Avoid This Food To Avoid IBS

If you have inflammatory bowel syndrome (IBS), including ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, or similar, then suddenly a lot of common dietary advice gets flipped on its head:

Dietary Intolerances & More

While resistant starches and the like (so, doing the job of fiber; see: When Is A Fiber Not A Fiber? When It’s A Resistant Starch) making it to the end parts of our digestive tract is good for our bacteria there, in the case of people with IBS or similar, it can be a bit too good for our bacteria there.

As a result, a common understanding is “if you have IBS, you mustn’t eat fiber” which is understandable—but incorrect—advice. More on that in the “Learn more” bit at the bottom, but for now…

What’s the actual biggest driver of IBS?

Another reason to skip red meat

Researchers (Dr. Chunbao Li et al.) noted that relevant epidemiological studies (of which, The China Study is the most famous, but there are countless others) have long shown a strong association between red meat consumption and the development of IBS, and wanted to ascertain how exactly this happened.

This is critical, because while epidemiological studies can present an overwhelming amount of evidence for association/correlation, they cannot outright prove causality.

So, they did a mouse study (mice are opportunistic omnivores like us, indeed often eating our* food, and as a result, have very similar gut microbiota), experimenting with dietary modifications, and then measuring colonic inflammation.

^{*The mice may disagree, and contest that it is we who are eating their food. But they are free to argue that in their own publication.}

What they (the researchers, not the mice) did: they fed the mice red meat diets (beef, pork, lamb) or control for 2 weeks, followed by an induction of colitis.

What they found: red meat diets (all of them) worsened colonic inflammation, increased pro-inflammatory cytokines, and caused neutrophil and macrophage infiltration.

Specifically: red meat intake (any) decreased beneficial bacteria (Streptococcus, Akkermansia, Faecalibacterium, Lactococcus) and increased harmful ones (Clostridium, Mucispirillum).

There were some differences between the three red meats (beef, pork, lamb), but the differences pertained more to variations within:

• which beneficial bacteria were decreased the most
• which harmful bacteria were increased the most

You can see the exact results (including: per meat type and per bacterial strain) in the paper, here: Red Meat Diet Exacerbates Colitis by Promoting the Accumulation of Myeloid Cells and Disrupting Gut Microbiota

This dysbiosis (that is to say: disruption of the gut microbiome) then led to an overproduction of pro-inflammatory cytokines and infiltration of immune cells in the colon.

In other words, it inflamed the bowel—that is to say, promoted inflammatory bowel syndrome.

Want to learn more?

Check out:

Fruit, Fiber, & Leafy Greens… On A Low-FODMAP Diet!

Enjoy!