This transcript has been edited for clarity. For more episodes, download the Medscape app or subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast provider.
Lin Chang, MD: Hello. I’m Dr Lin Chang and welcome to Medscape’s InDiscussion series on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Today we’ll be discussing brain-gut behavior, research, and treatment in IBS with Dr Laurie Keefer. Dr Keefer is an academic health psychologist and the director of Psychobehavioral Research within the Division of Gastroenterology at Mt Sinai. Welcome to InDiscussion. Thank you, Laurie, for being with us here today. We’re very excited for this session. You are the leading expert on this. Thank you for joining us.
Laurie Keefer, PhD: Thank you for having me. I’m always happy to talk about brain-gut behavioral therapies.
Chang: I want to start off asking how you became interested in IBS?
Keefer: Oh, that’s a great question; it was kind of accidental. I actually started out in graduate school. My mentor assigned me to a study to teach people living with IBS Herbert Benson meditation.