"What should I eat?” is the most common question for patients after an IBD diagnosis. To answer this question, we are excited to launch a one-of-its-kind, practical tool:
🎯 The goal: to guide patients and health professionals in integrating the right evidence-based nutritional option alongside medications to improve IBD care
🤝 The tool: a scientifically designed, interactive, step-by-step algorithm
✅ The result: a recommended tailored nutritional therapy that can help influence disease activity and improve non-inflammatory symptoms.
Growing Demand for Integrating Nutrition into IBD Care
Nutritional therapy is likely one of the clinicians' most powerful tools to improve disease outcomes. Patients already:
🍏 Recognize the influence of diet on symptoms
🍏 Make efforts to improve their symptoms with perceptive eating
🍏 Seek to utilize diet as a therapeutic tool under the guidance of medical professionals
In response to this growing demand for integrating evidence-based nutrition into IBD care,we provide the IBD Nutrition Navigator™ as an intuitive interactive tool. This model places patients at the center, prioritizing their interests, resources, and goals, fostering collaborative decision-making between patients and healthcare providers.
Here are some takeaways to help you familiarize with IBD Nutrition Navigator™ tool and make the most of it:
✅ Encourages clinician/patient conversations at every stage, from early diagnosis to long-term care, to explore tailored dietary modifications in combination with medications after:
Assessing nutritional status and history
Evaluating the disease state
Determining the patient’s goals
Considering the patient’s resources and interest in dietary treatment
✅ Nutritional assessment is needed before advising a patient to begin any of the recommended nutritional therapies.
This important first step includes screening for malnutrition, low muscle mass and impaired muscle function, relationship with food, food access, and resources at home.
✅ Three primary goals to choose from:
Reduce active inflammation and symptoms
Maintain remission and reduce the long-term risk of flares
✅ The Algorithm and references are ready to download and print for the busy clinician to help make decisions very quickly.
📹 Watch this short introduction of the IBD Nutrition Navigator.
Created by Providers for Providers
The IBD Nutrition Navigator™ has been developed with practicality in mind. With only six short steps, providers and patients can choose the right nutritional therapy together within the sometimes tight time constraints of a follow-up appointment. Likewise, healthcare providers can benefit from the practical algorithm provided by the tool that is ready to print and use in clinical practice and supported by relevant scientific references.
“What makes the IBD Nutrition Navigator™valuable is that it is the first-of-its-kind algorithm-based tool that digests the best in the literature on nutritional therapy in IBD and provides the output in a very simple, step-by-step and practical way for the patients.”
Ashwin Ananthakrishnan MD, MPH, FACG, AGAF, Professor of Medicine; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
A Personalized Approach
When it comes to IBD and nutrition, there is not a “one size fits all” approach. It is necessary to individualize nutritional therapies to use alongside medication. The IBD Nutrition Navigator™ incorporates questions to gauge each patient’s interest and resources in using nutritional therapy.
“Evaluating interest and motivation for change and resources, such as support networks, cooking skills, and financial security, is a critical step in determining if nutritional therapy is sustainable for the patient.”
Kaylie Nguyen, NP
Stanford Children’s Hospital.
Backed with Our Extensive Resources for Implementation
In the past six years, Nutritional Therapy for IBD has built an extensive collection of resources to help implement nutritional therapy alongside medication
🤝 Recommend it to patients, family, friends, and colleagues, by sharing this newslettter or the link below, to help nutritional therapies become the norm and not the exception as part of IBD care.
The IBD Nutrition Navigator™ has been developed by a team of physicians, gastroenterologists, IBD dietitians, nurse practitioners, patients and families, and members of the Nutritional Therapy for IBD team with the support of an educational grant from Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
To Our Readers
If you find our content helpful, please consider donating to support our efforts in improving nutritional care for IBD
At Nutritional Therapy for IBD, we are grateful for the collaboration and support of our Corporate Partners!
*Please note that Nutritional Therapy for IBD does not provide medical advice. The content provided here is for informational purposes only. Patients should always talk with their healthcare providers before changing their diet.*
Nutritional Therapy for IBD, 1050 Johnnie Dodds Blvd, PO Box #1666, Mount Pleasant, SC 29465
