Diet and Health FAQ

Tagged As: Ulcerative Colitis Symptom

Question:
My sister was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis �two months ago after 3 wks of continuous bouts of diarrhea. �She has been looking in medical books and�people with ulcerative colitis have many symptoms, she on the other hand has only the diarrhea. �A coincidence in all this is the diarrhea started the day after she had sour meatloaf at a diner. �She refuses to believe she has the colitis. � The Dr.s �told her they took 5 biopsies and they all point to colitis...The Dr says they (Colitis) has a certain look. Can somebody who has this condition or knows somebody tell me�if having UC�can only show the symptoms of diarrhea and nothing else? Can UC advance in the opposite direction, starting from the ileum/appendix and make its way to the rectum?�Or the advance always one-way? �Also can UC cause partial paralysis in some of the muscle groups of the extremities?

Answer:
I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis after eating a bad meal. For the first 4 weeks after the meal, I just had diarrhea everyday, and a stool test showed I had a campylobacter infection. The treatment for this is erythromycin, an antibiotic I had had problems with in the past so I refused to take it. Eventually I was persuaded to try another antibiotic called norfloxacin. A few days later I started passing large amounts of blood and was admitted to hospital where I spent 5 weeks. From your sister's story, it sounds like she was lucky enough to be diagnosed before she got too sick - perhaps she may have got worse and experienced more symptoms had a diagnosis taken longer. For the most part, my symptoms have been mainly diarrhea over the last 2 years. I don't experience significant pain unless I eat things I shouldn't, I rarely experience nausea, and I only pass blood when I am at my most sick. The extent of inflammation can affect the symptoms as well - distal colitis (towards the rectum) versus pancolitis (the whole colon). I hope this helps.  I have found it a wonderful source of support and information which has really helped me adjust to having UC. Hi Laurie, yes it is possible to have only diarrhea with UC. I was diagnosed with UC 2 years ago after 6 weeks of diarrhea, many of them with blood. I had no other symptoms until several months later when joint pain, arthritis and back pain hit me. Another several months later abdomen pain started and became very severe with bowel movements. Not everyone gets all symptoms at the same time. Symptoms can come and go. If the biopsies all point to colitis then it probably is. The sour meatloaf could have been a trigger to start a flare. Many people with UC have certain foods that can trigger a flair. You can have all different kinds of colitis. That's just a generic word for inflamed colon. She could have a self-limiting infectious colitis, for example. *Ulcerative* colitis is a specific kind of colitis that always: a. involves the rectum and can advance further up the colon; when it does advance, the inflammation is continuous, unlike in Crohn's. and b. produces rectal bleeding. There is no pathological sign in biopsies that is specific to ulcerative colitis ONLY. Diarrhea caused by eating bad food can often be the result of a bacterial problem. As Amy says, there are antibiotics that can and should help in these situations. But what keeps baffling me is that there are still doctors who don't know that just prescribing antibiotics can sometimes make things worse. The intestines are inhabited by many different types of bacteria. Some of these are beneficial and may even be necessary for proper intestinal health. But the antibiotics don't care - they will annihilate both the bad ones, which are causing the diarrhea, and also the good ones. So when the antibiotic is discontinued both the good and bad bacteria have an equal chance to repopulate. That's a bit of a rough explanation but I hope the point is clear. Therefore if you want to increase your chances of rebuilding a healthy intestinal flora you can significantly increase your odds by taking a Probiotic formula. I've tried a number of over the counter Probiotic products, and one that I really like is by Nature's Way and called Primodophilus Bifidus. You only need one a day and a 90 day supply cost around $11. I don't sell this product, just passing on my experience. You can usually buy these at any whole food store or even the Vitamin Shoppe sells them I believe.