Long Term Diet and Gut Health

The Investigative Clinical Research Group in Annapolis is a group of doctors and researchers that are dedicated to finding relief for those who suffer from gastrointestinal illness by researching and performing clinical trials. By being proactive and specifically designing individualized trials, the ICR team has a passion to provide better medicine for gastrointestinal patients. Diet plays a large role in most gastrointestinal issues and is just one of the many things that the ICR group focuses on.

Current national studies have been limited to focusing on single nutrients or food components rather than the role a person’s overall diet plays in health and disease. So much time has been spent looking for individual triggers instead of a comprehensive view of the entire diet.  Everyone has that one food that they know will upset their stomach. Sausage is a base example. Every time the patient eats sausage they have problems in their gut, we know that. But how does the patient’s entire diet come into play? If adjustments are made in the overall diet, will it then be safe to eat the sausage? Questions like these are the ones that doctors hope to answer.

Diet has been proven to play a role in both IBD and IBS symptoms and possibly disease progression. Doctors know that a diet high in foods with a high inflammatory score have been known to be associated with Crohn’s Disease, and the risks therein. While it is known that eating refined grains over a long period of time can cause a problem, they are not necessarily triggered food that will always upset things when eaten. Someone can eat refined grains daily and be fine, not knowing that the long-term effects of this diet can be detrimental to their health. Thus, the interaction between diet, gut composition, and the role intestinal microbes play in inflammation and disease is still greatly unknown.

There are many questions regarding gastrointestinal health that, simply put, there are no answers for. This is the very thing that motivates the ICR group to do what they do. Clinical studies are being done every day with the hope of providing answers for these questions. With the help of patients willing to participate in the trials, ICR hopes to find the information needed to give the patients the best treatment possible that will lead to long-term relief. For more information, please visit www.icrmd.com.