Functional Medicine meeting announcement 10-22-2015
Our next discussion Functional Medicine Discussion Group meeting is on Thursday, October 22nd at 6 pm and our topic will be Inflammatory Bowel Disease. I am very excited that we will be discussing a GI topic, the foundation for functional medicine. I am pleased to note that a respected gastroenterologist in Santa Monica, Dr. Marc Wishingrad, has agreed to join us. Please email or call if you will be able to attend so that i can get a head count. As usual, Metagenics, our sponsor, will be providing us with some healthy food.
As you probably know, Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) refers to chronic inflammatory conditions that involve both the small and large intestines and affect approximately 1.4 million people in the US. The two most common categories of IBD are Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and Crohn’s Disease (Cr) and as you know, these conditions can be incredibly difficult to manage.
Registered Dietician Lauren Cornell has a practice specialty on GI disorders and has taught about nutrition and IBD and she has offered to start the discussion with an overview of some of the most effective dietary regimens and supplements that may help manage both UC and Cr. Among the dietary regimens that have been found to be effective for patients in the literature with UC and Cr are the elemental diet, the specific carbohydrate diet, the anti-inflammatory diet, a low fiber diet, an elimination diet, and the low FODMAP diet. Among supplements that have been found to have documented benefit to some patients are the following: 1. Probiotics, 2. Prebiotics, 3. Fish Oil, 4. Curcumin, 5. Glutamine, 6. Vitamin D, and 7. Boswellia, among others. If anyone else would like to present a case study, that would be great.
I’ve attached a couple of papers. One is an overview on natural therapies for IBD and the other is on the low FODMAP diet for Crohn’s, my personal favorite dietary approach. Another good thing to read would be the chapter in the Integrative Gastroenterology book edited by Gerard Mullin, “Alternative approaches to the patient with inflammatory bowel disease.” published by Oxford in 2011.
I’ve been asked to change the dates of the November and the December meetings, since the dates are too close to the holidays, so I propose that we switch them to Tuesday November 17 and Thursday December 17. Is that o.k. with most of us? Feel free to pass the invite on to any of your colleagues who are interested in functional medicine or send me their email.
