WELCOME
The IBD Support Foundation, based in Los Angeles, California, focuses on providing comprehensive, patient-centered psychosocial care. Under the direction of Marci Reiss, LCSW, the Foundation strives to provide leading psychosocial support, nutritional counseling, and medical education to patients with Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis and their families.
IBD impacts the whole family, not just the patient. At the IBD Support Foundation, we recognize the importance of strengthening the family unit while addressing the emotional needs of each patient. This is done through individual and family counseling, hospital visitation programs, peer mentors, school, work and insurance advocacy, and psychoeducational support groups for pre-teens, 'tweens, teens, college students, adults and parents of children with IBD.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease DefinedBy: Sunanda V. Kane, MD, MSPH1
IBD is charachteristically a lifelong (chronic) condition in which there is inflammation of the lining of the gastrointestinal tract for no apparent reason. The inflammation might be located just in one part of the digestive tract, for example, in the large intestine (colon), but it can appear anywhere along the digestive tract, from the mouth to the anus.
IBD occurs as two major types and two rare types. Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are the two diseases that most people recognize because they are the most common.
More than 1 million Americans have IBD, and right now this is equally split between Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. However, this balance is likely to change because the number of new cases of Crohn’s disease is on the rise, although the reason behind this trend is not entirely clear. Each year, approximately 10 people per 100,000 are diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and 16 people per 100,000 are diagnosed with Corhn’s disease.2
It’s most common to develop IBD between the ages of 15 and 35. However, children as young as 3 have been diagnosed, and there is a second peak of diagnosis between ages 50 and 55. Equal numbers of men and women get IBD3. In Americans, it tends to occur more often in whites, particularly those of Jewish descent. However, more African-Americans and Latinos are being diagnosed with IBD each year, and in truth, there are no longer “typical?patients in terms of ethnicity. Also, people living in all parts of the United States get IBD, so there are no geographical differences here. But if we look at the global distribution of IBD, we see that it tends to occur in industrialized nations rather than developing countries. Strangely, IBD appears to be associated with better sanitation.4
1 This article is reprinted with the permission of Dr. Kane.
2 Loftus CG, Loftus EV Jr, Harmsen WS, Zinsmeister AR, Tremaine WJ, Melton LJ 3rd, Sandborn WJ. Update on the incidence and prevalence of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis in Olmsted County, Minnesota, 1940-2000. Inflamm Bowel Dis. 2007 Mar;13(3):254-61.
3 Sands BE, Grabert SEpidemiology of inflammatory bowel disease and overview of pathogenesis. Med Health R I. 2009 Mar;92(3):73-7.
4 Koloski NA, Bret L, Radford-Smith G. Hygiene hypothesis in inflammatory bowel disease: a critical review of the literature. World J Gastroenterol. 2008 Jan 14;14(2):165-73.
