John Arts Abundant Living johnarts.co.nz

Over the years I have created nutritional support programmes for those with Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis (UC). This year one person has noticed major improvements in UC, to the point of having much less severe symptoms and being able to reduce anti-inflammatory medication.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) refers to auto-immune diseases that affect the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. these can affect any area from the mouth to the rectum. The two most common forms of IBD are Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis (UC). Both are auto-immune diseases and while manageable with medication and surgery, both are generally classified as incurable.

From a nutritional view we want to reduce local inflammation of the gut while lowering body-wide inflammation generated by the immune system. The medical mainstay for UC and sometimes Crohn’s is the drug Mesalazine (Pentasa). This is derived from aspirin like (salicylic acid) substances and has a local anti-inflammatory affect. It appears to block the enzymes that produce inflammatory chemicals called prostaglandins. It is also thought to act like an antioxidant neutralising the excess of free radicals produced as part of the local inflammation.

This is precisely the goal of nutritional therapy. Firstly, to turn down body wide inflammation, and then to add potent antioxidants that both remove excess free radicals, and also have a local anti-inflammatory affect. While I use a wide range of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds, by far the most important are grape seed-derived proanthocyanidins, sometimes called OPC’s or PCO’s. these are powerful GI tract antioxidants and also help moderate highly inflammatory chemicals (cytokines and prostaglandins) produced by the immune system.

Of course everything starts with diet and we need to ensure that foods are anti-inflammatory and are also well tolerated. to this I then add specific compounds from supplements including Vitamin D. The most difficult decision with Crohn’s and UC is where to start and in what doses. Invariably we start very cautiously with a very narrow antioxidant product then as we get response we then increase and broaden the therapy, adding anti-inflammatory Omega 3 and many other compounds. for many people adopting such an approach can lead to real improvements in quality of life, and be an important step in long term management of these serious health problems.

John Arts is the founder of Abundant Health. for product information visit abundant.co.nz if you have questions or would like a free health plan you can contact John at or phone (07) 578 9051 or 0800 423 559. you can join his newsletter at johnarts.co.nz Read more from John at sunlive.co.nz