's largely because parts of this book are confusing and unclear -- until you understand enough of the underlying science. And parts are unclear because the legal/illegal list in the book does not clearly distinguish foods that you can try, once the gut has healed (e.g., beans, which are in fact a starchy food). And these apparent inconsistencies are highlighted by critics in mainstream health care.A few things make this diet a lot easier. Gwaltney sugar-free bacon. And pure dextrose (glucose) provides an easy-to-use substitute for granulated cane sugar, available on Amazon, of course: http://www.amazon.com/Now-Foods-Dextrose-Powder-10-Pound/dp/B002JNM8YMIf you want some understanding of the science behind this, you should Google up this article: "The Link between Ankylosing Spondylitis, Crohn's Disease, Klebsiella, and Starch Consumption". The gist is "molecular mimicry". That bacterium (Klebsiella) has antigens that are so close in structure to some human proteins that, in some people, when your body produces antibodies to kill Klebsiella, those antibodies cross-react with normal human tissue, resulting in autoimmune disease. A low-starch diet results in a 40-fold reduction in Klebsiella in the gut. Fewer bacteria --> fewer antibodies --> reduced autoimmune symptoms. Simple as that.Medicine is beginning to take this seriously. There are now a handful of small-scale studies of the SCD in the medical literature, and they all suggest that about 75% of people who try it go fully into remission. Exactly what this book says. There is now a clinical trial registered at NIH using this diet to maintain remission in pediatric patients. So at least some physicians must think this has some merit. Finally, the patent runs out on Remicade (the top-line drug for Crohn's) next year. Johnson and Johnson (the maker of Remicade) has bought one company, and partnered with another company, both of which are looking at ways to treat Crohn's by -- surprise -- manipulating the bacteria in the gut. Just what the SCD does. So if you still hesitate to try this, just consider that addressing Crohn's via the gut biome could very well be the wave of the future.If you find yourself in the situation we were in, I can only urge you to try the SCD sooner rather than later. In my opinion, mainstream health care critics of the diet simply misunderstand some of the more ambiguously written parts of the book. The science behind this is good, and while it won't help everybody, it helps some, and it definitely helped us.Edit: 7/17/2014. So far, so good. We are now three and a half months on the diet. My daughter is taking no medications, just vitamin D and zinc (to promote healing of the intestinal wall). She has no symptoms, and her bloodwork just came back completely normal. We all follow the SCD. No exceptions. And when I think of where we'd be, without this diet, all I can say, for us it is well worth it. I cannot express enough thanks to Elaine Gottschall and to the people who have kept this alive over the years.Update as of 9/23/2014:This will be my last update, because I really have nothing to add after this.We've now been on the diet for more than six months. My daughter feels fine and just got a clean bill of health from the gastroenterologist. We were instructed to check back in three months. If this continues, the gastroenterologist may or may not want an MRI or endoscopy at two years, just to be safe.The only change we are making is to add a couple of generally-recognized-as-safe supplements that have anti-fibrotic properties. Even in patients who appear healthy, Crohn's can lead to slowly developing fibrosis (scarring), resulting in a narrowing of the intestine that eventually requires surgery. The obvious solution would be for the doc to prescribe some anti-fibrotic as a preventative, but gastroenterologists just don't do that. So, we've added about a gram a day each of resveratrol and curcumin, based largely on Canadian research in reversing liver fibrosis in Hep C. That seems safe, and is about as much as we can do to slow down or stop any fibrosis that may (or may not) be occurring.When I think of my kid going from a frail, anemic steroid-refractory Crohn's case, to this, all I have to say is, thank you, Elaine Gottschall. And thank all the people who have kept the SCD going.