Well, it’s happened again folks!! Just like we are every time amazing AIP medical study results come in, we are absolutely beside ourselves at Autoimmune Wellness. The results of a second AIP medical study on the Autoimmune Protocol and inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis) are out, published by the journal, Current Developments in Nutrition, and available for everyone to read for free! If you’d like to read the full article now, you can find it here.
How did we get involved in this AIP medical study?
In summer 2018 Dr. Gauree Konijeti, the same gastroenterologist who we partnered with on the first-ever AIP study in 2016, reached out to see if she could get our help to survey those with IBD in the AIP community. Dr. Konijeti and her team, Dr. Joy Lee, a medicine resident at Scripps, and Christian Pedretti, a graduate student at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, wanted to find out how using AIP had impacted patients with IBD over a longer time frame than we had studied originally. They were especially curious to know what their reintroduction process had been like, and frankly, we were too!
Dr. Konijeti is such an engaged, open-minded doctor and the first study experience with her unlocked so many doors for further research, so we were more than happy to help. Once their study had approval, we helped by sending out a link to an anonymous online survey they’d designed via our newsletter and sharing it in various AIP support groups. If you responded to those call-outs to complete the survey, thank you!
What was studied?
The study looked at what the disease activity and dietary pattern was like among patients using AIP to help manage their IBD. The survey asked about things like age, how long patients had an IBD diagnosis, disease activity, medication use, how they used AIP, and about the foods they were able to reintroduce. The survey also gathered information about abdominal pain, stool frequency, and rectal bleeding when the patient started AIP, after six weeks of AIP, and at present.
What were the results of this study?
A total of 78 people submitted surveys. They had a mean age of 39.4 years and a mean IBD duration 13.2 years. A large majority had used steroids and 35% were on immunosuppressive drugs when they completed the survey. Here are some highlights on what was found:
- Much like the first AIP IBD study, 73% of the participants perceived achieving clinical remission due to AIP! Yes, you read that right!
- Of those on steroids, 32% reported discontinuing steroids after starting AIP.
- A majority of them started reintroducing foods between 5 weeks and 1 year of starting AIP (only 13% needed longer than 12 months to start reintroduction).
- Not surprisingly to those of us who’ve been utilizing AIP for years and learning about how these foods affect us, nightshades and gluten were the food groups that most patients said they were unable to successfully reintroduce.
To learn in-depth about the study methods, measures, analysis, and results, you can access the full article here.
What does this mean?
We are gathering more and more scientific validation that AIP works! Patients who used AIP to help manage their IBD experienced a real benefit, some of them reduced medication use, and they were able to successfully reintroduce some food groups. This shows us again that there is real data behind our conviction that this process benefits so many of us. It is continuing to open big conversations with the medical community about further research and how we can change the standard of care for those with autoimmune disease. It is our voices and support of this research that can help this become a reality.
2 comments
This is much needed research. It helps so much to validate what we know in practice. I’ve been a part of the medical community as a physical therapist for 38 years until my forced retirement due to my own autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis. I credit my journey with AIP in remaining able to work as long as I did after diagnosis was made, 5 years, and in my still being able to walk and function in my retirement. I take immunosuppressive medication, only 1, and I also have a fistula and receive total plasma exchange weekly. Most of my contemporaries are at 2-3 times per week and have varying levels of function. I know that if I hadn’t radically overhauled my diet early on after my diagnosis I would be much more physically handicapped than I am currently. I thank you and all those in the AIP community for the knowledge to be able to improve and maintain my health and my functional abilities. I have made a believer out of my neurologist. He attended a course on AIP and neurological diseases last year. Thank you again.
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