Listen To Your Gut: Natural healing and dealing with inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome

by Jini Patel Thompson

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Jini Patel Thompson. Listen To Your Gut: Natural healing and dealing with inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. Vancouver, BC: Caramal Publishing  2000. $36.95  http://www.listen2yourgut.com/

This book is a very empowering example of Biofeedback and self-reinforcement conditioning. The author was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 1986. After medical treatment for three years and getting worse she embarked on her own path of discovery via research and trial and error. She claims to be symptom, medication, and surgery free for the past 10 years.  

Jini Patel shares her healing journey with confidence that the readers can heal themselves as well. This teaches a way to begin to pay attention to how our body reacts to internal and external stress and how we can then take action and be responsible for our health. We can do this by treating causes of symptoms, then maintaining this healthy balance. while preventing future episodes of distress. This is something most of us probably do not realize we have the power to decide.

The book begins with the etiology and pathogenesis of IBD and IBS. It looks at one’s self concept then describes herbal therapies and supplements helpful for inflammation, ulceration and bleeding, fissures, mouth ulcers, immune system strengtheners, anemia, heartburn, diarrhea, constipation and weight loss/ malnutrition. Healing diets are then described, beginning with the maintenance diet, minimize gas and bloating diet, reduce diarrhea diet, stop intestinal bleeding diet, bowel rest elemental diet, and the testing for food sensitivity diet. One uses biofeedback to decide which diet is needed, depending on the stage of intestinal distress, graduating to the next diet as symptoms abate.

Next, lifestyle and environmental factors are discussed as we examine our food, beverages, exercise, air quality, noise where we live, and whether our job “builds us up or tears us down.” She describes how much control we actually have regarding how to eliminate toxins such as smoke, car exhaust, air pollutants, and power line effects. She tells the benefits of organic food and beverages, preserving the nutritive value of food, eliminating sugar, and implementing change.

Absorption through the skin can be a problem from products we put on our bodies, including chlorine in our water, which many people are sensitive to. She suggests water filters for drinking and showering.

Biofeedback is constantly helping us to learn to attain optimal health if we can love ourselves enough to give it our attention to what our body is telling us. The author asks us to examine our attitudes and beliefs about our body and its functioning, and to seek kinder gentler ways to effect healing in a manner that supports the whole body, because this kind of healing is wholistic and long-term.

Each chapter ends with questions for further exploration to lead us to a greater awareness of our situation, so that informed decisions can be made. The author rates bodywork therapies she herself has found helpful such as craniosacral therapy, naturopathic medicine, meditation (such as cultivating stillness), dialoguing with your body, colonic massage, and exercise – to name just a few. The book ends with Mind control and visualization techniques such as affirmations, healing visualizations, direct healing, overall healing, balancing/ calming, and exercises for controlling the bowels and transforming pain.

I liked this book immensely, as the experience of the author successfully healing herself from such a serious illness is inspirational.

Book Review by Marilyn Morlock, RN
Student in the Wholistic Transformational Therapy course
Integrative Energy Healing Program
Langara College, Vancouver, BC

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