Inflammatory Bowel Disease Quotes

We can compare the gut of a person with inflammatory bowel disease to a dying coral reef or a fallow field: a battered ecosystem where the balance of organisms has gone awry.

After years of intense research, I could come to only one conclusion: People whose diets are high in animal protein have significantly higher rates of chronic diseases: hypertension, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and many, many others, including cataracts, diverticulitis, diverticulosis, inflammatory bowel disease, gall bladder disorders, gout, hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, kidney stones, and rheumatoid arthritis.

IgA and IgM antibodies produced in saliva (and feces) are detectable months before IgA and IgG antibodies appear in the blood and several months before lesions occur on the surface of the GI tract (these lesions enable veterinarians to clinically diagnosis inflammatory bowel disease [IBD] or leaky gut syndrome). So, the saliva testing system can detect the progressive, pathological process of gut destruction and permeability much sooner than it can be detected via either blood testing or clinical diagnosis.

Antibiotics aren’t the only cause of dysbiosis. Gastrointestinal infections themselves can deplete the microbiome, and the subsequent decrease in microbial richness can lead to increased susceptibility to disease. Many patients trace the beginnings of their decline in health to an infectious event—from Montezuma’s revenge in Mexico to dysentery on safari in southern Africa to a bout of giardia from contaminated water closer to home. Post-infectious irritable bowel syndrome is a well-described phenomenon, and up to 10 percent of patients with inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis point to a significant infectious event that marks the beginning of their illness, particularly if their microbiome was already compromised from prior antibiotic use.

the array of conditions for which probiotic therapy has been found to have some documented and quantifiable measure of success is quite staggering. Probiotics have been most definitively linked to treating and preventing diseases of the digestive tract, such as diarrhea (including that caused by antibiotics, rotavirus, and HIV34), inflammatory bowel disease35, irritable bowel syndrome36, constipation37, and even colon cancer.38 They have shown efficacy in treating vaginal infections.39 Probiotics have been found to reduce incidence and duration of common colds40 and upper respiratory symptoms41 and to reduce absences from work.42 They have been shown to improve outcomes and prevent infections

Brain and mood disorders, migraines, osteoporosis, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, bowel diseases, autoimmune diseases, inflammatory disorders, and cancer are rampant. Grains are rarely suspected as the original culprit, though every one of these disorders, among many more, can potentially be traced to often insidious gluten intolerance. Gluten sensitivity is only rarely obvious to the afflicted, and many people are even entirely surprised to learn they have this sensitivity. I know I was. Only an estimated 1 percent of all gluten sensitivity or celiac disease is ever diagnosed.

House dust mite (HDM) allergen promotes inflammation and gut permeability in humans (Gut 2015;published online December 8). A similar breakdown in the human gastrointestinal tract epithelium has been found in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and inflammatory bowel syndrome (IBS), they added, but the triggers for this breakdown are unclear. "This study is the first evidence for a role for house dust mite allergens in intestinal disease.

Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii). This parasite, which is present in birds and cats, is the reason pregnant women are not supposed to scoop kitty litter. At least 40 percent and as much as 70 percent of humans in Western countries are infected with toxoplasmosis, which is completely asymptomatic unless you are immunocompromised or become infected while pregnant. (There is no risk to the fetus if you are infected with Toxoplasma gondii before becoming pregnant, but getting infected during gestation can cause a variety of serious health problems for the baby.) This parasite, while typically considered completely benign, is associated with increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease (a suspected autoimmune disease), Parkinson’s disease (a suspected autoimmune disease), Tourette syndrome, antiphospholipid syndrome, systemic sclerosis, and inflammatory bowel diseases.

Endometriosis Endometriosis is a painful condition in which bits of the endometrium (uterine lining) grow outside your uterus. These are called endometriosis lesions. Chocolate cysts The most common site for endometriosis lesions is the ovaries. This growth is referred to as an endometrioma or chocolate cyst. Endometriosis lesions also grow on Fallopian tubes, pelvic ligaments, and on the outside of your uterus, bowel, and bladder. Actually, they can grow anywhere—even inside your nose. Endometriosis lesions are sensitive to estrogen, so they swell and bleed with every menstrual cycle. Eventually, this causes pain, scar tissue, and heavy periods with large clots. Endometriosis can also impair fertility. What Causes Endometriosis? How does endometrial tissue ends up outside the uterus? There are a couple of theories. One theory is that menstrual fluid enters the pelvis via retrograde flow through the Fallopian tubes. This is not likely to be the correct explanation because retrograde flow occurs in most women, yet only a few women develop endometriosis. A second theory is that the endometrial tissue is laid down before birth—during your own fetal development. The tissue then lies dormant until it is activated by your hormones at puberty. Whatever the original source of the endometriosis lesions, your immune system is a big part of the problem. Your immune system produces inflammatory cytokines and autoantibodies that inflame endometriosis lesions and promote their growth. Without that inflammation, you are unlikely to suffer the condition of endometriosis (although you may still have dormant endometriosis lesions in your pelvis). Researchers have come to view endometriosis not as a hormonal condition, but as an autoimmune disease.

Small numbers of senescent cells can cause widespread havoc. Even though they stop dividing, they continue to release tiny proteins called cytokines that cause inflammation and attract immune cells called macrophages that then attack the tissue. Being chronically inflamed is unhealthy: just ask someone with multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, or psoriasis. All these diseases are associated with excess cytokine proteins.

Pulsed lasers produce incredibly short bursts of electromagnetic energy. For example, a pulsed femtosecond laser produces a flash of light that lasts for femtoseconds to a picosecond (a picosecond is one trillionth of a second, a femtosecond is one thousandth of a picosecond), instantly followed by another (and so on). These lasers brought about the possibility of exciting fluorophores with two photons of only half the necessary energy, but they need to arrive almost simultaneously to generate the ejection of a photon. Infrared pulsed lasers penetrate living tissue more effectively, with the advantage that fluorescence is achieved from much deeper in the tissue than normal fluorescence, where the depth of penetration is limited by multiple light scattering events. Multiphoton microscopy (mainly two photon in practice, but also feasible as three or more photons) allows imaging from as deep as a millimetre (one thousand micrometres), an improvement of several hundred micrometres over fluorescence confocal microscopy. A second advantage of two photon excitation is that it forms as a single spot in the axial plane (z axis) without the ‘hourglass’ spread of out of focus light (the point spread function) that happens with single photon excitation. This is because the actual two photon excitation will only occur at the highest concentration of photons, which is limited to the focal plane itself. Because there is no out of focus light, there is no need for a confocal pinhole, allowing more signal to reach the detector. Combined with the increased depth of penetration, and reduced light induced damage (phototoxicity) to living tissue, two photon microscopy has added a new dimension to the imaging of living tissue in whole animals. At the surface of a living brain, remarkable images of the paths of whole neurons over several hundred micrometres can be reconstructed as a 3D z section from an image stack imaged through a thinned area of the skull in an experimental animal. Endoscopes have been developed which incorporate a miniaturized two photon microscope, allowing deep imaging of intestinal epithelium, with potential to provide new information on intestinal diseases, as most of the cellular lining throughout our gut is thin enough to be imaged in this way. So far a whole range of conditions including virtually all the cancers of the digestive tract as well as inflammatory bowel disease have been investigated, reducing the need for biopsies and providing new insights as to the nature of these conditions.

But that doesn’t mean genes don’t play an important role in disease. Genetic variations influence plenty of chronic diseases such as coronary artery disease, heart arrhythmias, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, and Alzheimer’s.65 In these and other cases, genes help load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger.

Although medicine acknowledges that it can be caused by many diseases, including endometriosis, irritable bowel syndrome, ovarian cysts, pelvic inflammatory disease, fibroids, abscesses and uterine prolapse, the actual cause can be difficult to identify, and many sufferers are misdiagnosed.

Although medicine acknowledges that it can be caused by many diseases, including endometriosis, irritable bowel syndrome, ovarian cysts, pelvic inflammatory disease, fibroids, abscesses and uterine prolapse, the actual cause can be difficult to identify, and many sufferers are misdiagnosed.7 And, frustratingly, the long association between women’s pelvic pain and their emotions continues to stymie understanding.

Another Ramadan study found that fasting suppressed proinflammatory molecules called cytokines within the body.20 Excessive production of these types of molecules contributes to many of the inflammatory diseases so prevalent in today’s society, such as allergies, asthma, autoimmune diseases, and inflammatory bowel disease, just to name a few.

When I look at the world today, from the physician's point of view, from the health point of view, what do we see? We see a society, not just in North America, but as globalization extends its reach around the world, we see increasing levels of certain illnesses, certain mental illnesses like ADHD, which didn't use to exist in certain countries and now, all of a sudden, they have a problem with it. Auto-immune diseases like inflammatory bowel disease that didn't use to exist in certain societies, now exist in these societies. If you look at North America, if you look at multiple sclerosis in the 1930s or 40s, the gender ratio was about 1 woman to every man. Now that ratio is about 3 and a half women for every man. If you look at something like asthma which is rising amongst kids... a study in the United States last year showed that the more episodes of racism a black American woman experiences, the greater the risk for asthma. We've known for a long time that the more stress the parents have, the greater the risk of the child having asthma. In North America millions of kids are on medication now, for depression, anxiety, ADHD, and more and more kids are being medicated all the time. If you look at something like autism spectrum disorder, it is now being diagnosed 40 times as often as it was 30 or 40 years ago. Anxiety is the fastest growing diagnose in North America amongst young people. The usual medical explanations for any of these phenomena just doesn't hold. Because medicine, for the most part, sees all of these problems as simply biological issues. Multiple sclerosis being a disease of the nervous system. Inflammatory bowel disease being a malaise of the gut. ADHD, depression, anxiety, addiction.. these are problems of the brain. And, for the most part, we like to rely on genetic explanations, that it is genes that are causing these things, or, if it is not genes, we don't know what is causing it. Of course, if you just look at that one little fact that I told you about the ratio of women and men in multiple sclerosis.. you know right away it can't be genetic. Because genes don't change in a population over 7 years and if they did, why would they change more for one gender than the other? Nor it can be the climate nor the diet because that also hasn't changed more for one gender than the other. Something else is going on. For ADHD and the fact that many more kids are being diagnosed.. that can't be genetic, cause genes don't change in a population over 10 years or 5 years or 15 years.

Specific herbs support synaptic function. I recommend the following, available as encapsulated extracts or as the herbs themselves, every day unless otherwise indicated: Ashwagandha, 500 mg, twice per day with meals. This helps in the reduction of amyloid, as well as in handling stress. Bacopa monnieri, 250 mg, twice per day with meals, to improve cholinergic function, one of the brain’s key neurotransmitter systems (ashwagandha and bacopa are also available as nasal drops called Nasya Karma; if you prefer this to capsules, take 3 drops per nostril daily). Gotu kola, 500 mg twice per day with meals, to increase focus and alertness. Hericium erinaceus (lion’s mane), 500 mg once or twice a day, to increase nerve growth factor, especially for those with type 2 Alzheimer’s disease. Rhodiola, 200 mg once or twice per day, for those with anxiety and stress. Shankhpushpi (also spelled shankhapushpi and also known as skullcap), taken as 2 or 3 teaspoons or 2 capsules per day, to enhance branching of neurons in the hippocampus. For those with type 3 (toxic) Alzheimer’s disease, MCI, or SCI, tinospora cordifolia (guduchi) is helpful to boost immune support. It is taken at a dosage of 300 mg with meals, 2 or 3 times per day. Along with boosting immune support, those with type 3 may consider guggul, which removes toxins in the gut (somewhat like charcoal). This is typically taken as capsules of guggul extract, 350 or 750 mg per day. For those with type 1 (inflammatory) Alzheimer’s disease, MCI, or SCI, or with bowel symptoms, triphala—a combination of amalaki, haritaki, and bibhitaki—is useful to reduce inflammation. This is best taken on an empty stomach, either as a capsule or by making a tea from the powder.

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis) have significant problems absorbing salt in the intestine and colon, respectively, which leads to excreting more salt and lower blood sodium levels, even in moments of remission.126

Vegetables are one of the few foods that every diet philosophy agrees are healthy. That said, vegetables (particularly nonstarchy vegetables) tend to be high in insoluble fiber, which can irritate an inflamed gut. If you have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), or other digestive disorders, you may benefit from reducing your intake of vegetables that are high in insoluble fiber. These include: •  Greens (spinach, lettuce, kale, mesclun, collards, arugula, watercress, and so on) •  Whole peas, snow peas, snap peas, pea pods •  Green beans •  Kernel corn •  Bell peppers •  Eggplant •  Celery •  Onions, shallots, leeks, scallions, garlic •  Cabbage, bok choy, Brussels sprouts •  Broccoli •  Cauliflower However, vegetables that are higher in soluble fiber and lower in insoluble fiber tend to have a soothing effect on the gut. These include: •  Carrots •  Winter squash •  Summer squash (especially peeled) •  Starchy tubers (yams, sweet potatoes, potatoes) •  Turnips •  Rutabagas •  Parsnips •  Beets •  Plantains •  Taro •  Yuca

A study published in the journal Nature fed one group of human subjects an animal-based diet and another a plant diet. Then researchers studied the short-term results in the subjects’ gut microbes. Even after just a few days, the meat eaters experienced an increase in bacteria that cause inflammatory bowel disease. The plant eaters increased the number of microbes that rid the body of inflammation. “These results demonstrate that the gut microbiome can rapidly respond to altered diet,” the authors wrote.

Abundant data support the importance of biodiversity in health, and its loss causes various inflammatory conditions, including asthma, allergic and inflammatory bowel diseases, type 1 diabetes, liver disease, obesity, and much more.

BONUS BENEFITS OF TURMERIC: Powerful antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral (even helps inhibit the reproduction of the HIV virus); antiaging (reduces oxidative stress and down-regulates age-related genes); reduces chronic pain; antioxidant; anti-inflammatory; effective in preventing liver and kidney toxicity; potential treatment for skin disorders (rosacea and psoriasis), HIV, septic shock, cardiovascular disease, lung fibrosis, arthritis, and inflammatory bowel disease; anti-atherosclerotic. And that’s just what we’ve discovered so far! In-vitro and animal studies suggest that turmeric may offer anticancer benefits as well.