Empowering Patients To Make Healthy Changes For A Lifetime
Jordan Bellew ’20 endured a life-changing ordeal from ninth grade to his first year of college, marked by 24 hospital admissions due to a severe and progressive paralysis. This condition left him unable to perform even basic tasks like lifting a fork or spoon, despite his background as a young, healthy athlete. After extensive testing, Jordan was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease, Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP), which causes the immune system to attack the nervous system. Armed with this diagnosis, he embarked on a transformative journey to reclaim his health and inspire others, focusing on the profound impact of diet and nutrition in managing chronic illness and improving well-being.
As he journeyed through his condition and transitioned from high school to college, he made changes to his diet and lost more than 60 pounds. He credited this change and a few others with piquing his interest in studying nutrition.
“When I was going through that, I started changing my diet. That’s when I really started walking closer to the Lord. And the medicines I was on started making more of an impact then. I lost quite a bit of weight during that time. I initially lost more than 40 pounds. But what was interesting was that people around me were noticing that I was trying to make all of these changes, and they were noticing the results. They would come to me and tell me about their achievements after seeing what I’d done, so I was impacting them indirectly. So I wondered, ‘What can I do directly?’ And that made me go into this field,” Bellew stated.
That question led him to study nutrition at the University of Central Arkansas. Not long after graduation, he started working as a nutritionist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) with liver and kidney transplant patients, beginning a career he enjoys because of its impact. “I really enjoyed it,” Bellew stated. “Those patients were willing to change their diets to ensure their organs would stay healthy. They had to come in for checkups routinely, so I was part of their team. I was an outpatient nutritionist, so I could spend more time with them and get to know them.”
Bellew then moved to northwest Arkansas and is currently with ARcare Positive Connections, providing outpatient nutritional healthcare to HIV/AIDS patients as part of a holistic approach to their treatment. Even though medications have progressed in recent years, Bellew noted that nutrition plays a vital role in their treatment.
“Their medications do work very well to where they can become undetectable or to where they can’t even transmit it, but with that [the medications], they are more prone to develop diabetes or high cholesterol levels or hypertension. Some clients are usually 2% or less below the poverty line. So it’s trying to meet them where they are and helping them utilize what they have access to so that we can help them boost their immune system and just really help them feel better overall. I give them the educational tools they can use to build lifelong sustainable healthy habits,” Bellew said.
As part of a team of doctors, nurses and social caseworkers supported by the Ryan White Foundation, Bellew consults his patients on nutrition. He goes further by providing food bags or giving them guidance on how to apply for assistance. As an outpatient dietician, he can provide support and a place of accountability to ensure success for a population often overlooked or undersupported.
Bellew explained, “I can provide my clients with food bags or supplements. I can also give them little tips like what to look for when grocery shopping or going to local food banks. They also have caseworkers who help them with housing and things of that nature. Accountability isn’t just having them come in periodically; it is about checking in three or six months out to make sure everything’s going well, making sure they have what they need, and that can be enough motivation for them to maintain healthy habits.”
When asked about his hopes for his patients and his impact from bringing healthy nutritional change, Bellew stated, “I hope that the changes I’ve taught them are sustainable and maintainable. I want to leave them with the tools they need to feel confident and competent to maintain and keep it going.”