Former Miss Venezuela, Carmen María Montiel is now a resident of Houston, Texas. Active in charity work, Carmen María Montiel has been named a Woman of Distinction by the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA).
The nonprofit CCFA was founded in 1967 and through its 40 chapters, support programs, and national education, serves over 300,000 patients annually. It plays a leading role in the research of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis; funding studies at established medical institutions as well as other related initiatives. It publishes its own scientific journal, Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.
In March 2016, CCFA announced that it was awarded funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute in the amount of $2.5 million for a study on how effective Mediterranean-style diets and specific carbohydrate diets are as intervention to treat Crohn’s disease. Eating a particular food is not known to cause inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), but a number of foods may worsen symptoms in some patients.
To date, there have been few clinical experiments aimed at outlining changes in diets to assist patients with IBD to manage inflammation and symptoms; this is the first time a study of this kind will be done in a national scale.
