Living with Crohn’s or Colitis may mean you have to take extra care to make sure you’re getting the right nutrients. Inflammation of the gut can mean that your body might not always absorb all the nutrients it needs. And if you have diarrhoea, this could cause dehydration, which means your body may lose important nutrients and fluids.
Sometimes people with Crohn’s and Colitis need nutritional treatment which aims to improve or maintain the level of nutrients in the body. Two ways of doing this are exclusive enteral nutrition and parenteral nutrition. EEN is a liquid only diet that can be helpful for people with Crohn’s and parenteral nutrition delivers nutrients and calories straight into the bloodstream through a tube in a vein in the chest, arm or neck.
Through our work on the IBD Standards, we want to make sure all forms of nutritional therapy are available to people with Crohn’s or Colitis including exclusive enteral therapy for Crohn’s and referral to services specialising in parenteral nutrition. We also want to see everyone have their nutritional status checked when they’re first diagnosed and if they go into hospital.
We fund research into diet and Crohn’s and Colitis. One of our researchers, Dr Miranda Lomer has been developing a dietary algorithm that will help identify people with Crohn’s or Colitis who would benefit from more support around their diet, and those at risk of malnutrition. This will help more people have quicker access to the right dietary treatment, improving their psychological, social and physical health.
Thanks to my Crohn's, malnutrition has been the norm for many years, but thankfully I'm also on TPN & that has been a literal life saver. I'm no longer stressed about taking enough calories or nutrients during the day if I know I'll be getting my top up intravenously & won't have to deal with side effects like bloating or pain that happen when I do eat.
Omar Malick,
Living with Crohn's Disease
