On March 5th, 2021, Dr. Neilanjan Nandi of Penn Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA, hosted Dr. Sumit Bhatia of Medanta The MediCity Hospital, Gurgaon, India as well as Neha Shah, RD, of University of San Francisco, CA, USA, and me, Crohn’s & ostomy patient advocate of New York, NY. We sat down to discuss dietary guidance as provided by Dr. Bhatia along with practical tips of what South Asian foods to eat, how to customize them and how to include more protein in our diets to promote healing. Dr. Nandi also shared many important insights about diet from a South Asian American perspective and I also talked about what has worked for me and what has not worked so well for me as a patient in terms of diet.
As patients, one of the key takeaways from this session was how individualized diet is, how important it is to keep food diaries but also why it’s necessary to work with a GI dietitian and not just self-treat with diet. And that brings me to my last point and perhaps the most important: please do not drop your medications without your doctor’s consent and please do discuss the role of diet and complementary therapies with your GI dietitian.
Be well, my fellow IBD warriors. I know diet and absorption can be such a challenge for us but things do get better. Please always remember that many doctors recommend concurrent medicinal and dietary therapy and not just using diet to try to treat IBD.
