Er… why not just delete it then?
The policy of the owner’s of the Board for the last 5+ years has been to move posts rather than delete them.
I was all set to come in here and say that live Acidophilus bacteria has been proven to reduce the frequency and severity of yeast infections.
But Crohn’s? If I was diagnosed with it, I’d be putting the yogurt back on the shelf and heading to the real doctors immediately.
Probiotics work for certain things. They help build a healthy immune system, especially in your “gut” and they help with a number of digestive disorders. They are very helpful after taking a strong course of antibiotics. I never heard of them being used for Crohns Disease, so I tried some research on-line.
*"Ineffectiveness of probiotics in preventing recurrence after curative resection for Crohn’s disease: a randomised controlled trial with Lactobacillus GG
C Prantera, M L Scribano, G Falasco, A Andreoli and C Luzi
Division of Gastroenterology, Azienda Ospedaliera S Camillo-Forlanini, Rome, Italy
ABSTRACT
Background and aims: Experimental studies have shown that luminal bacteria may be involved in Crohn’s disease. Probiotics are a possible alternative to antibiotics. The aim of this randomised placebo controlled study was to determine if Lactobacillus GG, given by mouth for one year, could prevent Crohn’s recurrent lesions after surgery or to reduce their severity.
…
Conclusions: Lactobacillus GG seems neither to prevent endoscopic recurrence at one year nor reduce the severity of recurrent lesions."
*
"*Background: Lactobacillus GG is a safe probiotic bacterium known to transiently colonize the human intestine. It has been found to be useful in treatment of several gastrointestinal conditions characterized by increased gut permeability. In the current study, the efficacy of Lactobacillus GG was investigated in children with Crohn’s disease.
…
Results: There was a significant improvement in clinical activity 1 week after starting Lactobacillus GG, which was sustained throughout the study period. Median pediatric Crohn’s disease activity index scores at 4 weeks were 73% lower than baseline. Intestinal permeability improved in an almost parallel fashion.
Conclusions: Findings in this pilot study show that Lactobacillus GG may improve gut barrier function and clinical status in children with mildly to moderately active, stable Crohn’s disease. Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials are warranted for a final assessment of the efficacy of Lactobacillus GG in Crohn’s disease."*
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/114026690/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
Background: Seventy percent of Crohn’s disease (CD) patients exhibit anastomotic recurrence within 1 year after ileo-caecal surgery. Recent clinical trials suggest the beneficial use of probiotics in the control of intestinal inflammation in pouchitis and ulcerative colitis. This study is a multicenter clinical trial evaluating the efficacy of an oral administration of the probiotic LA1 on early postoperative endoscopic recurrence of CD.
…
Conclusion: Oral administration of the probiotic LA1 in patients with CD failed to prevent early endoscopic recurrence at 12 weeks after ileo-caecal resection.
(Inflamm Bowel Dis 2007)"
Based on these it would seem that Probiotics *may possibly *be a small part of an overall treatment plan. I’d discuss this with the REAL Doctor, and see what he says. My WAG is that he’d agree that they could be a possible adjunct , but not a treatment in of itself.
There are lots of doctors who are willing to try alternative meds along with standard meds.
You should be getting second, third and forth opinons. Don’t forget Osteopathic Physicans as well.
I have found the best bets if your skiddish are research hospitals and/or teaching hospitals.
Search online for other parents with the same condition and ask them what they’ve been through. Unfortunately with meds sometimes you don’t get a perfect answer, all you get is the least problematic.
At first blush it seems contradictory but, ironically, it is used for certain types of ulcers, peptic, I believe. What I have doe is give the guy some other people’s experiences with the same condition.
Just to clarify, my experience is that it is always best to start off as least invasively as possible but ultimately you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. If the situation calls for the big guns immediately, then do it. Always be under a doctors care and run everything by him first. There are some herbs that can have an adverse effect if taken with regular meds, such as St. John’s Wort with Welbutrin…don’t do it.
I got into herbs and nutrition years ago and have had some great results from a number of alternative treatments in lieu conventional treatments. Just remember, doctors are your friends, they’re not you Gods.
No, that’s not always the case. A lot of medicines only treat the symptoms and never cure, i.e., blood pressure. It all depends on the situation and the malady. I take large dosages of Ecinacea (sp) with zinc whenever somebody around me starts getting a cold or the flu. It either totally prevents it or ameliorates it to a remarkable degree.
Remember, the man asked for input based on a consideration that maybe there was something he could try on his son that would be effective without being as invasive. Certain herbal remedies work for certain maladies to certain degrees of effectiveness. Simple as that.
That’s good advice…if you’re helping someone fix their computer or something else that’s not life threatening. Otherwise it’s best to let the medical professionals inform you of what the best choices for you are. Do you think they go for the more invasive procedures when it’s not necessary? Do you think an herbalist is qualified to tell the OP what’s best for his son’s serious condition?
Your point?
That’s a lot less dangerous than the irresponsible advice you copy and pasted earlier. Home remedies for Colds and Crohn’s disease are apples and oranges.
And a qualified doctor pointed out in this thread that the herbal remedies you posted were dangerous, could cause death and other life threatening conditions. Simple as that.
Capsicum on an ulcer? :eek:
What next, rock salt for bleeding hemorrhoids?
I’m gonna need one hell of a cite to believe that capsicum is good for ulcers.
I’m not advocating it’s use without a medical professional’s okay, but there does seem to be some reputable evidence that capsaicin could be helpful for ulcers.
Remicade (Infliximab) is an antibody (a part of the immune system), which specifically blocks a particular signaling path in inflammation. It is used to bring the acute inflammation under control.
On the other hand, every time I’ve take echinacea my allergies have gone into overdrive. Either I’m allergic to purple coneflower, or when it “stimulates” my immune system it also stimulates the malfunctioning part of it. So, needless to say, I avoid echinacea. Even a bad cold is less miserable that what echinacea does to me.
Which just illustrates the point that people are different, there is no treatment without potential side effects, and herbal remedies can have consequences. Which is why the OP’s son needs to be under the care of a doctor with expertise in pediatric Crohn’s disease.
Yes, there are times when doctors will go for the more invasive procedures that are not necessarily called for. For instance, a friend of mine has gotten a prostate cancer scare recently and has been to four different doctors and has gotten four different opinions as to how to proceed. The least invasive is to take strong antibiotics and take a wait-and-see approach to a minor biopsy to a more agressive biopsy to going in right now and getting radioactive isotopes implanted. Same exact psychical malady, four different approaches.
If you have insomnia you will hear a full range of approaches; valerian root tea, OTC benadryl, trazadone/serequel, ambien, benzos. All of those work to varying degrees in varying cases but some start you off light and work up and others bring out the big guns right away.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Different substances will often do different things to different people, depending on their nervous system. Nothing in life is without potential side effects, including life itself. Just because something is classified as an herb does not exempt it from this rule. Technically, tobacco is an herb, poppy plants etc. are herbs (plants with medicinal qualities). As in all things related to your most precious of all assesets, health, always do what you do under a professional’s care, but bear in mind that second and even third opinions are a tool you have control of.
I don’t want to get into a big debate here, but that’s mostly confirmation bias on your part. No controlled clinical study has shown echinacea to have any effect on anything whatsoever.
Zinc, IIRC, does have some efficacy, but it’s not that great.
And if you extrapolate outwards from your confirmation bias, what you are saying is that anybody, at anytime, ever, in the history of man who ‘percieves’ that something like Echinacea is actually effective before a definitive test comes along, that they are confirmationally biasing and mood-making and that the power of the mind is so great that it can actually overcome real sickness’s and diseases. I’ve been doing this for years along with ginseng and have literally not gotten sick for 30 yrs. or more unless I don’t take it or am late taking is at the first signs in others. So you’re saying I’ve been mood making all of these years, innocently self-deceiving myself, right?
If my mood-making works so well on flu/colds then by extension it should do the same for cancer, right?
You really should try some of these things for yourself and see what works and what doesn’t.
That sounds very much like confirmation bias, actually, since you’ve admitted you do get sick if you don’t take echinacea soon enough.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T27-3V2N10N-V&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=9467d37a0e97ba82c639e35e5cdb82e0
"Thus, extracts of Echinacea purpurea and Panax ginseng enhance cellular immune function of PBMC both from normal individuals and patients with depressed cellular immunity."
http://archfami.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/7/6/541
"Conclusion In this study a prophylactic effect of the investigated echinacea extracts could not be shown. However, based on the results of this and 2 other studies, one could speculate that there might be an effect of echinacea products in the order of magnitude of 10% to 20% relative risk reduction. Future studies with much larger sample sizes would be needed to prove this effect. "
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf990677%2B
http://annals.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/136/1/42
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T7P-3SK95BJ-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=8348c1999ff5afe0af70db5490e4ec3a
"These results demonstrate the immune stimulatory ability of the unpurified fresh pressed juice of Echinacea purpurea and offer some insight into the nature of the resulting immune response as compared to endotoxin."
Or, it could be just what I’ve said…It works, simple as that.
I’ve got a great one for you from my own personal experience. Ever since high school I’ve had an inflammaroty/ulcerous condition on the right side of my stomach. A couple of times I had to get medical intervention for it when it flared up into full blown ulcers. Most of the time it is not a debilitating pain, just an annoyance and an knawing, throbbing pain. So, years ago I started taking Cat’s Claw, which was touted as the South American Ginseng. I was taking it for all the things that ginseng is supposed to do; strength immune system, energy, etc. So that is where my confirmation bias was headed. After the first day my ulcerous condition began to abate. No biggie, the pain would come and go in waves and cycles, heavily influenced by things like booze, cigs, coffee, hot spices, etc. I didn’t even give it a thought. When the bottle of CC ran out, the pain came back. Still no biggie, it was a pattern that had repeated itself hundreds of times in my life. I bought another bottle for the ginseng bias confirmation and the pain went away.
All of this got me wondering so I researched CC and found that one of its major characteristics was a powerful astringent agent. I experimented with taking large amounts throughout the day chased down with a big glass of aloe vera juice. Worked like a charm. As soon as I feel a wave coming on I take large amounts of both and the boo boo goes away. I can feel it healing by the itching that often times accompanies the healing process.
Now, to stress my point, I was taking something for one purpose with all my subconscious biases heading in the direction of ginseng affects when lo and behold, out of the blue, comes a totally unexpected effect that I actually did not correlate to the CC at first.
If you have standard ulcers and you take my recipe, I will guarantee you will feel relief. I’ve turned on maybe 30-40 people to this and all are happy as clams at high tide.
Moral of the story: just because something doesn’t compute on your computer doesn’t necessarily mean it ain’t real. Get out there and do some footwork and discover for yourself.