The IBD Healing Plan and Recipe Book
Using Whole Foods to Relieve Crohn's Disease and Colitis
Debilitating abdominal pain and diarrhea are just two of the many symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)—an often-devastating and almost always lifestyle-changing condition that affects more than one million Americans, says the National Institutes of Health. Crohn’s disease and colitis are the most common forms of IBD, and what makes them such serious conditions is this: A normally working immune system protects the body from infection; in people with Crohn’s, colitis, and other forms of IBD, the immune system mistakes food for a foreign substance and attacks it in the intestines, causing chronic—and severe—inflammation to occur.
The IBD Healing Plan and Recipe Book, written by nutritionist Christie Korth, who was diagnosed with Crohn’s when she was nineteen, provides proven, reliable, and empowering information about the diet choices that can help people with the condition live healthy, pain-free lives.
Founder and director of the holistic Happy & Healthy Wellness Counseling center in Long Island, New York, and a nutrition expert for Dr. Mehmet Oz’s Sharecare.com, Korth wrote The IBD Healing Plan and Recipe Book to help people “get off the IBD roller coaster for good.”
She’s proof, she says, that people with IBD who educate themselves about common allergens and triggers, establish a supplement regime designed to alleviate IBD symptoms and drug side effects, and are willing to try to new foods and recipes can “ditch the disease in its tracks” and live symptom-free.
The book, however, is more than a compilation of lists and IBD-friendly recipes. Along with sample menus, food substitutions, and on-the-go lunch suggestions, Korth provides her own experiences and insights and tackles the emotional struggles that she and others have felt from not being able to “eat normally.” At one point in her twenties, she says, her Crohn’s was so severe that she was a “prisoner” in her own house, unable to eat without vomiting. Doctors told her that if she didn’t have her intestines removed, she would die.
Her determination to leave the hospital with her intestines intact and without a colostomy bag led her to begin her study of both nutrition and holistic healing, as well as the proven prevention and natural treatment methods that make up this book.
Part cookbook, part reference guide, part memoir, The IBD Healing Plan and Recipe Book provides clear, concise, and compassionate explanations of not just why food intolerances occur, but how IBD sufferers can practically—and painlessly—make small changes that will lead to big results. A valuable tool for any individual with the condition.
Reviewed by
Cindy Wolfe Boyton
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
