Hey Crohnies. I've done a bit of searching, so apologies if I'm making a new thread where one is not needed (my Google-fu is pretty good. My Crohnsforum-fu, not so much). I'm actually posting a few things today (like with email, I tend to save up all my forum-ing and do it at once), because I recently got diagnosed.
As in ten days ago. But as I've written in the Your Story forum, I've been chasing this diagnosis for 18 months, and I've been having various symptoms (mostly abdominal pain of different kinds and severities, as well as numerous - as in literally, I can't count them - peri-anal abscess) since I was 15. I'm 35 now. Yikes.
Anyway, one thing I've always struggled with as a lady-person is persistent thrush (I'd apologise for TMI, but this is a Crohn's forum, I reckon we're pretty good with the downstairs area). It's never made my life a living hell like it has for some people, but I've had a few persistent infections that took a while to clear up, and it happens a lot.
About a year before I started looking for a diagnosis (thanks to an intern who told me my abscesses did NOT look like hidradenitis and asked which hack had failed to do a colonoscopy), I went on a ketogenic diet. Like most Crohnies (I guess?), I'd struggled with discomfort in the belly region and tried cutting out or avoiding various things, including doing a FODMAP test (no fructose for me, damn it, and limited lactose only). I went low fructose and felt better (involves cutting out wheat, which is relevant to this story). Then I felt sick again, after eating. So I went low GI / low fructose. I tried to get the most slow release, non-wheat, non-fructose carbs I could find, avoided sugar like the plague, and tried to consume a bit more fat to slow down absorption.
This worked for a while, and then I started to feel sick again.
"Sod it," I thought to myself, "let's go all the way." I was so tired of feeling sick after eating. So I went keto. That's <50g carbs per day, and a high fat / moderate protein diet. I did all the maths. I tracked everything. I weighed everything.
And I swear to god, it worked. It worked better for the nausea and my cycling energy levels than anything else.
The abscess areas in my butt region stopped swelling up so much (I still got an abscess, but I got them with so much less frequency). I felt less sick. I slept better. And to my shock and surprise - although it took me a while to notice - I stopped getting thrush.
I've tested this a few times (not on purpose). It's hard to stay keto when you're travelling or on fieldwork (I'm a marine biologist, I need to hit the road - or the ocean - sometimes). So I break, and eat carbs.
And BAM. I feel sick. My belly hurts more. AND I GET freaking thrush.
Without fail. Every damn time.
I know that candida overgrowth is often related to immune system suppression, and I have actually seen a lot of threads on here about how it correlates with various steroids and biologics and immunosuppressants, but at the start of all this I had never been on any of those medications (I'm now knocking back 9mg Budesonide EC, and GI wants to put me on Imuran - appointment on Friday).
But here's my question - has anyone else had a link between carb consumption and thrush with Crohn's? Is this yet more evidence that I have a carbohydrate malabsorption issue?
Other evidence that way is that, when I eat carbs, I am CONSTANTLY hungry. It's ridiculous. I can put away a ludicrous amount of food. And I do gain weight - but running the numbers, I don't gain NEARLY as much as I should, even given that I'm very active. I'm so hungry I'm nauseated.
My running theory - and I could be just pulling this out of my scarred backside, true - is that (1) I do absorb some carbohydrate as the damage is mild, but not efficiently and (2) this means that I have undigested sugars hanging about in my gut from this secondary malabsorption. My gut flora goes insane and happily chows down on this free sugar (om nom nom) and this leads to candida overgrowth, because of all this fuel.
One of the reasons I'm asking is because, with Imuran in my future, I'm a bit concerned this problem will get worse.
I'm also struggling to understand how different parts of the gut are affected and how that affects nutrient absorption. i.e., apparently the middle and distal parts of my ileum are covered in patchy inflammation, my colon is clear, my stomach and proximal end of the small bowel is clear; my B12 is VERY high (actually outside testing parameters), my liver stats are fine, my iron is low, it's all very confusing and inconsistent.
Anyway, I'm a very verbose person, so thanks for reading all this through, and I hope it makes some sort of sense. Cheers m'dears.
As in ten days ago. But as I've written in the Your Story forum, I've been chasing this diagnosis for 18 months, and I've been having various symptoms (mostly abdominal pain of different kinds and severities, as well as numerous - as in literally, I can't count them - peri-anal abscess) since I was 15. I'm 35 now. Yikes.
Anyway, one thing I've always struggled with as a lady-person is persistent thrush (I'd apologise for TMI, but this is a Crohn's forum, I reckon we're pretty good with the downstairs area). It's never made my life a living hell like it has for some people, but I've had a few persistent infections that took a while to clear up, and it happens a lot.
About a year before I started looking for a diagnosis (thanks to an intern who told me my abscesses did NOT look like hidradenitis and asked which hack had failed to do a colonoscopy), I went on a ketogenic diet. Like most Crohnies (I guess?), I'd struggled with discomfort in the belly region and tried cutting out or avoiding various things, including doing a FODMAP test (no fructose for me, damn it, and limited lactose only). I went low fructose and felt better (involves cutting out wheat, which is relevant to this story). Then I felt sick again, after eating. So I went low GI / low fructose. I tried to get the most slow release, non-wheat, non-fructose carbs I could find, avoided sugar like the plague, and tried to consume a bit more fat to slow down absorption.
This worked for a while, and then I started to feel sick again.
"Sod it," I thought to myself, "let's go all the way." I was so tired of feeling sick after eating. So I went keto. That's <50g carbs per day, and a high fat / moderate protein diet. I did all the maths. I tracked everything. I weighed everything.
And I swear to god, it worked. It worked better for the nausea and my cycling energy levels than anything else.
The abscess areas in my butt region stopped swelling up so much (I still got an abscess, but I got them with so much less frequency). I felt less sick. I slept better. And to my shock and surprise - although it took me a while to notice - I stopped getting thrush.
I've tested this a few times (not on purpose). It's hard to stay keto when you're travelling or on fieldwork (I'm a marine biologist, I need to hit the road - or the ocean - sometimes). So I break, and eat carbs.
And BAM. I feel sick. My belly hurts more. AND I GET freaking thrush.
Without fail. Every damn time.
I know that candida overgrowth is often related to immune system suppression, and I have actually seen a lot of threads on here about how it correlates with various steroids and biologics and immunosuppressants, but at the start of all this I had never been on any of those medications (I'm now knocking back 9mg Budesonide EC, and GI wants to put me on Imuran - appointment on Friday).
But here's my question - has anyone else had a link between carb consumption and thrush with Crohn's? Is this yet more evidence that I have a carbohydrate malabsorption issue?
Other evidence that way is that, when I eat carbs, I am CONSTANTLY hungry. It's ridiculous. I can put away a ludicrous amount of food. And I do gain weight - but running the numbers, I don't gain NEARLY as much as I should, even given that I'm very active. I'm so hungry I'm nauseated.
My running theory - and I could be just pulling this out of my scarred backside, true - is that (1) I do absorb some carbohydrate as the damage is mild, but not efficiently and (2) this means that I have undigested sugars hanging about in my gut from this secondary malabsorption. My gut flora goes insane and happily chows down on this free sugar (om nom nom) and this leads to candida overgrowth, because of all this fuel.
One of the reasons I'm asking is because, with Imuran in my future, I'm a bit concerned this problem will get worse.
I'm also struggling to understand how different parts of the gut are affected and how that affects nutrient absorption. i.e., apparently the middle and distal parts of my ileum are covered in patchy inflammation, my colon is clear, my stomach and proximal end of the small bowel is clear; my B12 is VERY high (actually outside testing parameters), my liver stats are fine, my iron is low, it's all very confusing and inconsistent.
Anyway, I'm a very verbose person, so thanks for reading all this through, and I hope it makes some sort of sense. Cheers m'dears.