Well, I will try to answer all of the questions, if I forget something please remind me, I've recently been in an auto accident and i swear that it's totally disrupted my train of thought. I started out by researching Tumeric/Circumin on the internet and sort of found the maximum dosage (some sights said 4g and other said 6g daily) I went to a health food store and asked their advice about dosage and settled on 2000 mg daily. after awhile I reduced it to 1600 mg and now i've reduced it again to 800 mg daily. I started out with the health food store capsules at 40$ a bottle and went that way for about 3 years. then after a visit to my doctor he told me that I should try the tumeric sold in the supermarket instead. He felt that it was the same stuff just packaged by the health food stores into convenient capsules. So now I have been buying bulk tumeric sold at the local food store for about 6 months. I hope it the same stuff. I take the same dosage in a small measuring spoon with water in the morning.
So for the medical symptoms before diagnosis I started with frequent bowel movements, then a fistula, then large amounts of daily bowel movement ( around 12/day) after diagnosis the doctor said she the inflammation was so bad that she couldn't get the camera in to the small intestine. On regular medication for about 9 months(again I can't remember the names of the three medications as its been about 3 years) but everything the doctor put me on was reacting with my body in one way or another. I seem as normal in regards to my daily movements. On the circumin I am down to once daily to once every two days. I've had the odd month where I had a day where i've been in the bathroom more than once, but it has never lasted more than one day. and i've been able to put on weight, which was a problem before.
Congrats AB for being 22 weeks pregnant. that alone is a challenge let alone having to combat IBD as well. You have also reminded me that I have not been in for a check up in over a year.
The GI didn't recommend the cirucmin out right, she was reluctant to mention anything that was "natural" as there wasn't enough studies or data on it to say it was going to work, but at the time it seemed better than the alternative.
Hope i have answered everything.