Stephanie Belseth – Pediatric Nurse Practitioner – Edina, MN

Our daughter had UC symptoms starting age 5, and we started seeing Stephanie Belseth shortly before our daughter's 7th birthday. In the MPLS, MN area, we see both a regular gastroenterologist, as well as Stephanie Belseth CPNP for more naturalistic approaches (her focus is on pediatrics, but others in the clinic handle adults.) We found Stephanie through the GAPS website, since her specialty is especially conditions helped by GAPS diet (autism, ADHD, allergies, etc) through gut-healing. She is very familiar with gut-healing approaches, but less-so with UC specifically - bear that in mind. Our situation was out-of-pocket, so don't know about insurance.



Our regular gastro had tested for c-diff, but no comprehensive stool testing. Through Stephanie we had comprehensive stool/blood/urine testing done. The stool testing revealed severe overgrowth of multiple "potential pathogenic" gut bacteria. Using herbs listed identified in the stool test as effective (berberine, uva ursi, etc) against these specific bacteria, we started our daughter on a one-by-one herb protocol to eradicate them, which took months (each one took a few weeks). We also incorporated a number of other supplements to address deficiencies identified in the blood/urine tests. Our diet for the last two years has been a combination of GAPS, SCD, & Paleo (which have a lot of overlap.) Over this time our daughter's health has continued to improve - it's currently been about 4 months since the last visible trace of blood in stools occurred. We have also incorporated on our own factors from www.listentoyourgut.com - Natren probiotics spe cifically, since mega-dosing VSL#3 didn't work. Stephanie will also prescribe LDN if you want - we tried it for over 6 months, but dropped it when the topical LDN application started causing bad rashes - and our daughter's current UC stability wasn't negative impacted stopping the LDN.



I would highly recommend anyone with intestinal issues to consider doing complete stool/blood/urine testing through a practitioner who specialized in this (offhand, these tests + detailed consultation to review the very detailed tests was almost $2000 - well worth it in our case, IMHO.) NOTE - this testing was NOT done through a gastroenterologist - this natural approach is snake-oil to typical gastro docs...and our daughter would be on 6MP and/or worse medications had we only followed the gastro doc approach. Instead, we currently only have a sulfasalazine prescription through the gastroenterologist, which is one of the most benign UC meds. Lord-willing, if we can continue the gut-healing approaches through Stephanie (diet/supplements), our daughter will eventually not need the sulfasalazine prescription.