Here is a comment from the authors of a scientific article about dietary modification that appeared in the ACP Gastroenterology Monthly newsletter:

“We acknowledge that dietary therapy is challenging both from a practitioner and patient standpoint as there is more effort needed to achieve a desirable outcome compared to medical therapy. Our center is keenly interested in this approach as our patients have been very active in pursuing non-pharmacologic alternatives to treatment, so our practice has evolved to include this as a treatment plan.”

In other words, as patients demanded more attention to diet, physicians modified their way of working. This led to better understanding and a published study about how much diet can help. Those results may then lead more doctors and patients to use dietary changes to manage symptoms. And bit by bit, the medical world becomes more open to things that once were labeled “alternative.”

What was the specific study being discussed? It involved the use of elimination diets - diets that involve removing foods to see if symptoms improve, and then reintroducing those foods to see which foods trigger symptoms. In the study, patients tried eliminating foods from their diet to improve eosinophilic esophagitis. Eosinophilic esophagitis is an irritation of the esophagus (the tube that goes from the mouth to the stomach) caused by eosinophils, cells that react to things in the environment. A biopsy is needed to diagnose this, and the usual treatment is oral steroids, which have numerous side effects.

SOURCE: Samir at the English-language Wikipedia

The elimination diet used in this study removed six foods: milk, wheat, soy, eggs, true nuts/peanuts, and fish/shellfish. Nearly 60% of patients had improvement seen on biopsy specimens, and most of those patients felt better.

After improvement, the eliminated foods were reintroduced one at a time. About 70% of patients only had one food that triggered symptoms and inflammation, another 25% had two, and a few had more. The most common food triggers were milk, wheat, and soy.

Not everyone needs to avoid these foods, though for patients with digestive complaints, eliminating and then reintroducing foods may be helpful. For me, while the study was interesting, what was more interesting was seeing an increased level of openness towards dietary interventions in the medical world.