Are crohn's symptoms generally getting worse?

[Uffie]

Hi,
I started with mild crohn's which after a nice break returned as mega evil crohn's.

My nan told me about her old friend who had crohn's and was fine.

My friends grandma has crohn's and seems to be symptom free and swears by a garlic clove a day.

These ladies of the older generation might just be lucky individuals - or maybe crohn's has changed and become more evil in recent years?

Does anyone have any factual information about this?

Ta

 

[valleysangel92]

There could be a number of reasons why they seem to be ok and you seem to be feeling worse.

One of which is that the level of symptoms don't always have a connection with disease activity, so they could have very active disease, but not have many symptoms, and so they don't have the tests etc and it isn't picked up that they are flaring. It could be that your disease was festering quietly for a while without symptoms, but damage was being done and now it's all hitting you for six.

Also, in general, the older generations are a lot more private and stoical, many of them don't want to bother people or find it demeaning or embarrassing to talk about their condition, so they could be telling everyone that they are fine, when actually they aren't.


Additionally there are theories surrounding things like the impact of pollution on crohns, the air we have grown up with is certainly 'dirtier' than the air of a few generations before us, and some believe this is partly why we see a higher incidence now than before.

Keep in mind as well that they may simply of got lucky, or they have had the disease so long they just have a good control over it now from trial and error in the past.