A good high fat diet can bring about positive changes in gut bacteria, which can help you fight harmful inflammation and reduce the symptoms of Crohn’s disorder, a chronic inflammatory bowel disorder, confirms a new study. Crohn’s diseases causes debilitating intestinal swelling, cramping and diarrhoea. In this new study, a diet of plant-derived good fats, which included coconut oil or cocoa butter, significantly reduced the bacterial diversity in mice with Crohn’s like disorder.
A mice which was fed with fatty diets had up to thirty per cent lower amount of gut bacteria as compared to those who were fed with their normal diets. This collectively resulted in a very different gut microbial composition. Some of the species even showed significant changes in the faeces, while others were showing difference in cecum, a portion of intestine which is inflamed in case of Crohn's disorder.
Mice fed even low concentrations of coconut oil or cocoa butter also had less severe small intestine inflammation, according to the findings presented at the annual Digestive Disease Week conference in Chicago.
"The finding is remarkable because it means that a Crohn's patient could also have a beneficial effect on their gut bacteria and inflammation by only switching the type of fat in their diet," said first author on the study Alexander Rodriguez-Palacios, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in in Cleveland, Ohio, US.
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"Patients would only need to replace a 'bad' fat with a 'good' fat, and eat normal amounts," Rodriguez-Palacios said.
The findings could help doctors identify bacteria to use in probiotics to treat patients suffering from inflammatory bowel syndromes.
(With IANS Inputs)
