Can You Say Diet Is One Of The Causes Of Colitis?

Unfortunately it is often the case that many misinformed people will advise you it was your diet as being one of the most likely causes of colitis that you are now suffering from. Now, this could appear as a reasonable conclusion as all the food and drink that you have consumed passes through the intestinal tract and therefore it is most likely to be responsible if something goes wrong. Yet can this really be true?

There also previals the misconception that some food types are identified as a cause of colitis due to the fact that ever so suddenly the known symptoms of the disease appear. The opposite is probably true in that some foods can trigger symptoms for sufferers but that is not to say that these foodstuffs actually caused the diagnosis in the first place.

The incidences of colitis were once restricted to countries of the West. A significant happening is the spread of the incidences of colitis to other parts of the world including former colitis free continents such as Africa and the Far East. This has come about by greater movement of people, a greater awareness of the Western lifestyle and with rising living standards, and a desire to adopt such a lifestyle. There is a danger that it can be easy to classify diet as a likely cause from witnessing other countries embrace a Western diet, though this could be incorrect without considering other matters.

There is a need for further research and investigation into other possible contributors such as the role that genetics play plus also a very important element, namely enviromental factors. In the last few years there have been extensive genetic studies undertaken with the results identifying several genes that can be associated with the incidence of colitis. Whilst it is acknowledged that such findings may be able to explain the diagnosis in Western society, it has to be appreciated that it can't be used as evidence for the ever increasing numbers being diagnosed with the disease in other continents. This is where the role of environmental factors has to be investigated. The role of bacteria, both good and bad, requires to be studied, the cleanliness or otherwise of our environment, the increasing amounts of stress that people are subjected to in their daily lives, are all factors that could play a significant role in the causes of colitis.

Simplistic analysis suggests that if a Western diet is a contributory factor in the onset of colitis then the basic formula of consumption of high levels of fat and sugar with a correspondingly low consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables is a recipe for an increased chance of being diagnosed. Whilst a conclusion could be drawn from some research that indicated that a diet high in sugar could be associated with a higher incidence of colitis, there is no demonstration that it could justifiable be a cause of colitis. It may well be that a desire for a greater consumption of sugar may be an actual consequence of having a colitis diagnosis rather than an actual cause of colitis.

As can be witnessed, there is much discussion about the causes of colitis and whether diet does actually play a role in its development. What should be taken from this is that a healthy balanced diet should be consumed and if someone is diagnosed with colitis, whilst adjustments have to be made to what is consumed, there still needs to be as much balance as comfortably possible in the diet to try and maintain good overall health.