Tag Archives: SCD

Concise Summary of SCD Studies

SUMMARY:  Here is the Concise Summary of Specific Carbohydrate Diet, or SCD Studies with a focus on SCD for dietary treatment for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).  Actually though, SCD is used for many conditions, not just IBD.  This post focuses on the boatload of studies evaluating SCD for IBD because that is where most of the SCD research is happening.  Make sure you look at the comments below this post for even more links to studies that have published since I released this post.  You’ll even see that modified versions of SCD are also in study for IBD like PRODUCE, CDED, CD-TREAT, IBD-AID, Low FODMAP, Mediterranean! [Sabino et al 2019]. The findings support that once gut irritating foods are removed, the immune system changes because the gut microbiome changes. That should be true for whatever condition SCD is used for.  Take this Round-table of SCD studies to your doctor and ask for support especially if for IBD.  They should liaison with those already integrating the SCD into IBD dietary therapeutics.  SCD helps IBD with or without medications and can be used to induce remission for many with and without medications.  Always, the goal of treatment is IBD remission, not necessarily medication-free.  Half of the 417 patients surveyed [Suskind et al., 2016] use the SCD to induce remission; the other half use it adjunct to medications because of medication failure.  Think how many guts could be saved!  Dr. David Suskind (leading light GI at Seattle Children’s  Hospital integrating SCD into IBD clinical  dietary therapeutics) explains [Suskind Dietary Treatment  YouTube, 2016] that some use SCD alone if with mild to moderate symptoms at diagnosis.  Others use SCD along with medications and then once in remission, it may be possible to wean off medications.  Consider giving some of the SCD tenets (especially the emulsifier elimination) a try regardless of your disease, or for aggressive  preventative health.  Diet that removes gut irritants is that powerful because it changes up the microbiome where over 70% of immunity resides!  What do you have to lose????  

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My Healing Diet Holiday Appetizers, a Roundup!

SUMMARY:   Openers Thanksgiving Day are actually all day long in our home.  Friends and family stop in knowing a culinary taste dream awaits them.  Incredibly though, my openers are simple with many made way ahead of time and pulled from the freezer a day or two ahead.   That is the only way to go because, well… it is too much fun celebrating with my guests then being creative in the kitchen!  Here’s my roundup!  You will find the recipe links below, or if the recipes have not yet posted, I printed the instructions below.  The Holiday Board on my Pinterest has these plus even more greats if you want other variety!  Hoping you enjoy My Healing Diet Holiday Appetizers Roundup!   Happy holidays!

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Get SCD Cheese Right. It is Loaded with Nutrients & Bacteria!

SUMMARY:  Hey… listen up! You want to get SCD Cheese right because it is loaded with Nutrients & Beneficial Bacteria!  ALL healing diets (SCD, GAPS, PALEO,  AIP, FODMAP…) eliminate lactose because most inflamed guts can not digest lactose!  Actually, the lactase enzyme in our gut (which breaks down lactose) is the last to return to normal after the gut has healed (see page 25, Breaking the Vicious Cycle (BTVC), Edition 13, 2010).   Further, certain diseases (like 65% of autism have a lactase deficiency) are associated with lactose intolerance, and some diseases (like IBS which afffects ten to fifteen percent of the population) may have an intolerance to the quantity of lactose consumed in the diet. For IBS  sufferers, 3 out of 4 are helped with the FODMAP  diet which figures out if foods we all digest poorly (which includes lactose) are even tolerated and if so, in what amount!  And the British Dietetic Association 2016 update for IBS recommends a trial period of a low lactose diet where sensitivity to milk is suspected and a lactose hydrogen breath test is not available or appropriate.  So many people are benefited by reducing or eliminating lactose in their diet!  This post explains how to do that deliciously using the SCD tenets, and it explains why eating lactose-free cheese is important (if you tolerate the casein protein) sharing 7 SCD cheese requirments to consider in selecting cheeses!  Bottom Line:  Everyone wants to get cheese right because it contains a whopping  10,000,000,000 or 10 billion MICROBES, and it seems they survive the gut transit ride and  beneficially impact your microbiome diversity + richness… all good immune boosting stuff!    

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SCD Seasoned Almond Flour ‘Bread’ Crumbs and Veg Recipe

Summary:  Seems everyone enjoys this staple gracing holiday tables going back generations!  It was my Dad’s favorite and for good reason.  Broccoli smothered in butter, cheese, and breadcrumbs.  What’s not to LOVE about that?  Wait tho — What to do if gluten-free?  Toss the tenets of healing diets to the holiday wind?  NO!  Here’s my holiday gift to you — use SCD Seasoned Almond Flour ‘Bread’ Crumbs!  Find the How-to in this post’s recipe: Broccoli, Cauliflower, and Cheddar Cheese, with Seasoned Almond Flour ‘Bread’ Crumbs.  Don’t know how it never made it on my Holiday Pinterest Board, but it’s there now!  HAPPY THANKSGIVING and early MERRY CHRISTMAS!  Last, read my special note for thyroid patients.  It’s crazy how so many of you don’t know this but, the cruciferous vegetables are on the goitrogenic foods list. That doesn’t mean they are off limits.  What that means is they need steamed or cooked and that is what this recipe requires.  You should be free to enjoy this recipe without worry of kicking up thyroid antibodies, but always check with your doctor!  This recipe meets PALEO/SCD/GAPS/UMASS IBD-AID/Mediterranean too!

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SCD Chicken Tortilla Soup

Summary:   SCD Chicken Tortilla Soup is an EASY and nutritious family favorite that my kidos ask me to make!  We have this soup year round, not just on cold Fall and winter nights.  It’s a great way to increase your children’s vegetable and bone broth consumption, And if you must have ‘tortilla chips’, try the below substitute!  Tip:  Grill twice as many chicken breasts as you need for the week and make this soup in bulk.  Often I quadruple this recipe and freeze portions.  My kidos always take it back to college, and often, I use frozen soups as my “ice” for travel!  If you happen to have a lot of leftover chicken or turkey (think Thanksgiving), this recipe makes great use of it!  The “hot” seasonings — simply adjust to your family’s preference.  Last, I’m sharing for the first time, my real thoughts on our pre-SCD meals (in hindsight) along with where the healing recipes that I post are really rooted.  Clue: “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”  Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

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Defy Autoimmune Psoriasis: Green Tea, Black Tea, Lemon Juice Antioxidant

SUMMARY:  Plenty of studies find anti-inflammatory effects of dietary antioxidants such as green tea for chronic disease.  Even in IBD patients, who have a very messed up microbiome (a finding of the American Gut data), the  benefits of antioxidant therapy is well documented (see below studies).  Read here about a simple EASY N=1 hack for one IBD patient that shut down a mild psoriasis skin flare that began two years ago.  They flared psoriasis, but not the autoimmune IBD, eating strict healing diet Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) probably due to a gluten/sugar airborne exposure.  The hack that worked for stopping psoriasis: Green Tea, Black Tea with Lemon Juice antioxidant blend!  I share their recipe here!   It is simple enough that you may want to add it to your immune calming anti-inflammatory arsenal too!  Make sure to see below for why it is important to NOT drink Green Tea for antioxidant benefit along with Iron.  

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Homemade Chocolate Hazelnut Spread, PALEO/FODMAP/UMassIBD-AID

SUMMARY:  This… Thanksgiving morning! Homemade Chocolate Hazelnut Spread.  Actually, don’t save this for only one day; we certainly don’t!  Easily make this in bulk and freeze.

Ingredients and Processing I Prefer to Use


The nut ingredients in this recipe make these bars an advanced food for those on healing diets such as SCD, UMass IBD-AID, GAPS, or PALEO.  For this very reason, I recommend using these instructions to properly prepare nut and seed ingredients  whenever possible to make such more easily digestible.  But if you don’t do this step, no worries since the notes section of the recipe provides alternate instructions for toasting those nuts!  The recipe is not SCD/GAPS legal due to the cocoa, but it is in accordance with The PRODUCE Study (a modified version of SCD), the UMass version of SCD which is called IBD-AID, PALEO and also FODMAP friendly if maple syrup is substituted for the dates; details are broken out below the recipe for those interested.

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50 IBD SCD remission patients: RUSH paper

SUMMARY:  In August, 2015, RUSH University published  their study of 50 IBD Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) remission patients: The Specific Carbohydrate Diet for Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Case Series. This is the largest report on a series of patients with IBD following the SCD to date and describes their clinical characteristics.  50 patients in remission eating SCD case series are reported which comprise: 36 subjects had Crohn’s Disease, 9 subjects had Ulcerative Colitis, and 5 subjects had in-determinant IBD.  

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What’s in a Practical Whole Foods PALEO, SCD, Gaps Healing Fridge?

SUMMARY:  Check out this healing, anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense fridge, and learn what is in a practical whole foods PALEO, SCD, GAPS Mediterranean diet type fridge, that also happens to be sustainable and family and friends friendly!  Also learn practical tips for transitioning (with recipe links) & quality food sourcing links.   Each of our microbiomes differ by over 99% and that means, there is no one right diet for all due to each of our unique physiologic and genetic (human and microbial) variability. This includes the trendy diets, like Ketogenic, PALEO, Atkins, Zone, as well as the popular, government-sponsored diets such as DASH (revised 2015) and TLC (2005, still needs updated).  The Mediterranean Diet continues to have evidence based benefit.  In fact, a diet called MIND, which combines Mediterranean, DASH, and aging brain literatureshowed for strict follow, that brains functioned as if 7 years younger AND there was a 53% reduction of Alzheimer’s risk.   Moderate follow reduced Alzheimer’s risk by 35%!  MIND is currently recruiting 600 with a family history of dementia or Alzheimer’s, and a BMI 25 or over, for clinical trial at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and RUSH University Medical Center!  The top diets in each category share similar attributes including balance, higher vegetable and some fruit (especially low sugar like berries, avocados), wild caught fish, fermented food (see the 2017 D. D. Rosa et al for the benefits of kefir which are also listed below), awareness of EWG toxin recommendations, along with self awareness, finding a like minded tribe of experienced healing diet eaters able to support your learning thereby establishing Blue Zones within families, to friends, to communities (Dr. David Katz, Episode 11 of Awakening From Alzheimer’s, and monitoring of what you eat through journaling.  An emphasis on frequent, structured exercise and physical activity are also common themes.  With awareness of the many tenets of healing type diets and lifestyle impact on the microbiomesmall diet and lifestyle changes result in big health improvement without the perceived rigidity of following a traditional diet plan, and these changes motivate you to your NEXT.   Eating microbiome gut supporting foods works.  Just check out my Testimonial page! 

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Nice, SCD increased F. prausnitzii… hugh?!?

SUMMARY:  This post is a followup to the post, IBD CROHN’S: SCD INCREASED MICROBIOME DIVERSITY BUT LOW RESIDUAL DIET REDUCED DIVERSITY.  It discusses the significance of the finding that SCD increased F. prausnitzii within the microbiome for Crohn’s patients eating SCD.  I’d suspect however, that similar results occur even for non-Crohn’s SCD consumers, which would be a good thing. For details of the microbiome changes due to SCD (microbial diversity increased to include 134 bacteria belonging to 32 different classes (Figure 8), the bacterial families over represented in the increase included over 20 species of the non-pathogenic clostridia family and more) read the post IBD CROHN’S: SCD INCREASED MICROBIOME DIVERSITY BUT LOW RESIDUAL DIET REDUCED DIVERSITY.  Think about the 3.5 to 5 pounds of bacteria that lives on and in us: what are they, how did they get there, and what does their mix mean for our health?  Ends up, F. prausnitzii is a major player in gut health and those having more of it fare better, at least for IBD where F. prausnitzii seems to be reduced.  In summary, F. prausnitzii protects against pathogen invasion, modulates the immune system, is an acetate consumer, and is a producer of substantial quantities of butyrate as well as high amounts of antioxidant compounds.  Some call F. prausnitzii a keystone peacekeeping microbe.  

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