Supplements for Crohn's/Colitis/IBS - The Brand I Swear By - Garden of Life

If you have Crohn's UC IBS or any digestive issues, you probably don't absorb all the nutrients from the food you eat.  You have to supplement with a good product that will make up for what you lose in your food.  Also, if you have to adhere to a strict diet, limited diet, you may not even consume some of the foods that nourish and provide you with the needed vitamins and minerals that you need to keep your body functioning to the best of it's ability.    

Garden of Life is by far, one of the best supplement/vitamin/herb companies out there.  They are one of the few brands that provide ORGANIC supplements.  Have you noticed that it's very rare to find good vitamins that are organic?  I never used to look for organic until I refuse to put anything that isn't organic into my body.   I'm posting what I take from them that works great and am able to tolerate.  My body is sensitive to supplements, so finding a brand that my body can handle is a process of trial and error. Hope you find this helpful :)

( Everything I have posted here can be found at www.gardenoflife.com ) 

The Vitamin Code - Healthy Blood: I need iron, but have never been able to tolerate oral iron at all.  This doesn't irritate my digestive system or give me any problems. Works great.  

Borody-His Innovative Discoveries on Digestive Disease - #FMT & #RHB104

This is another great article.  I knew that Dr. Borody, a doctor and professor out of Australia, developed FMT's (Fecal Matter Transplants) and was 1st to use the transplants to treat c-diff.  Interesting enough he is also considering FMT's for other digestive problems and even neurological conditions.  It will be interesting to see what illnesses are helped with this procedure.  

Here in the US doesn't even have a billing code for FMT's AND the FDA have only permitted transplants for difficult cases of c-diff, patients who do not respond to the antibiotic, that only around 30% of the patients respond to.  FMT's have a 90% recovery rate.  The question again is why not go with the treatment that has a higher success rate rather than lower.  Very sad that the US is so slow to adopt new and smarter treatments that will get people well.   I won't even go there today. It is an issue that probably raises my blood pressure if I think about it too long.  Not even joking.  

Anyway, after reading this article, I found out that Dr Borody also was the innovator for RHB-104 that is currently in the trial stages at this time. If you have Crohn's and don't know what RHB-104, read up on the treatment.  I have some blog posts that will give a good amount of information about the therapy.  It will make you smile and give you a boost of hope for something that may actually be able to eradicate Crohn's all together.  That is exciting!  
Professor Thomas Borody gets it!  He seems to understand the nature of digestive diseases very well.  He is certainly the man who is making some progress with developing real solutions to treat the actual condition and not just remedy the symptoms of a disease.  His name is one to remember and follow as he implements treatments that seem to be successful so far.  
Part of this article gives a little in depth look at his life and how he chose to dedicate his direction to gastrointestinal diseases.   

Note: I have underlined parts of the article that I felt were things to take note of.

He has the stomach for it | JPost | Israel News:

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Prof. Thomas Borody Photo: Courtesy
It’s amazing when in medicine, ideas that had seemed ridiculous – such as a chronic infection instead of an annoying boss causing ulcers – eventually become accepted truisms. Even though stools are considered dirty and something to get rid of, gastroenterologists have discovered that they can transplant feces from healthy donors into patients and very often relieve their chronic bacterial infections, irritable bowel disease (IBD), colitis, constipation and even some neurological conditions.

Prof. Thomas Borody, the founder and current medical director of the Center for Digestive Diseases (CDD) in Sydney, Australia, is a major innovator in these surprising treatments.

The CDD is considered a unique medical institution offering novel approaches in researching, diagnosing and treating gastrointestinal conditions. CDD offers a range of services in the day-procedure unit and houses a research and innovation department for conducting clinical trials in collaboration with universities, pharmaceutical companies and medical societies – all focusing on gastroenterology.

Donor Feces Cure Recurrent Diarrheal Infection, Study Shows - Bloomberg

Ummmm lol I still don't know about this.  There's just something that seems wrong about receiving an infusion..... of feces!



Donor Feces Cure Recurrent Diarrheal Infection, Study Shows - Bloomberg:

An infusion of feces through the nose beat the standard antibiotic as a treatment for a recurrent diarrhea-causing infection that kills about 14,000 Americans a year, a study showed.

In a trial among 43 people with recurrent diarrhea caused by a persistent bug called Clostridium difficile, 81 percent of those who received an infusion of feces from a healthy donor after treatment with vancomycin were cured, compared with only 31 percent of those treated with the drug alone, researchers from the University of Amsterdam wrote in an article published yesterday by the New England Journal of Medicine. The study was stopped early because the treatment was clearly working.

The results validate an approach called fecal microbiota transplantation, or FMT, pioneered in 1958 by doctors in Denver, and provides an alternative for the approximately one-in-four patients whose infection isn’t cleared by initial antibiotic treatment. C. difficile is the most common cause of hospital- acquired infectious diarrhea in the U.S. and costs about $1 billion a year to treat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Only patients with the most recalcitrant cases of C. difficile infection are likely to undergo FMT, usually out of desperation after multiple treatment approaches have failed,” Ciaran Kelly, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study. The use of feces may be eliminated by the use of cultured bacteria that make the recipient resistant to C. difficile, Kelly said.

Restoring Bacteria

The procedure probably works by restoring normal gut bacteria, the researchers, led by Els van Nood, wrote in the study, which was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

Vancomycin is sold as Vancocin by ViroPharma Inc. (VPHM) Vancocin accounted for $289 million in sales in 2011, more than half of Exton, Pennsylvania-based ViroPharma’s revenue.

A federal judge last week dismissed the company’s lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over generic forms of the antibiotic developed by Akorn Inc. (AKRX) and Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. (WPI)

Optimer Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OPTR)’s Dificid, approved for sale in the U.S. in May 2011, was the first drug cleared for the infection in 25 years.

By Simeon Bennett - Jan 17, 2013 6:28 AM ET

Study- Links Bacteria in Gut as MAIN CAUSE OF IBS

Awesome  read....  They  are  getting  closer... CLOSER & CLOSER 

Article Highlights

"In the past, treatments for IBS have always focused on trying to alleviate the symptoms," said Pimentel, who first bucked standard medical thought more than a decade ago when he suggested bacteria played a significant role in the disease. "Patients who take rifaximin experience relief of their symptoms even after they stop taking the medication. This new study confirms what our findings with the antibiotic and our previous studies always led us to believe: Bacteria are key contributors to the cause of IBS."    I love to see the words like..... Cause, Cure, Effective Treatment, Rid the Body of disease causing bacteria.  

Physicians definitively links irritable bowel syndrome and bacteria in gut

May 25, 2012 in Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

An overgrowth of bacteria in the gut has been definitively linked to Irritable Bowel Syndrome in the results of a new Cedars-Sinai study which used cultures from the small intestine. This is the first study to use this "gold standard" method of connecting bacteria to the cause of the disease that affects an estimated 30 million people in the United States.

Previous studies have indicated that bacteria play a role in the disease, including breath tests detecting methane – a byproduct of bacterial fermentation in the gut. This study was the first to make the link using bacterial cultures.

The study, in the current issue of Digestive Diseases and Sciences, examined samples of patients' small bowel cultures to confirm the presence of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth – or SIBO – in more than 320 subjects. In patients with IBS, more than a third also were diagnosed with small intestine bacterial overgrowth, compared to fewer than 10 percent of those without the disorder. Of those with diarrhea-predominant IBS, 60 percent also had bacterial overgrowth.

"While we found compelling evidence in the past that bacterial overgrowth is a contributing cause of IBS, making this link through bacterial cultures is the gold standard of diagnosis," said Mark Pimentel, MD, director of the Cedars-Sinai GI Motility Program and an author of the study. "This clear evidence of the role bacteria play in the disease underscores our clinical trial findings, which show that antibiotics are a successful treatment for IBS."

IBS is the most common gastrointestinal disorder in the U.S., affecting an estimated 30 million people. Patients with this condition suffer symptoms that can include painful bloating, constipation, diarrhea or an alternating pattern of both. Many patients try to avoid social interactions because they are embarrassed by their symptoms. Pimentel has led clinical trials that have shown rifaximin, a targeted antibiotic absorbed only in the gut, is an effective treatment for patients with IBS.

"In the past, treatments for IBS have always focused on trying to alleviate the symptoms," said Pimentel, who first bucked standard medical thought more than a decade ago when he suggested bacteria played a significant role in the disease. "Patients who take rifaximin experience relief of their symptoms even after they stop taking the medication. This new study confirms what our findings with the antibiotic and our previous studies always led us to believe: Bacteria are key contributors to the cause of IBS."