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So I Have Ulcerative Colitis…Now What?

Now it’s time to treat that bad boy.  There are different ways that you can treat ulcerative colitis, depending upon how severe your condition is.  There are three main goals for treating this disease:

 

1. Treating complications – sometimes there are complications with ulcerative colitis such as infection or anemia.
2. Preventing new attacks
3. Relieving your symptoms

 

So how do you reach these goals?  If you tend to have mild symptoms, then you will probably benefit from changes in your diet as well as anti-diarrheal medicines.  It’s important to discuss treatment options with your doctor so that you can be sure that you’re taking the right medication, even if it’s just anti-diarrheal meds.  Sometimes corticosteroids will be used to control the disease when it’s active, to stop the attacks.

 

If your symptoms are moderate to severe, then you will most likely need to take corticosteroids to control the inflammation that you are experiencing.  When your inflammation ceases, you’ll probably be put on aminosalicylates to ensure that the condition stays in remission.

 

However your ulcerative colitis affects you, it is imperative that you work with your physician to come up with a treatment plan to control the condition.

 

What kind of treatment do you use to control your ulcerative colitis?

Changing Your Diet to Treat Ulcerative Colitis

As I’ve mentioned before, altering your diet is a great way to prevent the symptoms that typically occur in ulcerative colitis patients.  The main thing to understand is that when you have an IBD such as ulcerative colitis, it may be difficult for your body to efficiently absorb the necessary nutrients and vitamins that it needs to stay healthy.  Here are some points to help you to determine exactly how you should alter your diet:

 

• You must eat a varied, healthy diet in order to keep your weight up and stay healthy and strong
• Keep an eye out on those foods that trigger your symptoms and stay away from them!
• Every person is different, and ulcerative colitis affects different people in different ways.  A good way to determine how your diet should be modified is to keep a food diary.  Keep track of what you eat and how it makes you feel.  Then you can make educated decisions when it comes to what you eat.
• It’s important that you get all of the vitamins necessary to stay healthy.  Consider taking a mineral or vitamin supplement to ensure that your nutrient levels are maintained.
• Since you are probably not absorbing all of the nutrients you need, you will need to maintain a high protein, high calorie diet.  To make this easier, eat regular meals as well as several snacks throughout the day.

 

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Do I Have Ulcerative Colitis?

There are several different tests used to determine whether or not a patient is affected by ulcerative colitis.  Thankfully, the condition is pretty easy to diagnose because it typically affects only the rectum and colon and causes apparent changes in your bowel habits.

 

Before conducting any of these tests, your doc will talk about your medical history and perform a physical exam to make sure that ulcerative colitis is a possibility.  If it is, then you will go on to enjoy either a colonoscopy or flexible sigmoidoscopy.  These tests, while uncomfortable and not something for you to look forward to, examine the interior of your large intestine.  Some of the time, these two tests are all that’s needed to diagnose ulcerative colitis.  In other cases, you may need to undergo other tests including:

 

• Barium enema, which lets your doctor check out your colon via X-ray.
• Abdominal X-ray
• CT scan, another X-ray procedure
• Stool analysis to look for parasites, blood, white blood cells, or signs of bacterial infection
• MRI

 

Sure, these kinds of exams and tests aren’t fun.  But they are imperative when diagnosing a condition such as ulcerative colitis.  And only when you know what you’re dealing with can you take the necessary steps to treat it…right?

Symptoms of Ulcerative Colitis

As I mentioned in an earlier post, ulcerative colitis is a serious disease that can affect the entire colon.  Following are the most common symptoms of this condition:

 

• Rectal bleeding.  You may also experience bloody diarrhea and mucus.  In addition, you may have rectal pain.
• Rectal urgency or diarrhea.  Some ulcerative colitis patients have diarrhea 10-20 times per day.  You may find that the urge to poop wakes you up in the night, too.  This is my personal least favorite symptom.  Talk about having a sore bum!
• Constipation.  We’re going from one extreme to another here, aren’t we?  This symptom is much less common that diarrhea.
• Abdominal pain and/or cramping.  Even physically touching your abdomen may be painful.
• Fever.
• Loss of appetite.
• Anemia.  Some patients develop anemia due to low iron levels caused by intestinal inflammation or bloody stools.
• Weight loss.  Chronic symptoms such as diarrhea can cause weight loss.  While I’m all about losing a few pounds, chronic diarrhea just doesn’t seem the best way to do it.

 

And these are just the most common symptoms that occur with this ghastly disease. 

Ulcerative Colitis: Signs to Watch Out For

If you have been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, there are several things that you need to constantly be on the look out for.  If any of the following symptoms appear, immediately call a physician:

• Passing out, lightheadedness, or rapid heart rate
• Fever over 101F and/or shaking chills
• Consistently bloody stools
• Severe pain in the abdomen
• Severe dehydration
• Pus draining from the anal region/swelling and pain in the anal region
• Not passing any gas or stools
• Repeated vomiting

None of the above sounds very fun, but if you have been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, it may mean that you disease has gotten much worse.  Be sure to keep in touch with how your body is feeling and don’t ignore it!

Ulcerative Colitis: What You Should Know

Ulcerative colitis doesn’t sound like much fun, and that’s just the way that the words sound.  Once you start researching the condition itself, it becomes more evident that this is not a disease one would wish for.

But what is ulcerative colitis?

Ulcerative colitis is a condition that causes ulcers/sores and inflammation in the lining of the colon, or large intestine.  Most of the time, the disease affects the lower section and rectum, but it does have the capability to affect the entire colon.  The more of your colon that’s affected by ulcerative colitis, the worse the symptoms you’ll experience.

Doctors and specialists don’t know exactly what causes this condition.  It’s possible that the condition is caused by the immune system overreacting to healthy bacteria in the digestive tract.  While stress can make ulcerative colitis worse, it is not the cause of the condition, as some used to think.  Studies have shown that you’re more likely to get the disease if others in your family have it.

Do you know anyone who has been affected by ulcerative colitis?  Share your thoughts here.