You can find a list of your representatives here:

http://www.congress.org/search.html

If you live in Canada, then you can find your reps here: http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/house/PostalCode.asp?Source=SM

Everyone's experience with this disease is different. Feel free to use this as a guide if you want to, or write your own letter. If you live in Canada, please make sure you change the NIH to whatever the canadian equivalent is....I think it is the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), but i'm not certain on this. I've put my notes in <>.

Plan on having your family members and friends send in letters as well. If we can get 3 people for every member on this list to send in mail, then we could have 1,500 letters........or more......for each of our representatives.

Dear Senator <elected official's name here>:

I am writing to you on behalf of thousands of US citizens who are suffering from Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). When I was 13 years old, I became extremely ill with a form of IBD called Crohn's Disease. The details of my life with this disease are too depressing and too long to include in a short letter. Suffice it to say, the medications the doctors prescribed to treat the pain, diarrhea, fistulas, and suffering related to this disease were less than ideal. I've seen several specialists since my original diagnosis and none could offer any further relief.

Two years ago I found a book entitled, "Breaking the Vicious Cycle" written by Elaine Gottschall, MS Biochemistry. The book detailed a diet based treatment for IBD related illnesses. I had nothing to lose at that point in my life, so I gave the diet a try. Within a month I was off all of my medication and my symptoms were 90 percent gone. After two years of staying on the diet, I am now 100 percent symptom free. Some of my doctors have been more encouraging than others. Most of them do not believe my remission has been induced by the diet. This is why I am writing to you today.

The diet is called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, has been around for decades, and is based on sound scientific principles. However, it is not well received by the medical community because there hasn't been a study performed to evaluate its effectiveness. Please Senator Clinton, I implore you to contact the National Institute of Health (NIH) on our behalf to reserve funding for such a study. I truly believe that this diet could save hundreds of thousands of people from needless suffering. I know that if my specialists had advised me of such a diet when I was 13, I could have been saved from 11 years of suffering. Thank you for listening,