Jessica Black N.D. - Living with Crohns & Colitis: A Comprehensive Naturopathic Guide for Complete Digestive Wellness

Dede

T o MY family and friends, especially Sam, Emma, and Joey; and to Steve for being there for me when I needed him.

Jessie

T o MY family, staff, and patients for being so understanding of my deadlines and for continuing to help me grow passionately as a physician, mother, and wife.

PART I:

C HAPTER 1:

C HAPTER 2:

C HAPTER 3:

C HAPTER 4:

C HAPTER 5:

C HAPTER 6:

C HAPTER 7:

PART II:

C HAPTER 8:

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PART III:

C HAPTER 12:

T HE GREAT majority of books about inflammatory bowel diseases are written by physicians and scientists, and most are focused on a purely allopathic disease model. Living with Crohns and Colitis sets itself apart from the rest with its thorough discussion of the many dimensions to this complex disease. The book offers a treatment regimen that encompasses the mind, lifestyle, and food intake, offering a concept of wellness and a plan for better living, not just temporary remission of the inflammatory process.

Today, massive research efforts are underway to unravel the biological underpinnings of the universe of some 100 trillion microorganisms that inhabit our gut, in order to better understand the role they play in triggering chronic gut inflammation. Many factors are major players in the development and persistence of such debilitating diseases like ulcerative colitis and Crohns disease. New therapies offer help for all patients with these conditions, including those who were previously resistant to conventional therapies with anti-inflammatory drugs; these patients often ended up with multiple bowel resections and intractable fistulas. Living with Crohns and Colitis studies the complexities of these interactions and takes other influences on these systems into consideration, presenting a comprehensive discussion of major factors in the development and persistence of ulcerative colitis and Crohns disease.

Living with Crohns and Colitis presents two different perspectives, the subjective experience of an insightful and well-informed patient, Dede, and the authoritative knowledge of complementary treatment approaches to conventional medical therapy, through Dr. Black. The authors present a holistic model of disease and wellness that takes into account not only the specific disease mechanisms and cutting-edge therapies, but also the interconnectedness of mind and body, of different organs with each other, and of a lifestyle in harmony with oneself and with ones environment. The ultimate goal is not remission but wellness. While Dr. Black provides an impressive overview of the current state of scientific knowledge about the pathophysiology and medical treatment options, as a naturopathic doctor, she also introduces concepts about alternative and complementary treatment options which rarely are offered to patients in the traditional medical setting. This makes Living with Crohns and Colitis a unique source of information which should be an obligatory reading assignment for every patient suffering from inflammatory bowel disease.

In many ways, Living with Crohns and Colitis is a book closely linked with recent medical study. Emerging scientific evidence clearly supports a holistic (or sometimes referred to as a biopsychosocial) model of disease pathophysiology and therapy of all chronic diseases, including inflammatory bowel diseases. While the nervous system and its intricate connections with the gut-based immune system, and the likely interactions between the trillions of bacteria and the nervous system (the brain gut microbial axis) are not mentioned in the great majority of text books and research articles on IBD, recent evidence clearly supports an important role of such neuroimmune interactions in disease activity and recurrence. Recent well-designed epidemiological studies have rediscovered the association of psychosocial stressors, depression and anxiety with relapse rates and disease severity. It remains unknown if this association reflects simply a role of the mind in modulating the disease processes, an influence of chronic gut inflammation on brain regions concerned with the modulation of mood and affect, ormost likelya combination of both.