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Introducing Myself and My Story

Hi All,

Not my first time here, but I've finally decided to join a community as a means of helping myself to the road to recovery and to help others. Of course, one can feel lonely, helpless or lose motivation in tackling IBD and so being around others I can relate to should help.

Background
Introducing myself, the name's Zoheb but I'm also known by Suhaib, which is much easier for people to pronounce! I was diagnosed with IBD when I was 25. I'm a male, now 27 years old and have a growing (but young) family of four children.

Since 16 I have developed haemorrhoids every 1.5 - 2 years. In 2012 the bleeding was too abnormal and so I saw a specialist who believed I had I IBD. An endoscopy late that year confirmed this. I was first diagnosed with Crohn's but later biopsy results favoured Colitis. Confusion resulted from the opposing diagnoses for me and so I didn't know what to treat until 2014 when I saw a GI specialist.

Impact
The impact IBD has had on my life is substantial. I quit martial arts and strength training which I had been doing for nearly 2 years (up to 6 days a week). I went from 85kg to 75kg. Most of my evenings were spent in the bathroom; from needing to go once a day to anything from 5-20. I had recently started a second degree, which was going badly as I was simply too tired to study considering full-time work, family life and IBD. I dread going to social events or to visit friends and family, as I worry about food options and needing to go to the bathroom.

For me, remission would never last longer than 6 weeks. My diet became poor as the bad, refined foods and grains were better for me than the much healthier diet at had while training. My diet also seemed to rotate - at times nuts were a big no no for me, at others they were fine. The same can be said for other foods too.

At Present
I restarted my strength training last year. Since then I've managed to get my weight back to normal and can get away with eating a variety of foods that I otherwise couldn't. My diet contains oats and rice as my primary grains, a lot of chicken, egg and fish, plenty of cooked legumes and beans (my favourite foods), easy to digest salads, but otherwise, definitely not enough fruit and veg.

Overall, I'm stable and have been for a year but am very confused if I'm in remission or not... At times I bleed but I don't really notice it as it doesn't seem to effect me badly. Have I grown use to it I wonder?

I normally need the bathroom once a day unless I'm fasting (in which case 0), which I've done twice a week for years. There's the odd day I'll go more often, but rarely do I go beyond 3 visits. While I still feel a desperate urge when I need to pass, I don't get any of the pains and cramps that I use to, but I do still have the obligatory morning round of collected gas/mucus. This seems unavoidable for me.

So despite the massive improvements, I don't know what to consider this given the (continuing) presence/recurrences of blood, gas. More than anything, I'm worried that I'm still, slowly damaging my intestines and the blood is a sign of that for me. One thing I really dread and would hate to go under is a resection. Yet I fear that I'm bringing this about, slowly but surely...

Considerations
Three types of medication have appealed to me in recent time, all of which I discovered more through training and contemplated due to the apparent effectiveness of them, both for strength training and managing IBD. They are human growth hormone, digestive enzymes and probiotics. Fortunately, my coach who first suggested HGH, is also a long time family friend and a qualified doctor.

Will be interested to hear your perspective on these.

Thanks for reading and sorry for such a long introduction :p
 

David

Co-Founder
Location
Naples, Florida
Greetings and welcome to the community.

I suspect that you're not in remission (though you may qualify as clinical remission which really just means reduction in symptoms). In the end, you want to be in deep, stable remission with total healing of your mucosal layer. I suspect you are not there.

Do you get blood and stool tests to monitor your inflammation levels? When was the last time you had imaging studies or a colonoscopy done?

I'm all for the utilization of digestive enzymes and probiotics as part of a broader treatment plan. But them alone is a recipe for disaster in my opinion. I don't know enough about hgh in Crohn's to comment there.

All my best to you.
 
Thank u for sharing your story. Probiotics has,been used for maintenance in crohn,s but didnt work for me. Neither digestive enzymes. As for HGH, I think you need to know more data before trying it as it may also has side effects
 
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