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Comment by mfer | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been reading, from medical doctors, about how inflammation is tied to diet. There are a bunch of papers on it. “Fiber Fueled” was an interesting book to explain what’s going on.

Have you looked at the impact of diet?

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Sorry, this is not helpful. I guarantee you that anyone who suffers gastrointestinal disorders has considered their diet. The pain sometimes feel like a bottomless pit of suffering.

I had GI issues and talked to doctors about it. Not a single one of them said anything about diet. Looking back at it is rather frustrating.

When I first learned about diet the advice was terrible. It didn’t work.

Now that I have a good conceptual model for my GI track and food it all makes more sense.

For me (well controlled IBS), diet only seems to be a minor factor. It can be very difficult to really figure out if any particular food is causing a problem, or if it's some other factor. You need to test the food multiple times under different circumstances. For myself, I did think that certain foods caused problems. But I've since realised that I can eat pretty much all of those foods without problem. There are certain things that I'm careful about (alcohol, and wine in particular, sugary drinks, and coffee), but even those I can tolerate in moderation. The only thing that reliably causes symptoms for me is stress (100% of the time).

I fully understand where you are coming from, but do not discount the power of diet. I found, that in order to see a real difference, I had to move ~very~ far away from my old habits. It can be a scary thing to do.

Every gastroenterologist I have ever talked to has been ~absolutely certain~ that diet plays no role at all in gut inflammation.

I'm glad to see this mindset start to change.

Hm that's weird, is that recent or 10+ years ago? I went to an old man gastro doc and he said the first thing on the checklist nowadays with IBS is low FODMAP diet.

The most recent doctor I asked was 6 months ago. I've been diagnosed with Chrons specifically, so that may be a factor.

Incidentally, my current diet is extremely high in a subset of FODMAPs and has helped dramatically.

Absolute certainty is not how any heard any doctors (outside of politics) frame their level of certainty on medical questions. Isn’t it more like “there are no studies showing a link between X and Y”?

You would think, but my personal experience is the exact opposite. I actually continue to ask every new doctor the same question and continue to receive the same answer.

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