Customer Reviews

Beat Crohn's! Getting to Remission with Enteral Nutrition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My 7 year old has primarily small bowel Crohn's Disease and we were trying to make the very painful choice of a biologic medication or enteral nutrition for his next treatment. He was steroid dependant and that kept him from growing. He was also taking an immunosuppressant that was not working to keep him in remission.

I had searched the internet for medical publications, and even met with a specialist who is considered one of the top rated in the US for pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease for a second opinion on treatment. The enteral nutrition was recommended but not exactly embraced.

When I quite literally stumbled upon this book, it was much needed affirmation and refreshing validation that we were making the right choice for my son. It blessed the treatment by compiling years of published research and international data in an easy to read, layperson friendly format.

The question becomes, why would you choose a 'big-gun' treatment or surgery before trying a much safer method, that allows children to grow and mature normally?

My son began this treatment on April 8, 2010 and is now in remission from Crohn's Disease. I brought this book to the hospital with us to share with medical students and residents since no one had any experience with this treatment. Ben is now gaining weight and off all medications (after only 4 weeks). The treatment is easy and well tolerated by my son. Every parent with a child with Crohn's Disease should be given this book at the time of diagnosis. Some day, this treatment will be the first line choice for Pediatric Crohn's Disease in the US as it is in Europe, Japan and Canada.

I've lived with Crohn's for 10 years and I am glad to have this information. I think that if someone is in a full blown flareup and isn't responding to medication, it might be worth it to try this. It would be extremely difficult, for sure. After I had surgery (I had one inch of intestine removed, not a lot compared to many of the people discussed in this book), I was put on complete paraenteral feeding (through an IV) for six days, and I wasn't hungry at all, but this isn't quite the same.

I honestly don't know if I could do it. Oppenheimer does discuss the pros and cons of enteral nutrition, and I think, at least in my case, it's not really a viable option. But I have responded to medication. If I hadn't, I can say for sure that two or three weeks of drinking your nutrients is a MUCH better option than surgery. Your body is not the same afterwards, trust someone who's been there.

In any event, it's good to educate yourself as much as possible, and Oppenhemier has done her research well. Check it out, it may not be the best option for you, but at least it's a viable one.

In my practice as a clinical nutritionist I use enteral nutrition(liquid supplementation or liquid diet) with great success for patients with Crohn's and ulcerative colitis.Unfortunately, very few patients know about the benefits of enteral nutrition and how to use this simple and very effective diet to promote colon healing.

The author, Margaret A. Oppenheimer explains beautifully why enteral nutrition is "a time-tested treatment" for children with Crohn's disease; how enteral nutrition can help kids to get off steroids and achieve complete gut healing without toxic drugs. Readers can even learn how to make their own enteral formula at home with liquid foods (other patients stories are used as an example).

Finally, I can recommend to my patients an easy to understand, well researched book on the benefits of enteral nutrition.

Galina Kotlyar, MS RD -Digestive Health Expert-

The cover of this book has a quote that I agree with. "[Beat Crohn's is] the most detailed and accurate written account of this topic I have come across". It provided a comprehensive summary of the topic of enteral nutrition that would be beneficial to an IBD sufferer of any age. While the book does focus on Crohn's Disease there is discussion of other forms of IBD in the book (and even Irritable Bowel Syndrome).

The book gives a strong argument for why someone should consider Enteral nutrition and there is a good comparison of it with other commonly prescribed drugs. The book does a good job of separately discussing the needs of children and adults and has a separate section for people with more complicated IBD conditions. I was a bit disappointed with the overall discussion on the drawbacks of the Enteral nutrition though. As someone who has been on it, I feel that there was not enough discussed on the drawbacks of the treatment, especially the isolation that comes from not being able to participate in the act of eating with other people. There is also the embarrassment of having to explain to people why you are not eating and why you are using this treatment. To the book's credit this and other issues are mentioned briefly, however I wish there was more written on it.

Many potential worries or questions that people considering this treatment option are answered. I would have liked to see a bit more detail on how to convince a medical practitioner that this treatment option is right for you.

Overall I feel this is an excellent book for people with IBD who are interested in a different treatment option besides surgery or the more common drugs. I do not think this book is ideal though for a new sufferer who does not know much about the disease and is looking for an overview of what the disease entails. There are other more general books that would be of more benefit to them as this book is more specific to one treatment option. For any other sufferer who is interested in a treatment option they might not know as much about, this book is of better use and is highly recommended

I agree with the other reviewer that Jini Thompson's books "Listen to your Gut" and "The IBD Remission Diet" are far better and they have complete instructions. She also has a powdered formula called "Absorb Plus" which is the best out there (we have tried many). I will not lie; this diet and the natural supplements are not cheap and it will be hard for your whole family, but my 8 yr old daughter has put on 8 pounds and grown an inch over the past three months. I have seen it work with my own eyes. If you don't want to commit to the whole diet at first, just try the L-glutamine - that's what we did and after three days my daughters stools firmed up dramatically. Please try it.
Also, we went to one of the top childrens hospitals(Philadelphia) in the country and I will say they are efficient at diagnosing thier patients, but they have no idea at how to treat their patients. They wanted to put my daughter on Remicade as a first treatment option for the rest of her life without trying anything else. They said diet and nutrition are irrelevent (which is B.S.). They always want to just treat the symptoms, not the cause (you CAN heal your intestines!).
Bottom line: DON'T ASSUME YOUR GASTROENTEROLOGIST (or the author of this book) IS ALWAYS RIGHT. DO YOUR RESEARCH AND THINK FOR YOURSELF!

roweboat09@gmail.com

Margaret Oppenheimer in Beat Crohn's: Getting to Remission with Enteral Nutrition makes a good case for giving enteral nutrition a try for Crohn's disease. Although it does not work for everyone, it has a better success rate than many other treatments and may result in longer periods of remission than other treatments.
She has written a comprehensive study about Crohn's disease, enteral nutrition, other treatment options, and various diets and their impacts on Crohn's. Even if you decide after reading her book not to try enteral nutrition, you will have learned a tremendous amount about the disease, including personal stories by other victims of Crohn's. It is written for the medically informed layman. Her comments are supported by extensive research citations. The data are very well organized. She writes beautifully, and the pages turn quickly. It's the best study of a disease that I've read for a long while. If you have Crohn's, ulcerative colitis or Irritable Bowel Syndrome or know someone who does, this is a must read.

It is extremely hard to find resources on Enteral Nutrition as a treatment for Crohn's in the U.S. In other parts of the world this is more frequently used as a treatment to bring Crohn's into remission in children, particularly in the newly diagnosed. This book provides a great deal of information on this treatment and has an extensive bibliography of research studies on this treatment.

An excellent, easy to understand read. A treatment option for Crohn's that doesn't require toxic meds. Enternal Nutrition is not for everyone. It is not an easy treatment, but very worthwhile if up to the challenge of ridding yourself of toxic med treatments. Not all Doctors even offer this up as a treatment option, but they should.

Beat Crohn's provided me with a very interesting list of references useful for my research on this group of diseases. I am a physician that treats IBD patients everyday and I use the IBD remission diet method intialy developed by Jini Patel Thompson.

Oppenheimer describes the method from a theoretical perspective, she herself suffers from some form of IBD, but she says this method did not work for her, obviating that small (big) detail she ventures to recommend this to other IBD patients without mentioning why this method did not work for her.
I am supposing that the method, as she describes it, would probably fail as it is based on food replacement formulas that in my experience perform very poorly, all the supplements she mentions in her Appendix B provoke bloating, nausea and early drop from the treatments.
On top of this there is no mention on how to address the recovery of the bacterial repopulation of the gut, probably the most important issue described by most medical researchers.
Another important point that is not mentioned is how to start, maintain and finish the Enteral Nutrition.
How does a bleeding, diarrheal, in pain person knows if he can use this method, how would it modify his symptoms and when should he/she should switch to solid food.
How and when should solid food be reintroduced?
What to do if the patient has persistent bleeding and anemia?
What about Vitamins, Oils, Calcium, Hormones, etc?
How should a medicated patient act? Is it safe to be on medicines (inmmunesupressives for example) and at the same time start with this Enteral diet?
How to adjust dosages or be aware of interactions?
How to deal with potential infections?

Lots of loose strings, Enteral Nutrition is a fabulous method to HEAL IBD guts, but it is a MEDICAL therapy, you just can't address all the details I just described without a good medical guidance, with a clear description on how to start, stay and wean from the so call Bowel Rest and also address the hundreds of issues involved.

I appreciate the medical references she mentions in the book, some of them are totally new for me. She did a very good and intensive research in that area, but I can not see how this could help a patient deal with the actual management of his disease.

Ms. Oppenheimer could certainly take advantage of the method for herself if she could approach to Enteral Nutrition in a different perspective from the one she describes in her book.

drnajt@yahoo.com

Chapter 9, "Beyond Enteral Nutrition", is one place where this book goes outside of its scope.

This book's title is "Beat Crohn's: Getting to Remission with Enteral Nutrition." It's not "Getting to Remission with Enteral Nutrition and Other Advice About How To Stay in Remission Once You Have Gotten There."

Nothing in the title indicates that the book is designed to wade into the controversial, insufficiently studied, extremely complicated swamp of a topic which focuses on the broad range of foods available to people in our society and their impact on Crohn's sufferers. But that's exactly what the author tries to do, and in under 25 pages. IMHO that is a mistake.

She tries to assess other selected types of dietary therapy but presents such skimpy evidence pro/con for most of them that concluding anything or even saying something like "it seems unlikely that" is worthless to the reader. I believe she should have left Chapter 9 out.

The focus of the book is enteral nutrition not wormwood, aloe vera, or the specific carbohydrate diet. So many other people have written so much about these topics both pro/con already. Oppenheimer adds nothing to that discussion. (Chapter 9 is a waste of paper.)

But, it is great to see a book that focuses on enteral nutrition as a primary therapy for Crohn's patients, and mentions that in other countries, (e.g. Japan) this is what the medical system actually does too. (What a stark contrast to the system here in the US.)

So, for that reason alone I rated the book with five stars.