Dietary Fiber's Impact on Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

There was a 56% decrease in the incidence of Crohn’s disease and a 20% decrease in the incidence of ulcerative colitis, when comparing the highest and lowest categories of DF intake. However, the Crohn’s disease meta-analysis revealed substantial heterogeneity. The incidence of Crohn’s disease was observed to reduce by 13% for every 10 g/d increase in dietary fiber, suggesting a linear dose-response association between the two (Liu et al., 2015 (link)). The short-chain fatty acid component of fermentable fiber, butyrate, has been hypothesized to have an anti-inflammatory impact via downregulating the transcription factor NF-kB. According to a meta-analysis supporting this anti-inflammatory effect, supplementing with DF led to a small, but statistically significant decrease in C-reactive protein levels in people who were overweight or obese (Jiao et al., 2015 (link)).