Preventing Malnutrition With Your IBD Diet

Diet is the key for preventing clinical malnutrition, a condition that results when there is a deficiency or imbalance of nutrients in our body. Nutrient deficiencies can result over time from a lack of overall calories (the term 'calories' can be used interchangeably with 'energy') or from a lack of specific nutrients, such as protein, essential fats, vitamins, minerals, or trace elements.

 

Malnutrition is a concern because it can affect your immune system function, leading to an increased susceptibility to infections. It also compromises your body's normal defenses against free radicals (damaging molecules produced from pollution, radiation, stress, and smoking), slows down wound healing, and can contribute to long-term complications, such as poor dental health and early bone loss leading to osteoporosis. When you are poorly nourished, the symptoms of your IBD are likely to become more severe or have a more significant impact upon you.

 

 

The most common indicator of malnutrition is a significant loss of body weight. Often when you are not feeling well, you have little appetite and must force yourself to eat. And often you still lose weight despite your efforts. Why does this happen? This is not simply a matter of willpower.

 

In Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, various parts of the gastrointestinal tract become inflamed, and although the inflammation occurs primarily at a local level (the bowel tissue), it can also occur at a whole body or 'systemic' level. Systemic inflammation results from inflammatory molecules (proteins called cytokines), which are produced in the inflamed intestine, but which circulate throughout the body. It is the effect of one or more of these cytokines that can lead to a loss of appetite.

 

Anorexia is one risk factor for malnutrition which, along with other symptoms, such as gastrointestinal intolerance, altered taste, and dietary eliminations (food phobias and dependencies), can lead to inadequate intake. Other risk factors for malnutrition include increased nutrient requirements, malabsorption of nutrients, and increased losses of electrolytes, minerals, trace elements, and proteins. These factors can lead to malnutrition in individuals with IBD, but this doesn't mean that you will develop these symptoms or complications just because you have IBD. Also keep in mind that some are specific to either Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis.

 

 

To determine if you are malnourished, health-care professionals will evaluate your symptoms and signs, medical history, height and weight trends, diet history, social and economic circumstances, medications, and laboratory tests. Although there are several complicated formulas that have been developed to evaluate nutritional status and nutritional risk, most physicians and dietitians can answer these questions quite easily. An appropriate nutrition plan can then be created to help manage your illness and achieve your desired health outcomes.

 

Your nutrition plan could include counseling for diet modifications or implementing specialized nutrition therapies. These could include supplementation with nutritional products, replacement of vitamins and minerals, provision of enteral nutrition (liquid nutrition formula delivered using a feeding tube into the stomach or small intestine), or provision of parenteral nutrition (intravenous nutrition infused through a special intravenous line).