Quality of life in Inflammatory Bowel Disease, with Clemmie Oliver

06/21/24 • 35 min

If I encounter anyone with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, I send them straight to Clemmie Oliver. Her clinic specialises in supporting people with IBD using Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine, and Clemmie has had prolonged experience of IBD herself.

Clemmie and I trained together several years ago, and since then she has built an incredibly successful IBD-focused clinic, now been joined by registered specialist gastroenterology dietitian, Jess Upton.

I absolutely loved this chance to catch up with her, and I think you will hugely enjoy hearing her personal (and reasonably dramatic) story of IBD and health, as well as her brilliantly passionate yet clear explanations of this often-misunderstood condition.

As Clemmie succinctly puts it: Diet matters – no matter what is going on.

Our topics include:

Why the small intestine is Clemmie’s favourite part of the digestive system!
What Inflammatory Bowel Disease is, and what causes it
Clemmie’s own journey with IBD since the age of 9
The important differences between IBD and IBS
Symptoms to watch for if you suspect IBD, and what to do
The relevance of stress to IBD
The value of medical interventions AND nutrition and lifestyle medicine in IBD
IBD Flares and what may help reduce them
Clemmie’s advocacy work with her IBD patients

More on Clemmie:

Clemmie is a Qualified Nutritional Therapist (DipION), Registered Associate Nutritionist (MSc, AfN) and founder of the Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine Clinic which supports people living with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases to improve their quality of life. Clemmie also mentors other nutrition professionals and provides IBD training and education for other healthcare professionals. Clemmie regularly speaks on the topic of nutrition for large corporations based around the world, and works with IBD charities and companies as a nutrition advisor. She has also carried out postgraduate research in IBD at the University of Aberdeen.

Clemmie is incredibly passionate about empowering patients with IBD by providing professional nutrition support to optimise nutritional intake, support symptom management, and ultimately improve their quality of life, as well as being their patient advocate. In addition, as an IBD patient herself, having lived with Ulcerative Colitis since the age of 9, she has a compassionate understanding of her patients’ experiences living with IBD.

https://nalmclinic.com/

https://www.instagram.com/clemmieolivernutrition/

https://www.facebook.com/nalmclinic/

Contact Clare via her website: https://www.transformationnutrition.org/contact

Theme music is by Chris Marchand. You can find more of his work at https://chrismarchand.bandcamp.com/

As Clemmie succinctly puts it: Diet matters – no matter what is going on.

Our topics include:

Why the small intestine is Clemmie’s favourite part of the digestive system!
What Inflammatory Bowel Disease is, and what causes it
Clemmie’s own journey with IBD since the age of 9
The important differences between IBD and IBS
Symptoms to watch for if you suspect IBD, and what to do
The relevance of stress to IBD
The value of medical interventions AND nutrition and lifestyle medicine in IBD
IBD Flares and what may help reduce them
Clemmie’s advocacy work with her IBD patients

Previous Episode

Training the brain to reduce pain, with Jennifer Johnson

We’re used to the idea that pain sensations accurately register physical disease or injury. But much research has found that some kinds of pain are actually alleviated by working on the brain, not the body.

Jennifer Johnson is a Mind-Body Chronic Pain Coach based in Seattle. Her chronic pain journey started 14 years ago, most days barely able to walk. After undertaking training on her mind and nervous system, she became pain-free and able to resume normal life. Then, as a coach, she took Howard Schubiner's practitioner training to qualify her in Pain Reprocessing Therapy, to support diverse clients in resolving their own chronic pain.

I loved this conversation for Jen’s open honesty about her story, the mind-bending information she shares, and the huge ray of hope she sheds for people in chronic pain.

This is an angle of Lifestyle Medicine that may be quite surprising to most, and I hope will be life changing for many.

Could your pain be susceptible to 'Mind-Body’ reprocessing? Here’s Jen's questionnaire to help you: https://www.thoughtbythoughthealing.com/thetest

Jen’s podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/thought-by-thought-healing/id1632101059

Jen refers to Dr Howard Shubiner: https://unlearnyourpain.com/mind-body-syndrome/

I have found Alan Gordon’s book is a useful, easy-to-access introduction to this subject: https://www.curablehealth.com/books/alan-gordon/the-way-out-approach-to-healing-chronic-pain

The boot story Jen mentions can be found (with some difficulty, you need to buy access) as a report in the British Medical Journal: Fisher JP, Hassan DT, O’Connor N. Minerva. Br Med J 1995; 310:70.

There is a huge literature on pain. One useful, nuanced introductory article may be found here: Brodal, Per. "A neurobiologist’s attempt to understand persistent pain" Scandinavian Journal of Pain, vol. 15, no. 1, 2017, pp. 140-147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sjpain.2017.03.001

Contact Clare via her website: https://www.transformationnutrition.org/contact

Theme music is by Chris Marchand. You can find more of his work at https://chrismarchand.bandcamp.com/

Next Episode

Biography affects biology

This episode, I share how elements of my biography may have affected my biology, including multiple digestive symptoms and thyroid disease.

I’m aiming for what Gabor Maté calls “a clear and honest look at the biographical factors that can disrupt our biological well-being”.

And I wanted to consider this in light of my previous two Nutrition With Love interviews, which discussed health challenges from two very different standpoints – one, mainly to do with the ‘mechanics’ of the gut, and the other, mainly to do with mind-body messaging.

Were my health challenges ‘mechanical problems’ in the body, or were they ‘formed by the mind’?

I think both. But of course it’s also more complicated than that.

Covering attachment, bereavement, mould, the HPA axis, digestive health, training one’s brain, hormonal balance and more, my discussion is partly inspired by Gabor Maté’s book Myth of Normal, in which he argues for the intimate interconnectedness of one’s environment, culture, biography and one’s state of health.

If my experiences help even one person to unravel some of their biology, or biography, in a healing way – then sharing them will be worth it.

Unlike my other episodes, this was recorded while standing in my kitchen and taking care of a lively dog - which close listeners will probably hear!

If you’d like to talk more about improving your digestive or thyroid health, do get in touch.

Some useful related links:

On thyroid health: https://nutrition-with-love.simplecast.com/episodes/why-your-thyroid-matters

On testing gut health: https://nutrition-with-love.simplecast.com/episodes/why-your-thyroid-matters

Gabor Maté’s book Myth of Normal, from which I quote chapter 7: https://drgabormate.com/book/the-myth-of-normal/

On attachment and stress: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/systems-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2021.718198/full

On mould (video): https://www.transformationnutrition.org/post/anne-pemberton-mould-and-histamine

Sleep: https://nutrition-with-love.simplecast.com/episodes/sweet-sleep

On HPA axis / allostatic load: Izabella Wentz’s book https://mybook.to/adrenalprotocol / https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-019-0228-0

For other references and any questions, please do get in touch on the link below.

Contact Clare via her website: https://www.transformationnutrition.org/contact

Theme music is by Chris Marchand. You can find more of his work at https://chrismarchand.bandcamp.com/

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