This week we had such a great conversation with Kate Scarlata, MPH, RD! Kate is a Boston-based registered dietitian and New York Times best selling author with 30+ years of digestive health experience. Kate is a world-renowned low FODMAP diet expert and invited speaker on the role of food intolerance in GI disorders at numerous international and national gastrointestinal health conferences from Harvard Medical School to Monash University. She specializes in digestive health including treatment for: IBS, celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, mast cell activation syndrome and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO).

We talked to her about so many things! We discussed patients that have co-occurring IBD and IBS- how frequent that is and how to best treat them. We talked about food intolerances, intolerance testing, and elimination diets. We discussed medical equity and her efforts to highlight the lack of medical diet-friendly- like for celiac- food offered in food pantries. We talked about common myths surrounding gut health that she asks her guests on her podcast called The Gut Health podcast to discuss. Finally we discussed her new book that she co-authored with Dr. Megan Riehl called "Mind Your Gut: The Science-Based, Whole-Body Guide to Living Well with IBD."

Please keep in mind that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and should not be considered medical or legal advice. Please consult with your healthcare team on any changes to your disease, diet, or treatment. We want you to stay safe and healthy! ;)

Links:

• Kate's Blog that she mentions
• Kate and Megan's book
• Dr. Megan Riehl's episode
• Kate and Megan's podcast -The Gut Health Podcast

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This week we spoke to Rocio Castrillon- better known for her popular Instagram account @VoiceforIBD! She shared her story of being diagnosed with Crohn's disease and how a lack of information caused her to suffer in silence with fistulizing disease. We talked to her about finally getting involved with Team Challenge with the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation in the USA and how that helped her find a large community of other people living with IBD. The opened up other volunteer opportunities and so we talked to her about the many ways that she's gotten involved with the community including advocacy work, leading a Spanish-speaking support group, educational initiatives, and more. We especially discussed her support group that includes people from many parts of the world and what are some commonalities she's observed and the people she helps. Finally we talked about how all of her advocacy work and involvement led her to being nominated for the National Board of Trustees for the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation here in the US. We discussed how she's using this seat at the table and this platform to raise even more awareness of the needs of the Hispanic/Latino IBD community and so much more.

We really loved getting to know Rocio more during the conversation and we know you'll appreciate all that she does for our community as well!

Please keep in mind that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and should not be considered medical or legal advice. Please consult with your healthcare team on any changes to your disease, diet, or treatment. We want you to stay safe and healthy! ;)

Links:

• Grupo de Apoyo para Adultos con EII
• Article by Rocio in Crohn's & Colitis 360
• Crohn's Disease Patient Experiences and Preferences wit Disease Monitoring: An International Qualitative Study - Crohn's & Colitis 360

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This week we had a great conversation with Mason Milne! Mason is the host of the Crohn's and Autism Awareness Advocate podcast! We talked to him about being diagnosed with Crohn's when he was 17 years old and a bit about the health system in the UK where he lives. We talked about what it's been like navigating the healthcare system with autism and advocating for his needs. Mason gave some advice for other people living with autism that may also need to communicate their specific needs or preferences to their healthcare team. We talked a lot about his podcast, the unique series that he does, and how he recruits guests- including some famous ones! And finally we discussed his love of the show Dr. Who and how attending conventions has lead to him recruiting some very cool guests to his show!

Please keep in mind that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and should not be considered medical or legal advice. Please consult with your healthcare team on any changes to your disease, diet, or treatment. We want you to stay safe and healthy! ;)

Links:

• Mason's YouTube channel
• Mason's episode with the 8th Doctor- Paul Magan
• An interview with Mason about living with Crohn's and Autism- Crohn's Colitis UK

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This week we had a great time getting to know Dr. Kim S. Beall! Kim is a Doctor of Pharmacy whose son was diagnosed with Crohn's disease when he was 13 years old. After she and her son discussed his treatment options with his healthcare team and they did some research he decided to try Exclusive Enteral Nutrition (EEN) to get his Crohn's in remission. We discussed how Kim and her family supported him during this time and how he coped with being on this very restrictive diet. Nutrition has been central to Kim's son’s management of Crohn’s disease since his diagnosis in 2013 at age thirteen. Nutritional therapy has been an essential part of providing optimal care and has afforded him the best opportunity to manage life with Crohn’s disease successfully.

After her son achieved remission, she and her husband, Anthony Beall who is a physician, realized that there really was a lack of information about dietary therapies for IBD, that many healthcare providers didn't really know where to look, and that there was a huge need for a repository of this information. So they started the nonprofit organization Nutritional Therapy for IBD in 2019 to fill an essential void in providing evidence-based knowledge, tools, and resources to empower patients and aid clinicians seeking to leverage nutrition alongside medications in inflammatory bowel disease. Their mission is to establish evidence-based nutritional therapy as a foundational part of IBD treatment to enhance the well-being and health outcomes of all children and adults with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis. We empower clinicians and patients with essential, current, comprehensive, educational, and innovative resources. We talked to Kim about starting this nonprofit, some of the great tools available for patients and clinicians, the recipe database, and how her nonprofit has been received by the medical community.

We were so inspired by Kim's passion and the all of the great things that Nutritional Therapy for IBD is doing.

Please keep in mind that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and should not be considered medical or legal advice. Please consult with your healthcare team on any changes to your disease, diet, or treatment. We want you to stay safe and healthy! ;)

Links:

• The Diet Comparison Chart discussed in this episode- Nutritional Therapy for IBD
• Information for Healthcare Professionals- Nutritional Therapy for IBD
• Recipe Database
• Abigail Marie- The Chef with IBD's episode- volunteer with Nutritional Therapy for IBD
• Nicole Pavlin's episode- volunteer with Nutritional Therapy for IBD
• Barbara Olendski's - RD- video
• Information on Exclusive Enteral Nutrition- Nutritional Therapy for IBD

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This week we had such a great conversation with Dr. Megan Riehl! Dr. Riehl is a GI Psychologist, Assistant Professor of Medicine and the Director of GI Behavioral Health at the University of Michigan. We talked to her about all things IBD and mental health and how she helped to establish and incorporate GI behavioral health into the IBD center at the University of Michigan. We also talked to her about her interest in innovations in digital therapeutics, how she's worked with some developers to ensure the efficacy and quality of their products, and what apps that she recommends to patients as well as providers. We talked to her about her new book! It's called "Mind Your Gut: The Science-Backed Whole-Body Guide to Living Well with IBS." While this book is geared for people living with IBS, there is some really great information in there for people living with IBD as well and we discussed this with Dr. Riehl as well. Finally we went over some additional virtual resources that she finds helpful for patients. We really enjoyed talking with Dr. Riehl and we know you'll learn so much from her as well.

Please keep in mind that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and should not be considered medical or legal advice. Please consult with your healthcare team on any changes to your disease, diet, or treatment. We want you to stay safe and healthy! ;)

Links:

• The Gut Health Podcast- Dr. Riehl and Kate Scarlata, RD's new podcast!
• Dr. Meredith Craven's episode
• Info on the Nerva app
• Curable app for chronic pain
• Mahana IBD app
• Diaphragmatic breathing video
• Dr. Brennan Spiegel's book- "VRx: How Virtual Therapeutics Will Revolutionize Medicine"

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This week we talked to Abigail VanHoose- otherwise known as Abigail Marie the Check with IBD! Abigail was diagnosed with UC after a bad car accident and after she finished culinary school. Her disease journey was definitely rocky and very impacted by substandard medical care. Like may people living with IBD, she was told that "diet doesn't matter" but after dealing with multiple flares, she found the book "Breaking the Vicious Cycle that outlines the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and how it can be helpful for people with IBD. She decided to give it a try but found the recipes to be....less than exciting. She decided to put her culinary talents to work and started coming up with new recipes that followed the diet and than led her to decide to share her knowledge in her blog. We talked to her about following the SCD, how she creates the recipes, what she includes on her blog, and her favorite recipes. We also talked to her about her work with the nonprofit Nutrition Therapy for IBD and how she's been able to help them grown their recipe database, expand their social media, and much more. Finally we go on a rant about the medical system, steroids, and medical education. If you've listened to previous episodes, you know this is unsurprising. We had a great time hearing from Abigail, we know you will too and we're all set to try some of her yummy-sounding recipes. Cheers!

Please keep in mind that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and should not be considered medical or legal advice. Please consult with your healthcare team on any changes to your disease, diet, or treatment. We want you to stay safe and healthy! ;)

Links:

• Abigail's Blondie recipe
• Abigail's Coffee "Ice Cream" recipe
• Abigail's Strawberry Cupcake with Vanilla Icing recipe
• Nutrition Therapy for IBD

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This week we talk to Kim Braly, RD! Kim is a Registered Dietitian that specializes in IBD, consults on nutrition and IBD-related research studies, has expertise on IBD nutrition program development and educates practitioners on nutrition therapies for IBD. She is currently in private practice seeing adults and kids living with IBD virtually across the country. Previous to this she was part of the IBD Center at Seattle Children's Hospital where she saw patients as well as developed and participated in research studies on nutrition therapies for IBD. We talked to her about what it was like to develop these studies and how challenging it is to control for all the potential changes that can happen when participants are cooking their own foods. We talked about the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and how she talked to patients about the expectations and prepared them to take it on. We also talked about the efficacy of several diet therapies. We also discussed health and economic disparities and how these might affect the ability of some families to consider dietary therapies and the lack of insurance coverage to help. Finally we talked about the website that she developed with a woman living with Crohn's disease who was her patient at Seattle Children's called Eats for IBD. This website provides much-needed nutrition support and practical resources to those with IBD including educational sessions, support options, and delicious recipes that are friendly to dietary therapies. We had a lot of fun talking with Kim and we learned so much too! Cheers!

Please keep in mind that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and should not be considered medical or legal advice. Please consult with your healthcare team on any changes to your disease, diet, or treatment. We want you to stay safe and healthy! ;)

Links:

• Eats for IBD website
• Kim's private practice website
• ImproveCareNow
• Nutrition Therapy for IBD website
• Find an IBD-Focused Dietitian- Crohn's & Colitis Foundation- USA
• Find an IBD-Focused Dietitian- Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics - USA

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This week we had such a great conversation with Courtney Walls! Like several of our guests, Courtney had a pretty dramatic introduction to the IBD community including needing urgent surgeries, C-diff infections, fistulizing disease, and she's now living with an ostomy (happily). We talked to her about going through all of that while also living with anxiety and how she's processing it using mental health therapies like CBT and internal family systems and going through the Employee Assistance Program through her work. Courtney also started a very successful Instagram account about her Crohn's journey called courts_crohns_corner. We talked to her about what it was like putting her story out so publicly, how different it is to be talking about her disease and her treatment decisions in real time versus sharing past history, and about how she's using her account to give support to others while also getting some herself. Finally we discussed her love to Charles Barkley and Arizona.

Please keep in mind that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and should not be considered medical or legal advice. Please consult with your healthcare team on any changes to your disease, diet, or treatment. We want you to stay safe and healthy! ;)

Links:

• What is Internal Family Systems Therapy
• What is C.Diff- Centers for Disease Control
• Understanding C.Diff Infection- video from the American Gastro Association
• Our episode with Courtney Robert, LCSW about EMDR
• Our episode on what EMDR is like as a patient with friend of the show, Hannah C.
• Learn about Team Challenge- Crohn's & Colitis Foundation USA
• Learn about living with an ostomy, finding support, and more- United Ostomy Association

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