From the Desk of Carolyn Dean MD ND
On MedPage, I saw the title “Our Understanding of IBD Has Come a Long Way—So Have the Options to Treat It.” I was interested to see if allopathic medicine had finally caught up with the naturopathic way of treating Inflammatory Bowel Disease in the past twenty years since I wrote about it in IBS for Dummies. Of course, I was disappointed, as I usually am, by the missteps of Modern Medicine.
Fake and Pandering
A nurse practitioner wrote the article and said she had been on the front lines of caring for people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) for 25 years. I thought, cool, then she’s learned a thing or two, especially about the side effects of medications for bowel disease. She said that medicine had evolved “to a more holistic approach that targets underlying mechanisms of the disease, considers the entire patient journey, and ultimately, improves outcomes.” She continued, “This encompasses “a multidisciplinary healthcare team has played a significant role in this shift and improvement in patient care.”
As it turns out, they were pandering words touting a fake multidisciplinary, holistic approach. There were 586 fluff words that didn’t say anything substantive, which then led to the main focus of the article—a new drug for IBD. By the way, our nurse practitioner “was paid an honorarium by Johnson & Johnson for drafting this article.” Drafting is an interesting term to use—to me, it means she wrote the basics, and then someone at Johnson & Johnson embellished it.
Infection as a Side Effect
The next 1461 words were about a “biologic” drug called STELARA—spelled out in CAPS. I’ve written about biologic drugs before; you can search my blog archives to see my great concern for the long lists of side effects that come with these drugs.
I knew Johnson & Johnson was careful to mention all the STELARA side effects. That’s because, with the dangers of the drug in writing, patients can’t sue the company if they have a reaction! Of the 1461 words describing the drug, 1,177 were about the safety concerns and side effects! This article was a barely disguised drug ad.
I don’t want to list all the side effects; you can go to the article yourself and be shocked. However, I was pretty disgusted to see that infection seems to be a contraindication for using the drug. However, INFECTION is often the cause of IBD! Seriously?
Here are their safety concerns:
Serious adverse reactions have been reported in STELARA®-treated patients, including bacterial, mycobacterial, fungal, and viral infections, malignancies, and hypersensitivity reactions. STELARA® should not be given to patients with any clinically important active infection.
1,645 Informed Words
Now, I’m going to give you 1,645 words on what I recommend for IBD – Colitis from my Future Health Now Encyclopedia that is available on my member site drcarolyndean.com:
Ulcerative colitis is a bowel inflammation causing diarrhea and in the extreme case – intestinal bleeding. Along with Crohn’s Disease, it’s called Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). The most probable cause appears to be improper food digestion, which can be brought on by a junk-food diet. Another common cause is intestinal infection. After the original irritation is created by a bad diet or infection, the foods that are most difficult to digest are gluten and dairy. Other substances such as sugar, alcohol, coffee, tea, sorbitol, aspartame sweeteners, and cigarettes are also implicated in bowel irritation.
Infection can begin with sudden onset of diarrhea and can be due to bacteria, parasites, yeast or fungi. Such infections occur commonly when traveling. A stool sample will sometimes indicate the culprit. It is very difficult to identify parasites or even yeast from a stool sample, however. A rectal swab is a much more effective way to identify parasites. The swab scrapes the rectal mucosa sweeping up parasites where they live. This swab must be viewed under a microscope immediately to see the live organisms. To rule out any underlying pathology, your doctor may recommend a bowel x-ray using barium chalk and/or a fiber optic examination of the colon. If nothing is wrong with your intestines, you must research dietary causes of colitis and use our Completement Formulas to treat it.
Diet
The first step is to avoid gluten, dairy, sugar, tea, coffee, processed meat, and all food additives, especially aspartame (NutraSweet). Maintain this diet for at least one month to determine if the food you eat is causing your problems.
Most people improve on this regimen. If you don’t or if only minor improvement is noted, you might have to avoid even more foods and perhaps have food allergy tests to determine the offending foods. These tests are available through complementary medicine doctors.
There are many treatment programs available for people who have colitis. However, a diet that avoids all grains may allow fruit, which in someone who has yeast overgrowth would not be appropriate. A diet that focuses entirely on vegetables and fruits presents the same problem. Since many people with colitis have a leaky gut and overgrowth of yeast, then sugar and fruit restriction are necessary. An individualized program is necessary when treating colitis.
A lactose tolerance test can determine a lactose allergy but will not indicate an allergy to any other constituents of milk. The best advice is to eliminate milk for at least two to three weeks to see if there is a change. You can also be allergic to wheat; this is often due to the gluten in wheat. Gluten is also found in rye and barley. We always include oats in this category but only because most oats are processed and packaged in factories that handle other gluten grains, so the oats are contaminated with gluten. All four grains should be entirely eliminated for at least a month and then challenged back with several meals of gluten grains to determine if reintroduction causes more symptoms. Many people with symptoms of colitis or irritable bowel have an overgrowth of yeast in their intestines, which can be treated with picometer silver and a natural antifungal/probiotic.
You may be suffering from a diet change that is putting too much roughage into your intestines. In trying to improve your lifestyle, you may add more whole grain cereals and breads, vegetables and beans, hearing that these foods are good for you. To your horror you develop gas and cramping in the intestines because of the added roughage and not because you are allergic to them. If this is the case, cut back on the roughage, drink more water, soak your beans before cooking, go into your diet changes more slowly, and take probiotic yogurt or probiotic supplements to build up the good bacteria in your intestines. I recommend Saccharomyces boulardii combined with humic/fulvic acid.
Food Combining
Food combining is often very helpful in calming down an irritable, inflamed bowel. You eat only one to two types of food at a time so that your digestion is not stressed.
* Eat fruit alone.
* If you eat protein such as meat, fish, chicken, eggs or cheese, eat it with leafy salad vegetables only, not root vegetables or beans.
* If you eat grains or bread, eat them with root vegetables and beans.
All the Completement Formulas will be helpful in creating balance but especially soil-based probiotics and stabilized ions of picometer liquid silver for yeast overgrowth.
Unlearn Worry
Sometimes, in spite of numerous dietary interventions, medications and doctor’s visits, symptoms remain. You may have developed a pattern of diarrhea and cramps under stress and specific triggers that perpetuate the problem. Each time you worry, “What if there’s no bathroom where I’m going, what if I can’t get through my presentation?” intestinal muscles tighten and cramps and diarrhea result. Just as you learned how to create these symptoms, you can unlearn them.
Consider doing EFT or seeing a therapist who practices EFT either in person or over the telephone.
