To be blunt, the medical community is largely ineffective when it comes to educating patients on how big a role diet plays in their health. It’s not that providers don’t try; it’s the system itself. Due to limited face time between docs and their patients, missing resources, and a lack of collaboration between providers, patient care suffers.
For digestive symptoms, gaps in care are especially troubling. For example, when a patient arrives at the ER because of scary abdominal pain, bloody stools or uncontrollable diarrhea, the treating physician will typically prescribe an expensive medication to get symptoms under control and then order some invasive follow-up tests (think colonoscopy). Patients may receive some diet tips before being released, but rarely is a nutrition expert brought into the loop.
This is unfortunate. Not only can this approach be ineffective, it’s also expensive—for individuals, for health plans, and for self-funded employers.
There’s Another Way
At Vivante Health, we’re the digestive health experts. We understand that medication and scopes aren’t always the answer to gut trouble. In fact, for digestive conditions, food can be medicine. We’ll say it again: Food is medicine.
Therapeutic Nutrition
We call it therapeutic nutrition. It’s not a traditional diet. It’s not a weight loss program. By using proven science we help people with gut trouble identify and manage the triggers—foods, stress, and lifestyle factors—that cause their symptom flare-ups in the first place.
With chronic GI conditions like Crohn’s disease, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and celiac disease, flares can include embarrassing digestive symptoms like diarrhea, constipation, gas, and bloating, but also body aches, exhaustion, chills, fever, and skin reactions. All of these symptoms can come on suddenly, without warning, drastically impacting someone’s ability to function, much less be productive at work.
Food as Medicine
Therapeutic food plans, like the low-FODMAP and specific carbohydrate diets, can help. When we personalize these diets, tailoring them to the individual, friendly gut bacteria can thrive while the harmful bacteria are starved out. When the ratio of helpful to harmful bacteria is in balance, inflammation eases and symptoms diminish. Using therapeutic nutrition, people are empowered to heal their guts naturally, reducing or even ending their dependence on expensive specialty drugs like Humira and Remicade.
Therapeutic nutrition is proven effective. In a study, 9 of 11 test subjects were able to manage their inflammatory bowel disease without specialty drugs, and 100% experienced reduced symptoms.
GIThrive® Digital Gut Health Program
Using therapeutic nutrition to alleviate symptoms is one of the cornerstones of our GIThrive digital gut health program. Coupled with support from team of real human gut health experts, the GIThrive program can:
- identify the root cause(s) of GI inflammation
- help rebuild a balanced gut microbiome (healthy ratio of helpful to harmful bacteria in the gut)
- greatly increase the chances of remission for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and IBS
- reduce the need for steroids and other costly meds
Therapeutic nutrition not only helps helps individuals with chronic digestive trouble reclaim their lives, but it also helps employers and health plans reduce costs for GI-related claims.
About Vivante Health
Vivante Health is an innovative digital healthcare company reinventing the way chronic conditions are managed, starting with digestive disease. Our all-in-one digital gut health program, GIThrive, empowers people—through brilliant technology and advanced science—to improve their digestive health, while lowering their cost of care. Learn how employers and health plans are saving money with GIThrive.