If you or a family member has been affected by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), you may find an upcoming webcast very useful.
When: Thursday, June 18, 2009 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. ET
What: “IBD and Families: Disease Education and the Role of Nutrition” Webcast

Discussion: A panel of health care professionals will discuss IBD issues, including symptoms and diagnosis, nutrition and tips for working with health care providers
How to Join: You must register online before the Webcast
Host: Children’s Digestive Health and Nutrition Foundation (CDHNF) with support by Shire plc
In addition to hearing from panelists from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and …read more

A study looking at food poisoning (salmonella and campylobacter) found that people who had one or the other had a higher risk (1.2%) of developing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) than those who never had food poisoning (0.5%). These findings were presented to doctors and researchers at the annual Digestive Diseases Week.
Results showed that the risk for developing IBD grew over a 15-year period after having the food poisoning. The researchers, in Denmark, looked at the histories of over 13,000 people who had been treated for either type of food poisoning and compared them with people who had not become ill …read more

Facebook users may choose their shoes and have their voices heard to help support IBD research.
Will it be a yellow flip flop, purple flat or red boot?

The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) and Shire plc have joined together for the first virtual “Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) March on the Hill.”
The program is free to users.
Just visit ibdmarchonthehill.com and click the shoe you like for your virtual March on the Hill. For each virtual step, Shire plc will donate $1 to CCFA for research for the first 30,000 steps. Once per person.
Don’t worry. You don’t have to become a …read more

If you’ve ever experienced abdominal cramping due to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn’s disease or any other problems with the intestines, you know that they can be truly incapacitating. How do I know? I was hit yet again this week.
It had been a while since I had such bad cramping. While I  used to usually experience pain of about 7 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst ever, I think this week’s was 9, if not 10. And it just started out of the blue.
But when do you need to see …read more

I is for injection….
It’s also for:
Inflammation: Many times, when we have pain, it’s caused by inflammation or swelling, even if we can’t see it. For example, some types of arthritic pain are caused by inflammation inside the joints, so people are treated with anti-inflammatories to help relieve the pain.
Imagery: As part of the complementary and alternative methods of healing, imagery is a major player. People are taught to put themselves in a different place from their pain, or they are taught to imagine pushing the pain away, for example. Here are a couple of sites that do a …read more

According to a study published in this month’s issue of Gastroenterology, patients 50 years old and older who take multiple immunosuppressive medications for inflammatory bowel disease have a higher risk for developing infections.
Researchers studied the records of 300 patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and they found patients 50 years old and older were three times more likely to have infections than those patents under 50 years. The more immunosuppressive medications they were taking, medications that lower the the immune response, the higher the risk of infection. Those who were taking one such medication were three times more likely to …read more