ALTERNATIVE MEDICINES for IBD

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) often take medicines that their doctors don't recommend or go see other practitioners. In a study done in Toronto (G Nguyen and others, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, 2016), of those who took alternative medicines or techniques (or complementary medicines—meaning that they also took their regular medicines): 

• 65% took probiotics
• 49% took fish oil
• 43% underwent massage therapy
• 39% sought naturopathy

The reasons they did:

• They wanted better control of their IBD (39%)
• They had poor control of their disease with their regular medicine (22%)
• They felt that alternative medicines were safer (21%)
• They had side effects while on their regular medicines (16%)

Some had taken these medicines or gone to these practitioners before for their general health, too. Others learned about these medicines from the internet or a friend. 

The problem was that half of those who were using these complementary and alternative medicines (also known as CAM) often missed taking their regular medicines and had a worse quality of life. While most said that they didn't intentionally miss or stop their medications, the fact that they had worse quality-of-life is a sign that they may be developing a flare as a result. And those flares can lead to further bowel damage, hospitalizations and surgery. 

In general, there's no problem with taking CAM—unless it leads to not taking other, needed medicines. There is still some controversy, however, with probiotics, at least in pediatric Crohn's disease, where patients those taking probiotics actually did worse than those who weren't taking them.