Gastroenterologists Reveal Diet That Protects Toddlers From Bowel Disease

A healthy diet from an age as early as 1 could drastically reduce the chances of inflammatory bowel disease, a new study has found.

The study, published by scientists in the journal Gut, found that a preventive diet of plenty of vegetables and fish may be the way to avoid the disease. The disease, also known as IBD, occurs when the digestive tract becomes inflamed.

Symptoms include pain in the stomach, diarrhea, rectal bleeding, urgent need to poop and more. In many cases, people are able to live a normal life if they keep the symptoms under control with various treatments. However it can sometimes cause severe complications, and can increase the risk of colon cancer.

Cases seem to be increasing over the world although scientists are not sure why. Scientists have already looked at how diet can increase or reduce risk in adults, but there is little information on infants.

There is no distinct cause of IBD, but it usually occurs in those with a weaker immune system. Therefore research into how to prevent and stop the disease is ongoing.

To reach these new findings, researchers analyzed data of thousands of children from databases across Sweden and Norway. During the study, scientists asked parents for details on their children’s diet through their different ages.

They found that diets with a higher amount of vegetables and fish when the child was 1 year old was connected with a lower risk of the disease. Children that had a higher intake of sugar sweetened drinks were connected with a 42 percent increase in risk, the study reported.

Scientists did not find a link between a high amount of meat, dairy or potatoes. But there was a notable link between vegetables and fish and a lower risk of IBD.

When the children studied were 3, the scientists noticed that only a very high amount of fish in the diet contributed to a lower risk of the disease.

“While non-causal explanations for our results cannot be ruled out, these novel findings are consistent with the hypothesis that early-life diet, possibly mediated through changes in the gut microbiome, may affect the risk of developing IBD,” the authors wrote in the study.

While this study certainly has some notable findings, more research will need to be done to establish how preventive these foods can be for children and their risk of IBD.

Ashwin Ananthakrishnan, a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in an editorial on the findings that it may indeed be time to recommend the preventive diet.

“Despite the absence of gold standard interventional data demonstrating a benefit of dietary interventions in preventing disease, in my opinion, it may still be reasonable to suggest such interventions to motivated individuals that incorporate several of the dietary patterns associated with lower risk of IBD from this and other studies,” Ananthakrishnan said in the editorial. “This includes ensuring adequate dietary fibre, particularly from fruit and vegetables, intake of fish, minimising sugar-sweetened beverages and preferring fresh over processed and ultra-processed foods and snacks.”

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