What's your theory on how you got Crohn's Disease?

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I was told that because I abused laxatives when I was young girl trying to loose weight in a very stupid and naive way that it may have been a trigger
 
I believe it is the antibiotics.
I got a cold and cough in 2011 spring.
The doctor used large amount of antibiotics infusion.
Following the cure of the cold is frequent diarrhea.
And I hear similar stories like mine in China.
 
Definitely genetic + stress trigger. LOTS of Crohn's in my family on both sides.
I was diagnosed at age 12 while my family was on sabbatical overseas, perfect timing :)
After I had "stomach flu" for two months, a GI took one look at my family history and scheduled a colonoscopy for me. One of the most terrifying moments of my life when I was told were the camera was going to go....

Also I'm in the biggest risk category, female, ashkenazi Jewish and live in a western society (with all the environmental pollution and "edible food products" and the like).
 
Genetics. I got fed a lot of throw away rubbish from the gastro doctor telling me it's because we are brought up in too clean an environment. Considering I'm 49 and grew up on farms, playing in dirt with animals, I knew this was a weak excuse. My Grandmother apparently had it and she was born round 1910ish. I think that something triggers it -I lived hard when younger, drank and smoked like no tomorrow- it probably starting kicking in over ten years before diagnosis- the pains and bleeding I thought were just from over exertion as a labourer and from hitting the booze too much. And, like a typical bloke ignoring signs not all is well in camp until the ---- hits the fan. I started getting weird illnesses, became sensitive to pesticides, and then allergic to bees which I went through 3 years desensitisation- soon as those jabs finished , hey presto my guts went nuts. Always had strange illnesses as a kiddie that nobody could work out.
 
I believe antibiotics caused crohn's in my case and found some new studies and even a book that suggests this is true. Buts it seems many factors contribute to extinction of benefical bacteria that could lead to IBD, like vitamin d deficiency and lack of fiber.

http://www.npr.org/books/titles/302...-of-antibiotics-is-fueling-our-modern-plagues
an interview with the author:
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/14/302899093/modern-medicine-may-not-be-doing-your-microbiome-any-favors


This theory may be true as fecal transplants seem to restore missing bacteria in IBD and induce remissions without any maintenance drugs. Find out more here.
http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?t=52400
 
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Dackelmann said:
Genetics. I got fed a lot of throw away rubbish from the gastro doctor telling me it's because we are brought up in too clean an environment. Considering I'm 49 and grew up on farms, playing in dirt with animals, I knew this was a weak excuse. My Grandmother apparently had it and she was born round 1910ish. I think that something triggers it -I lived hard when younger, drank and smoked like no tomorrow- it probably starting kicking in over ten years before diagnosis- the pains and bleeding I thought were just from over exertion as a labourer and from hitting the booze too much. And, like a typical bloke ignoring signs not all is well in camp until the ---- hits the fan. I started getting weird illnesses, became sensitive to pesticides, and then allergic to bees which I went through 3 years desensitisation- soon as those jabs finished , hey presto my guts went nuts. Always had strange illnesses as a kiddie that nobody could work out.
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I am allergic to bees and get bee venom shots. Never thought it could be a contributing trigger!!

Definitely I feel its genetic. I do feel the environment triggers it. All hell broke loose at 50 for me, asthma, GB disease, Crohn's, hormonal hell (menapause). I absolutely feel they are all interconnected.
 
I've kind of always had stomach and intestinal issues throughout my childhood and teenage years. I constantly was taking tums as a kid for upset stomachs, and pepto throughout middle school and high school. Not to mention I'd take aspirin and such very often for my migraines. But my symptoms got worse my senior year of high school, and that's when I was diagnosed. Like everyone else, I don't know what caused it. But the last year of high school in itself is pretty stressful...
 
I believe smoking has a lot to do with it. I know some research states it makes it worse but doesn't cause it. I've smoked since I was very young and quit about 8 months ago. As soon as I quit. I started my first bad flair and was hospitalized shortly after.
 
CrystalB said:
I believe smoking has a lot to do with it. I know some research states it makes it worse but doesn't cause it. I've smoked since I was very young and quit about 8 months ago. As soon as I quit. I started my first bad flair and was hospitalized shortly after.
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this isnt the first time Ive heard of this, this makes me think tobacco may have some type of anti inflammatory property and was keeping your symptoms at bay.

here something ive found http://www.sott.net/article/221013-Health-Benefits-of-Smoking-Tobacco

not sure if its true but interesting to say the least.
 
Yes it would make sense to have anti inflammatory capabilities also the appetite suppressant the less that goes through the better in our case : ) Thanks for the article
 
The lung cancer,heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are big minuses for smoking as an answer to crohns!
 
I would say for me it is definitely genetic. My uncle (mothers brother) has had crohns for about 20 years. I hit 18 and out of the blue in the course of 12 months me and my mother were diagnosed. Looking back im sure there must have been a trigger that we were both exposed to around the same time. What that was tho I cannot think.
In the long run unfortunately my crohns has been much more aggressive than my mothers. Before diagnosis we were both heavy smokers and on the advice of my gastro i quit but my mother carries on to this day. Now i know people argue for and against smoking as a cause or deterrent.
Just seems funny to me that I quit and end up having my first major surgery a few weeks ago and my mother has been in remission for 2 years.
Now I will never start smoking again but its interesting to me how wildly everyones own experiences differ.
 
I definitely think there is a genetic link; well there certainly is in my case with an uncle, a cousin and 2 grandparents all suffering from IBD. My mum also believes that a very bad case of food poisoning when I was about 16 triggered something in me that led to my problems. I really would love a definitive answer one day.

The genetics link seems to be very random though in my family, with both my parents being fine as well as both of my sisters. I drew the short straw as such lol!
 
A big plus for quitting smoking especially in the uk is the financial one,it costs a fortune.i,ve never smoked which is probably unusual as all my family except my sister and I smoked like chimneys.we lost our parents to smoking related diseases,foul habit.when I was diagnosed with crohns was told there was no effective treatment available for smokers don,t know it that was correct or not.
 
I am unsure but as one son has been diagnosed and am just waiting on tests for the older one following the same symptoms I can remember at the start of it all approx 2 years ago they both suffered with some form of virus which I have since found out my youngest had tested positive for glandular fever sometime in the past so that maybe a theory to the trigger. They also drank a lot of cows milk, unknown to me this carries possible map bacteria damaging to people with the genetic predisposition.
There is only IBS in the family that I know of.
 
We wonder about MAP also. For years we got milk from a local dairy that used the bare legal minimum of pasteurization, and MAP can survive even standard pasteurization. So now we are only buying ultrapasteurized milk (for making the SCD yogurt). We also donated money to Dr. Hermon-Taylor in London who is trying to do a clinical trial for his MAP vaccine, but can't get funding.
 
I love this thread, but there are now 15 pages of responses, and most are attributing the cause to their own personal circumstances. For instance, some cite female hormonal changes...but I have Crohns and I am a male. Some cite bee stings...never been allergic to anything in my life. Some say antibiotics, but I was healthy as a horse until Crohns hit at 30. The only common theme I really see is stress, but of course we have all experienced periods of extreme stress, and being highly individualized people that argument doesnt seem right to me either. Same with environmental issues... we are mostly all exposed to the same things and yet most don't get Crohns.

although some of the geographical studies are interesting, we know of no known pathogen that, like a carcinogen, if exposed to increases the chances of Crohns (although that accutane lawsuit was intriguing). This leads me to believe that Crohns is not environmental.

I believe that we Crohnies are statistical losers. If you look at enough numbers, anomalies appear, and we are those anamolies. Roll the dice ten times and nearly impossible to roll 6's every time. Roll them a billion times and unlikely you wont. It doesnt mean that something "caused" the instance where it occurred. We were not made perfectly, and try as we might to understand what causes our bodies to fail, there may be no explanation at all.
 
What makes the most sense to me is that it's a combination of genetics and another trigger, whether it be MAP or some other pathogen.

I wonder if it is helpful to think of Crohn's as a condition rather than a disease? Like, say, a skin rash. You can have a rash that is from poison ivy, or contact dermatitis, or carpet burn, or an allergic reaction to something that you ate. The treatment would be a combination of a soothing ointment, and eliminating whatever caused the rash. The soothing ointment wouldn't do a lot of good if you kept right on clearing out the poison ivy patch without gloves, or using the soap or eating the food that gave you the rash in the first place.
 
I'm joining a little late in this discussion, but it's a good one. My son was dx'd at age 8. It was a sudden onset. He had a flu for a few days, got a little better for a couple days, then fell quite ill and shortly after we had a dx of CD. So, I think the flu was the trigger, but he did have some signs of CD going back into toddlerhood. Although there's no one else dx'd with CD in the family, there are many with "bowel issues", so I don't doubt a genetic factor. I wonder about cow's milk and MAP, but there would have to be some other factor involved for some to develop CD, and others not. Apparently here on the east coast of Canada we win the honours of highest number of CD cases in the world. But I don't know if that means people are just more readily dx'd/less of those undiagnosed, or if there really are more Crohnies here than anywhere else!
 
Rocking on said:
I love this thread, but there are now 15 pages of responses, and most are attributing the cause to their own personal circumstances. For instance, some cite female hormonal changes...but I have Crohns and I am a male. Some cite bee stings...never been allergic to anything in my life. Some say antibiotics, but I was healthy as a horse until Crohns hit at 30. The only common theme I really see is stress, but of course we have all experienced periods of extreme stress, and being highly individualized people that argument doesnt seem right to me either. Same with environmental issues... we are mostly all exposed to the same things and yet most don't get Crohns.

although some of the geographical studies are interesting, we know of no known pathogen that, like a carcinogen, if exposed to increases the chances of Crohns (although that accutane lawsuit was intriguing). This leads me to believe that Crohns is not environmental.

I believe that we Crohnies are statistical losers. If you look at enough numbers, anomalies appear, and we are those anamolies. Roll the dice ten times and nearly impossible to roll 6's every time. Roll them a billion times and unlikely you wont. It doesnt mean that something "caused" the instance where it occurred. We were not made perfectly, and try as we might to understand what causes our bodies to fail, there may be no explanation at all.
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There are diseases that are purely genetic in nature like Huntington's.

You can accurately predict the demographics for that disease.

However, crohn's disease is a disease that spreads much faster than genetics alone could account for, which means there is an environmental trigger that is the main driver behind the increase, genetics only conferring predisposition.

You can have genetic predisposition, and not get the disease. Many people wtih crohn's disease have genetic predisposition to leprosy, many of the autophagy and protein mutations relate to genes involved in bacterial detection like IBD1 (NOD2) confer susceptibility to both crohn's disease and leprosy, however few of us have leprosy because we live in the West, the environmental trigger is missing.

If you went to Brazil or India, the environmental trigger would be there, and you'd see an increase in leprosy cases amongst crohn's disease patients. Many of our genetic mutations make us very vulnerable to mycobacteria.

In Brazil 30,000 people each year get leprosy, and many of those people have genes that make them susceptible to it that overlap with genes that make us susceptible to crohn's disease. You can actually draw an inverse curve, places where TB or leprosy is high, crohn's disease is low, places where leprosy is low, crohn's diseae is high.

Why this is no one seems to know, but it might be because bacteria are competitive in nature. If you remove certain bacteria from the environment, you might leave the door open for others.
 
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My theory for myself is stress and anxiety. Ever since i can remember, i would feel as though i had knots in my tummy when i got anxious about something. And even still today, the minute (and i mean literally the minute) that something huge comes up, straight to the bathroom i go. I was diagnosed two years after my brother passed away. I think that just put my body over the edge. Though i thought i was in control of my emotions, i feel as though my body was telling me otherwise.
 
I was diagnosed with Crohn's at 5yrs of age and had a traumatic first 5 yrs of life. I would say anxiety and stress for sure!
 
I have an answer for this!

So, obviously I'm predisposed for Crohn's genetically. I grew up in a pretty stressed environment, divorced parents and what not. However, I didnt develop crohn's till I was 16 and I think it was a combination of things. One, I developed really bad social anxiety in high school. Second, I ate the CRAPPIEST food. No joke, it was awful for me. Lastly, I developed something like asthma and my doctor thought I had inflammation in the lining of my lung. He had me take alieve EVERY DAY for like 2 or 3 months. A few months after that I started having crohn's related issues!
And that's my theory as to why I developed crohn's!
 
And the food might have contributed to the social anxiety, or the Crohn's might have, even though you didn't know it yet. Impossible to know, at this point.
 
In 2011 a group of Danish investigators reported on their examination of pharmacy records for ... children born between 1995 and 2003...
Compared to healthy children, those that developed IBD were 84 percent more likely to have received antibiotics. Furthermore, children who had taken antibiotics had more than triple the risk of developing Crohns disease than those who were antibiotic-free.

Martin J. Blaser, MD, "Missing Microbes: How the overuse of antibiotics is fueling our modern plagues"
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Based on that, I would wager that many of the anecdotes in this thread might need to examine early exposure to antibiotics as a factor. It seems likely that the disposition to the disease from early exposure to antibiotics might be stronger even than genetics. Oh, and what looks like a genetic disposition to the disease might really be that your acquired microbiota (mostly from your mom, but also other family members) might have been less than fully robust. Then some other later event (another hit from antibiotics, accutane, whatever), simply pushed you over the edge.
 
7vNH said:
Based on that, I would wager that many of the anecdotes in this thread might need to examine early exposure to antibiotics as a factor. It seems likely that the disposition to the disease from early exposure to antibiotics might be stronger even than genetics. Oh, and what looks like a genetic disposition to the disease might really be that your acquired microbiota (mostly from your mom, but also other family members) might have been less than fully robust. Then some other later event (another hit from antibiotics, accutane, whatever), simply pushed you over the edge.
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There is another possibility. Due to a genetic fault (NOD2 mutation) we have difficulty clearing certain bacteria and therefore have needed to resort to antibiotics more frequently. In that case, use of antibiotics is not the cause of the problem but the result of another underlying issue.
 
JMC said:
There is another possibility. Due to a genetic fault (NOD2 mutation) we have difficulty clearing certain bacteria and therefore have needed to resort to antibiotics more frequently. In that case, use of antibiotics is not the cause of the problem but the result of another underlying issue.
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Good point about the direction of causality. I guess what had me thinking the causality was the other way is that IBD is aligned with westernized populations. I have nothing but a gut feel, but I figure the various population's incidence of mutation you mentioned is at a similar level across all people. Probably there are more forces at work here, interacting in mysterious ways.
 
Crohn's is not a genetic disease. Whether someone gets Crohn’s Disease (CD) is not determined by a single gene as it is for, say, Cystic Fibrosis, but genes do play an important role. A new technology called Genome Wide Scanning (GWS) has enabled scientists to scan the whole length of a person’s DNA looking for small changes. This has been done for many different diseases and also comparing different human populations. It has provided hugely important new insights into the potential causes and mechanisms of disease. When GWS has been done in thousands of people with CD and compared with thousands of people without CD (either in themselves or their families), some small changes or ‘mutations’ within genes have been consistently found in people with CD. Although many genes are involved, some mutations appear more frequently and are more important than others. The three most important genes associated with CD (called NOD2, ATG16L1 and IRGM) all affect the capacity of immune cells to get rid of bugs which live inside cells… like MAP! These exact same genes are also found to be highly associated with susceptibility to Tuberculosis and Leprosy (other members of the ‘Mycobacteria’ family). The truth that GWS and related methods have enabled us to see is that very many infectious diseases may be more likely to happen in some individuals rather than others because of inherited susceptibilities. So whilst you don’t inherit Crohn’s Disease, you can inherit a susceptibility to the bug that is causing it.
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That quote came from the MAP vaccine site, which pretty much says MAP is necessary but not sufficient for CD (but not UC).
 
Runs in the family. 3 relatives have it. And probably more as they were all adult onset and a couple weren't diagnosed until they were elderly. I had some symptoms for 15 years before diagnosis.

No question but its caused by a hyperactive immune system, not some environmental factor or "bug". I've got a number of oddball allergies and for some drugs - like cortisone and Remicade quickly develop a reaction that kills their effect after one use.

Any theories about diet are pretty dubious in my opinion. I know of health food nuts and vegans with Crohn's and no diet causes have come out of any epidemiological studies that I know of. I suspect both diet and germ theories are going to end up in the same dustbin of history as the psychological theory and that the supposed increase in IBD is due to better diagnosis.

But we'll see.
 
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JMC said:
There is another possibility. Due to a genetic fault (NOD2 mutation) we have difficulty clearing certain bacteria and therefore have needed to resort to antibiotics more frequently. In that case, use of antibiotics is not the cause of the problem but the result of another underlying issue.
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but nod2 mutations cannot predict who gets crohn's with 100% accuracy, there are many healthy people with these mutations walking around just fine.
 
I think it's food colourings dyes msg etc in the diet. I was diagnosed at age 17 after 3 years of misdiagnosis. I am the first in my family to have crohns and the first to have not been brought up on food that went straight from the farm or vege garden to my plate! The cleaner less processed food I eat the better my disease is. Although stress may also be a factor - parents divorced at 5. Although my 2 siblings went through the same things and they don't have it!
 
there is definately the genetic predisposition, yet in order to express itself in overt disease, environnemental factors must be present. I believe that a combination of environnemental factor can contribute and weaken the immunity, leading to expression of disease, and I also belive in the hypothesis of transgenerational passation of environnemental factors and that the process of disease expression could start as early as when we are a foetus in the womb. we could be vulnerable to antagonists agents (environnemental factors) lived or digested by the mother, and that could impact on the future life of the new born. Whether in the womb or when an infant, food habits with transformed foods and intoxicated food with pesticides and GMOs, body application of ''hygiene'' or perfume products with chemical agents, Western diet extremly poor in protective food such as fiber and vegetables, super hygienic conditions of western world, possibly antibiotics overuse which are known to destroy and disrupt natural gut bacteria, stress and anxiety, possibly some fillers of and or vaccines given in infancy and through life may all be potential environnemental factor that disrupt our immune and natural defence system that therefore may encourage the expression of disease genetic predispositions. They are all potential fuel to the bad seeds.

it is well known that migrating people from developping countries when they arrive to Western countries go on to develop similar rates of chronic inflammatory diseases and cancers like Westerners. Some cities in the developping world are going through recent major increase of inflammatory disease cases, including IBD. I believe that the change from based sctrach home cook meals to increased industrial grocery shopping, mimicking Western food habits, is the main contributor to this phenomenon. The gut flora becomes disrupted and so does immunity. I belive that in the majority of inflammatory chronic disease cases, the most destructive agent is bad diet with minimal protective food and when combined with other antagonists, risks of disease expression become even stronger.

I for one, overused of bad transformed food and barely ate vegetables when i was young and for over 30 years. Being very slim, all my friends thought I was so lucky to be able to eat so much junk without gaining weight. At Mcdonalds i could often easily eat 20 Mc nuggests dipped in sauce, a big french fries and coke. isnt that what they call a ''HAPPY MEAL'' ??? :ybatty: The words ''happy'' and McDonalds in the same sentence and advertizement for junk food should be prohibited by law because this brainwashes the kids!!! I know its a utopia, but I am optimistic junk food advertizement will be banned in medium term future, just like cigarette was 20 years ago. Eating bad food...Happy and Lucky i thought I was too... I felt happy and not concerned at all with bad possible future outcomes as I was in good health until 22 and most importanly happy being slim, so why change? I also have the tendency to be a easily stressed and anxious person since young age. I belive that these variables were a perfect field to disease expression in my case. Now that I am aware of that, I do what I can to change this lifestyle and to hopefully protect my future with the means I have. I am happy to engage in something for my health, I feel responsible for it and happy about it, never want to return to my previous lifestyle.
 
Moriati i'm really interested in that theory. I've never heard of birth control being linked to causing IBD.

Are there any study papers or reputable research you can point me in the direction of?
 
Not sure exactly what I have at the moment only that a gp I was under about a month before my collapse and waking with the distention looked at me worryingly and warned me to take care of my stomach.I think maybe some soluble pain meds at the time or a council gas fire in the place I lived then may have triggered it.
 
I was 23 and in my first real job after university. I lived in a basement flat which was quite damp; I've always wondered if that was a factor as my general health did improve when I left.

Stress and anxiety may have been factors, but at that stage of my life things seemed to be going quite well, so I doubt it. And perhaps my diet changed around then, but I've never been one for junk food and always ate fairly sensibly. I do remember that I ate baked potatoes quite often, which is something that I realised over the years made my stomach issues worse and so avoided potatoes in general. Perhaps I always had some minor intolerance that became something worse.

No-one in my family has had IBD (though my grandfather did have a duodenal ulcer and I lost a cousin to stomach cancer). My brother is the one who smokes, but I got Crohns, and we grew up together, eating the same food, in the same environment and obviously are as genetically close as can be.

I was apparently quite ill at 2 years old. I may have had antibioctics back then, but I know the next time was when I was 43.

So who knows?
 
I believe it will be a combination of factors, vitamin d deficiency, lack of dietary fiber, antibiotics exposure, artificial sweeteners. neither one alone will be sufficient except perhaps antibiotics.

For me I had all 4 combined and yep my crohn's is extremely severe. The type of antibiotic also seems to matter and ive been exposed to the two antibiotics linked to IBD, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid(augmentin) and doxycycline. If i only had foreknowledge i would've been able to escape it completely, instead I seemed to do everything i could to put myself in harms way.
 
StarGirrrrl said:
Moriati i'm really interested in that theory. I've never heard of birth control being linked to causing IBD.

Are there any study papers or reputable research you can point me in the direction of?
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I'm not sure if it's a 100% thoroughly proven theory, but here's one paper I found: http://gut.bmj.com/content/46/1/140.1.full

We really can have no idea as to what caused our disease until they figure it out more.
 
My daughter was diagnosed at 3. In retrospect there were symptoms much earlier. The first foul BM with blood I noted within a few weeks after she received a Rotovirus vaccine. She was 2 months old and breastfed only.

So for her, it wasn't food, or environment, she's our 6th child of 7 and non of the others are sick.

I lean toward a combo of genetic predisposition, and perhaps a trigger from the Rotovirus vaccine.
 
Ds was 7 at dx had Gi issues since he was two weeks old.
Gene studied showed lots of crohns genes
So for him genetics all the way .
 
Moriati said:
I'm not sure if it's a 100% thoroughly proven theory, but here's one paper I found: http://gut.bmj.com/content/46/1/140.1.full

We really can have no idea as to what caused our disease until they figure it out more.
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Very interesting thanks. I would think we would see a much higher incidence in women then men but it seems it affects both equally.

My diagnoss is very late onset ( at 50 yo). I wonder what triggers account for early vs. late diagnosis.
 
I have crohns & my 14year old son was diagnosed 3 years ago... pretty much in the same places as me... I seem to think genes have something to do with it, but was then also told it was the low immunity I passed on to him... ??? My mum's mum died from bowel cancer, being so long ago was (undiagnosed) crohns the beginning??? I dont think a colonoscopy was even invented, so getting tested would have been hard..
I guess with modern medicine now they may be able to work out what starts it.. for the sake of my son & even his kids I hope they do..
 
I suspect genetics. We have what my sister and i affectionately call "weird guts" in our family. She has IBS, my mother had all manner of undx'ed and dx'ed GI issues tho never IBD... My Dad took the cake by shocking the ulcer study people years ago. They told him they needed to do an endoscopy to determine which of the three types of ulcers he had as they only were studying one type and were baffled when he looked at them and said go ahead but i can tell you i do, i have all three types. Theyd never encountered someone with gastric, peptic AND duodenal ulcers. Then my niece took the prize away by being born with her guts on the outside (literally, she had gastroschisis). We all just have weird guts so i figure my weird guts manifested as Crohns and an adult pyloric stenosis dx that baffled the poor doc and nurses. (plus my immune system is weird, hence the severe asthma)
 
I wonder has anyone ever studied the family connections of Crohns with respect to mothers vs. fathers? If it's purely genetic then you'd expect the family connection to be 50/50 from your father's side or mother's side, but if it's more from the mother than that suggests it might be to do with what goes on in the womb. It stands to reason that those initial 9 months of life has a huge impact on your long term health.
 
Pilgrim said:
My daughter was diagnosed at 3. In retrospect there were symptoms much earlier. The first foul BM with blood I noted within a few weeks after she received a Rotovirus vaccine. She was 2 months old and breastfed only.

So for her, it wasn't food, or environment, she's our 6th child of 7 and non of the others are sick.

I lean toward a combo of genetic predisposition, and perhaps a trigger from the Rotovirus vaccine.
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I wonder if Rotovirus vaccine has an effect on the gut microbiome. I sort of doubt it, but wonder if it's been tested.

Yours is a great case study. Your kids had no differences in antibiotics administered? No C-sections? All breast fed (that's super healthy for development of the microbiome). I would be interested in seeing PCR of all your kids' gut microbiome. Do you know about american gut project?
 
Interesting thread. Before I stumbled upon this one, I was thinking of starting one on same lines.

My theory is also related to ibuprofen. I had severe backache a few years ago from physical activity at work that I am not accustomed to. Saw a doctor whose best advice after $50 copay every week was to keep taking advil. I did that for 2-3 weeks popping 6-8 advils a day. Knowing ibuprofen is a no-no for intestinal issues, am inclined to believe that it served as a catalyst along with other environmental and biological factors.

While we are on this topic, I will throw in another theory. Ate chinese food almost every week day for a couple of years when I first started to work. I know none of this exactly caused Crohns but could have prepped me just enough to contract this :)
 
No GI problems for 31 year. Never a symptom or issue. Rarely took NSAIDs or antibiotics or any other med at all. never smoked, rarely drank. No allergies, no health problems, no family history of any GI issue. Took a Zpack for a really bad bronchitis and a few weeks later all the fun started. Granted, I wasn't sleeping much as I was in residency at the time, but I can think of a million others who were sleep deprived and took an antibiotic who did fine.

I have a host defect- genetic, that at the right time (early/middle adulthood) in the right setting (recent URI, sleep deprivation) and with the right trigger (antibiotic) got it all going.

But just like anything else in medicine (heart attack, stroke, cancers) there can be various triggers and causes. Everyone is different.
 
7vNH said:
I wonder if Rotovirus vaccine has an effect on the gut microbiome. I sort of doubt it, but wonder if it's been tested.

Yours is a great case study. Your kids had no differences in antibiotics administered? No C-sections? All breast fed (that's super healthy for development of the microbiome). I would be interested in seeing PCR of all your kids' gut microbiome. Do you know about american gut project?
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I'm curious too. One c-section (not her, she was the 11lb vbac after the kid who was the section), two of the children have had more antibiotics (again not her, at least not until they started treating the Crohn's symptoms right before diagnosis). She was the only one who had the Rotovirus dose, and she only had one of the two doses she was supposed to have as I got freaked out with the BM after the first dose.

I'll look up the american gut project, never heard of it.
 
First I am not at all sure that all things labelled Crohn's Disease are the same thing. I suspect when all is said and done that there will be several illness strains that are currently conflated into one by similarity of outward expression.

I do accept the current notion that the immune system is involved in the condition but I would contend that it is responding to a stimulous active in the body, hence the very high rate of spontaneous Crohn's remissions when the TB cure is administered. TB is not the only pathogen lurking in our bodies - the chicken pox virus that lives within many of us and manifests itself as shingles is an example of a known internalized stimulus, but could also prove to be the stimulus causing some folks Crohn's symptoms.

Just as the Heliobacter pylori turned out to be the cause of many peptic ulcers, I believe we will ultimately conclude that the majority of Crohn's expressions are our immune system's response to an active internalized stimuli like TB, the varicella-zoster virus that causes chicken pox , or the herpes simplex virus that causes cold sores and so on. And of course it has a genetic "predisposition" element, it must be so or we wouldn't have it - just like we are genetically predisposed to have TB, etc.
 
CrohnsLifer said:
I do accept the current notion that the immune system is involved in the condition but I would contend that it is responding to a stimulous active in the body, hence the very high rate of spontaneous Crohn's remissions when the TB cure is administered. TB is not the only pathogen lurking in our bodies - the chicken pox virus that lives within many of us and manifests itself as shingles is an example of a known internalized stimulus, but could also prove to be the stimulus causing some folks Crohn's symptoms.
Click to expand...

That's very interesting. As I mentioned above I first had symptoms when I was living in a damp basement flat, and TB is typically associated with people living or working in damp conditions.

Put "TB Crohns" into Google, and the things that come up are about differentiating intestinal TB from Crohns as it seems the symptoms are very similar, which makes you wonder if some people with Crohns are actually misdiagnosed and have TB.
 
DEmberton said:
makes you wonder if some people with Crohns are actually misdiagnosed and have TB.
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Thanks for your observation.

You are right, mixing the two up apparently happens frequently in regions of world were TB is still common.

But a significant percentage of the world's human population has latent TB (controlled supposedly by the immune system) but lying sort of in detention in an individual's body. It is the body's over response to this "inactive" TB's stimulation and that of other silent lurkers which I suspect is the source of many folk's Crohn's symptoms. Unfortunately I have been unable to find any evidence, other than the TB cure, mentioned above, that researchers pursuing this possibility.
 
Keep in mind
Most individuals with crohns are tested for latent tb prior to starting any biologics
So this rules out tb for those folks
 
my little penguin said:
Keep in mind
Most individuals with crohns are tested for latent tb prior to starting any biologics
So this rules out tb for those folks
Click to expand...

Good point.

Unfortunately, most of us were\are tested and treated only in anticipation of biologics treatment not as a general rule. Also it only rules them out after they are tested and treated not before.

Perhaps we should test and treat all TB positive showing Crohn's patients whether they are ready to try biologics or not. According to the data, this is likely to help a lot of folks.

Also, as mentioned, there are many lurkers besides TB that may be the culprits in other cases.
 
A good way to potentially kill someone with TB is to give them steroids. Considering the number of people with IBD who have gotten long term steroids and the fact that is really has never caused a latent or smoldering case of TB to emerge really blows that ridiculous theory out of the water.

I don't think anyone doubts their is a bacterial/infectious element to IBD. But is someone with upper small bowel disease and a fistula the same as someone with mild rectal inflammation? Hardly.

Some people get lung cancer because of smoking, exposure to asbestos or other products. Others get lung cancer having never had any exposure. To those looking for 1 exact cause of all cases of IBD, forget it. don't hold your breath.

Even garden variety things like hypertension can be caused by too much salt intake, poor kidney function, obesity, family history, loss of elasticity of vessels, medications, heart problems, age, thyroid or adrnenal condidions. If something as simple as high blood pressure can be caused by a dozen or so different processes, wouldn't it make sense that something as complex as IBD which interacts with the gut lining, bacteria, the immune system, enviorment (food) would be at least as complex in its origin, maintenence and management?

So please stop throwing unproven crap around that TB meds cure IBD or IBD is caused by TB. And in our wonderful inner city hopsital here we have a ton of TB patients- I do not recall one having CD. I just had my annual PPD for my hospital work, It was perfectly normal.

Enough of the TB talk. It's rubbish.
 
baistuff said:
So please stop throwing unproven crap around that TB meds cure IBD or IBD is caused by TB. And in our wonderful inner city hopsital here we have a ton of TB patients- I do not recall one having CD. I just had my annual PPD for my hospital work, It was perfectly normal.

Enough of the TB talk. It's rubbish.
Click to expand...

Before shooting from the hip you might do well to check the data.

Perhaps you've heard of Google well give it a try before unleashing your prejudices. You might also benefit from reading and understanding posts before commenting on them. Are you aware that Crohn's disease and IBD are not synonyms?

etc.
 
CrohnsLifer said:
Before shooting from the hip you might do well to check the data.

Perhaps you've heard of Google well give it a try before unleashing your prejudices. You might also benefit from reading and understanding posts before commenting on them. Are you aware that Crohn's disease and IBD are not synonyms?

etc.
Click to expand...


15 years of practicing medicine in one of largest US hospitals, 12 years of Crohn's disease myself, attending IBD conferences, contacts with some of the most respected researchers in the business whom I am in regular contact with. But yeah, I'm just "shooting from the hip."

But no, I guess you are right. You solved the nearly 100 year debate by reading google. Congrats on finding the cause and cure of IBD.

I was attacking the theory, it was not personal. And in case you are not aware, crohns is a form of IBD. If my occasional use of the umbrella term to describe idiopathic inflammation of the GI tract doesn't meet with your approval, well, I don't give a damn. Just because UC, microscopic and LC (that's lymphocytic colitis- another term for collagenous coliltis) may be different histoligically and phenotypically from CD, does not mean they are not part of the same conversation. CD falls under IBD, and while certainly they have differences there are many similarities.

Discussion about TB/MAP, E coli, H. Pylori etc... is all well and good, research on them is important. But NEVER come on a board of chronically ill, often desperate people and spout things like "the TB cure causes CD to go into remission." show me any peer reviewed controlled trial that have proven that.

And BTW- never make things personal. It reflects poorly on you.

Good luck to you. I hope your disease is well controlled and you can heal soon.
 
baistuff said:
15 years of practicing medicine in one of largest US hospitals, 12 years of Crohn's disease myself, attending IBD conferences, contacts with some of the most respected researchers in the business whom I am in regular contact with. But yeah, I'm just "shooting from the hip."

But no, I guess you are right. You solved the nearly 100 year debate by reading google. Congrats on finding the cause and cure of IBD.
.
Click to expand...

Gee, you still didn't read and understand the posts or check the facts.

Instead, you chose to passive aggressively claim butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, then try to put me and my opinion down by telling me how great and more experienced you are than I could ever hope to be. Not nice and no way to refute a theory.

BTW, you don't need to use potty language to refute an theory and Crohn's disease and IBD are still not synonyms.

Don't take what I'm about to say personally, its based on my experience with classes of medical professionals not you in particular. I've been ill for a long time and in my Crohn's career I've encounter some really stellar individuals. Some who as it turned out actually saved my life and others who made it more liveable. And yet others, who, trading on the goodwill of the great, use that prestige to try to beat patients into submission to their prejudices, out dated methods and ideas.

I really do have hopes for you. I hope you take the time to read and understand my posts and if you still disagree take the time to marshal facts and ideas to produce a coherent theory of your own as to the causes and cures of Crohn's. I'd like to hear it.

FYI, I believe that the TB cure benefited me greatly even though it didn't cure my condition.
 
CrohnsLifer said:
Gee, you still didn't read and understand the posts or check the facts.

Instead, you chose to passive aggressively claim butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, then try to put me and my opinion down by telling me how great and more experienced you are than I could ever hope to be. Not nice and no way to refute a theory.

BTW, you don't need to use potty language to refute an theory and Crohn's disease and IBD are still not synonyms.

Don't take what I'm about to say personally, its based on my experience with classes of medical professionals not you in particular. I've been ill for a long time and in my Crohn's career I've encounter some really stellar individuals. Some who as it turned out actually saved my life and others who made it more liveable. And yet others, who, trading on the goodwill of the great, use that prestige to try to beat patients into submission to their prejudices, out dated methods and ideas.

I really do have hopes for you. I hope you take the time to read and understand my posts and if you still disagree take the time to marshal facts and ideas to produce a coherent theory of your own as to the causes and cures of Crohn's. I'd like to hear it.

FYI, I believe that the TB cure benefited me greatly even though it didn't cure my condition.
Click to expand...




Yup, I use my prestige to put patients in their place. Wow. you figured me out so easily and so quickly. Yes, I'm so prejudiced about my medical practice. I will make sure to forward this to the holistic and alternative/compl. med folks I work with on a regular basis. They will sure to get a laugh out of it. I'll make sure to go re-read the letters from all my patients over the years about how nasty and patronizing I am. I guess I have a lot to learn. Thank you for pointing out all my shortcomings. I'll try my best to work on that.


Now, can we return to the program in progress. I really don't get the hostililty. You made a claim that TB meds induce remission. I am calling you out on it, and as I have said on this forum many times, I will STRONGLY AND VOCALLY call out any unproven claims not based on established evidence. I asked you to cite a peer reviewed published source for that comment. Instead I get insults. So, I will try again. Please cite a scientific study or peer reviewed source to backup your claim. Why did I not hear about this at DDW last year? I'm sure you were in Chicago as well with all the leaders in IBD research. I heard about QBECO, some interesting other SSI works, the gut microbiome, fecal transplants, then the usual biologic and other traditional stuff, new things related to the genomic side etc.... I don't recall anyone discussing TB meds. So again, please, bring your sources. Many folks here do not have science backgrounds, and take things posted here very seriously. Since there are not many here who can verify accuracy, I feel it's justified to protect some vulnerable folks here from pie in the sky claims.


And just FYI, I had a fecal transplant and have been med free, and mostly symptom free since. Do you see me coming on here calling FMT a "cure?" heck no. I reported my own success, will update changes as they occur, but for now I'm nothing more than a data point, not even a statistic yet. More research will come in, data will be reviewed, analzyed and published, and then maybe we will be able to make some more general conclusions. Until then, my results are nothing more than an interesting anecdote. And if I would claim otherwise, I would hope someone would call me out as well.

BTW- I went back and looked at my prior posts- I see not a single offensive or non PG word. So I'm not sure where my "potty mouth" is. But if there was a term you found offensive, my apologies.

And for the last time, b/c this is a real waste of everyones' time, I DID NOT SAY CD IS A SYNONYM OF IBD. It's a FORM of IBD. But, the other forms of IBD to share some similarities to CD, and sometimes in conversation the terms can overlap.
 
2thFairy said:
Maybe I didn't see it posted already, but where do you get this information?
Click to expand...

The info is available through Google. It's not difficult to get Remicade info but you really have to dig in order get study detail that includes Control Group info, then you have to check the same info for other drugs such as Imuran to get an idea of how control group remission rates compare.

Here's a summary of my findings. If you are interested, you can either refute or confirm them through Google or in this case the manufacturer of Remicade.

As a general rule, control group spontaneous remission rates of non-biologics Crohn's related drug studies run between 4% and 7%. (Google again)

In a brochure provided by the drug manufacturer provided when I was considering taking Remicade, it quoted a study in which the Remicade group remission rate was 53%, the spontaneous remission rate in the control group was 25%. Both groups according to my GI received the TB treatment. To me if you can put into remission 25% (perhaps -4% to -7% of the usual remission rates) of a Crohn's group with a free medication that's pretty significant. Presuming the study was valid.

And I was told that not only was the TB treatment free (in my area) it had relatively low side effects and was low risk.

In studies I have seen through Google, control group biologics remission rates have been as high as 35%.

I've looked around for the brochure but this all happened several years back and I haven't found it yet, if I do and it's not copyrighted I'll post a copy.
 
Instead of preparing a lecture for my residents on polyarticular gout in the hospitlized patient, I've spent the last hour plus on the Natl. Library of Medicine/Pub med and contacting some folks much smarter than I am.

I have found no study published linking TB treatment to inducing remission in CD. One of my GI research friends wrote me back saying that there are some anecdotes floating around and some research about some anti-mycobacterial drugs in general potentially showing some benefit in CD but the data is really not supportive at this point, and most of the prior studies really didn't show much benefit, but did say more research on it could be productive. He did say, and this is all over in the literature, that intestinal TB can and does mimic CD, so getting the correct diagnosis first is important.

So my take away is that it may be worth looking into, but there is really no validated data to hang your hat on.

But of course, don't trust the big bad doctor. We just sit in the back room with all the drug company execs while we toast our greatness and laugh at how we are hiding the truth and keeping everyone buying expensive drugs and squashing real cures.

And for those who think TB meds have no side effects, INH causes increased liver enzymes in about 10% and significant drug induced hepatitis in about 1%- not that rare. Other TB meds have been known to cause renal failure, optic neuritis, and neuropathy. And most of these effects are more common when used in combination and extended durations.

Please everyone, be careful if you decide to follow this route.
 
2thFairy said:
Maybe I didn't see it posted already, but where do you get this information?
Click to expand...

Here's a link you might try

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2721293/

The specialized language makes the article difficult to follow but if you take a look at "Figure 2" you'll at least get a summary of the findings. As with many things in these studies, the independent ones are often less cut and dried in their findings.

BTW, it was never my intention for folks to rush out and take the TB cure, just that it is something to consider as an option and should be discussed with your GI before proceeding.
 
Am I missing something? The figure 2 table is the comparison of humira to placebo. Placebo isn't the TB treatment. I'm not really certain where you are going with your theory. Those statistics are affected by patients that are primary or secondary non responders and those that possibly have refractory crohns. But since you can't start a biologic until you have tested negative for TB then it isn't possible for that table to show those with TB who had a response to the placebo or otherwise.
 
Hey Clash

According to my GI everybody in these studies took the TB cure, then were placed in placebo (as a control group) vs biologics in this case Humira. So as I see it, the placebo group is responding to the TB cure since they were not treated for Crohn's.

I am not a trained medical professional or researcher so it is entirely possible that I am reading this study incorrectly, I merely gave out so that those interested could review it for themselves. And if you Google hard enough, you will find that there are many more studies showing the same thing.
 
You keep referring to "TB cure." Which medication or combination of medications are you specifically talking about? There is more than one.
 
"BTW, it was never my intention for folks to rush out and take the TB cure, just that it is something to consider as an option and should be discussed with your GI before proceeding."


This is a fair and reasonable statement.

Though I don't necessarily agree with it, it is a lot different than making the statement "tb meds induce remission in crohns." And I guarantee you no one, myself included will attack that kind of statement.

Personally I'm not impressed with the study. In today's world remission is measured in mucosal healing which is not demonstrated. I'm not fully discounting clinical remission or CDAI scores- tt is certainly possible some symptomatic relief is obtained from these meds- they are antibiotics after all, and it has been well established that antibiotics have a role in CD management. It also has not been reproduced so the incidental finding of a higher placebo effect (and BTW, it's not entirely clear whether they all were given TB meds first, but I'll assume they did) is actually not all that surprising if they received antibitoic.

In short, is it worth a question to a GI? sure, no harm in asking. But I would not run in the streets screaming we are on the cusp of curing CD based on a nice, but really not surprising incidental finding in a 7 year old study that hasn't been reproduced.
 
2thFairy said:
You keep referring to "TB cure." Which medication or combination of medications are you specifically talking about? There is more than one.
Click to expand...

The treatment I received was a 9 month course of isoniazid, because of absorption issues I opted for liquid rather than pill.

I was not one of the lucky ones to go into remission but I did benefit. A rectal fissure that had plagued me for years disappeared within weeks of beginning the treatment. Another (perhaps) subsequent relief has been a significant reduction in the frequency and severity of iritis attacks.
 
baistuff said:
"BTW, it was never my intention for folks to rush out and take the TB cure, just that it is something to consider as an option and should be discussed with your GI before proceeding."

This is a fair and reasonable statement...

In short, is it worth a question to a GI? sure, no harm in asking. But I would not run in the streets screaming we are on the cusp of curing CD based on a nice, but really not surprising incidental finding in a 7 year old study that hasn't been reproduced.
Click to expand...

The question asked was "What's your theory on how you got Crohn's Disease?" not "Do you have a doctoral thesis on the genesis and cure of Crohn's disease".

And I stand by my theory!
At least as a working hypothesis.
Have you read any of the other posts?
 
CrohnsLifer said:
The question asked was "What's your theory on how you got Crohn's Disease?" not "Do you have a doctoral thesis on the genesis and cure of Crohn's disease".

And I stand by my theory!
At least as a working hypothesis.
Have you read any of the other posts?
Click to expand...


You have every right to stand by it. I took issue with the statement "TB meds induce remission." That's not a theory on how you got it. That's a statement on how to successfully treat this horrible disease, and at this point, because there is no evidence at all, it is not accurate, and can mislead a number of people on this board looking for evidence based answers.

I'm glad we resolved that issue.

There may be something to your theory, there may not be. I have no itention to debate how you think you got your disease.
 
baistuff said:
I took issue with the statement "TB meds induce remission."
Click to expand...

At the risk of beating a dead horse here's my entire initial post -

"First I am not at all sure that all things labelled Crohn's Disease are the same thing. I suspect when all is said and done that there will be several illness strains that are currently conflated into one by similarity of outward expression.

I do accept the current notion that the immune system is involved in the condition but I would contend that it is responding to a stimulous active in the body, hence the very high rate of spontaneous Crohn's remissions when the TB cure is administered. TB is not the only pathogen lurking in our bodies - the chicken pox virus that lives within many of us and manifests itself as shingles is an example of a known internalized stimulus, but could also prove to be the stimulus causing some folks Crohn's symptoms.

Just as the Heliobacter pylori turned out to be the cause of many peptic ulcers, I believe we will ultimately conclude that the majority of Crohn's expressions are our immune system's response to an active internalized stimuli like TB, the varicella-zoster virus that causes chicken pox , or the herpes simplex virus that causes cold sores and so on. And of course it has a genetic "predisposition" element, it must be so or we wouldn't have it - just like we are genetically predisposed to have TB, etc."

Now what in that did you take issue with?
 
These may be of interest to some in this thread.
Old Mike
http://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(14)01434-9/fulltext#tblfn0025

http://www.pulsus.com/cddw2010/abs/114.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18070971

Thiopurine drugs azathioprine and 6-mercaptopurine inhibit Mycobacterium paratuberculosis growth in vitro.

Shin SJ1, Collins MT.



Author information




Erratum in
Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2008 Mar;52(3):1208.

Abstract

The in vitro susceptibility of human- and bovine-origin Mycobacterium paratuberculosis to the thioupurine drugs 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP) and azathioprine (AZA) was established using conventional plate counting methods and the MGIT 960 ParaTB culture system. Both 6-MP and AZA had antibacterial activity against M. paratuberculosis; isolates from Crohn's disease patients tended to be more susceptible than were bovine-origin isolates. Isolates of Mycobacterium avium, used as controls, were generally resistant to both AZA and 6-MP, even at high concentrations (> or =64.0 microg/ml). Among rapidly growing mycobacteria, Mycobacterium phlei was susceptible to 6-MP and AZA whereas Mycobacterium smegmatis strains were not. AZA and 6-MP limited the growth of, but did not kill, M. paratuberculosis in a dose-dependent manner. Anti-inflammatory drugs in the sulfonamide family (sulfapyridine, sulfasalazine, and 5-aminosalycilic acid [mesalamine]) had little or no antibacterial activity against M. paratuberculosis. The conventional antibiotics azithromycin and ciprofloxacin, used as control drugs, were bactericidal for M. paratuberculosis, exerting their killing effects on the organism relatively quickly. Simultaneous exposure of M. paratuberculosis to 6-MP and ciprofloxacin resulted in significantly higher CFU than use of ciprofloxacin alone. These data may partially explain the paradoxical response of Crohn's disease patients infected with M. paratuberculosis to treatment with immunosuppressive thiopurine drugs, i.e., they do not worsen with anti-inflammatory treatment as would be expected with a microbiological etiologic pathogen. These findings also should influence the design of therapeutic trials to evaluate antibiotic treatments of Crohn's disease: AZA drugs may confound interpretation of data on therapeutic responses for both antibiotic-treated and control groups
 
I think stress had a lot to do with mine. I started getting really bad symptoms just after my father passed away from mesothelioma, But I also think that the parasite I had in my intestines a few years before might have had something to do with it because after that my gut never felt the same.
 
Me too. I think stress was a major factor in causing my Crohns. My first dymptoms started with my residency in a children's hospital with excess both physical and psychological stress. Another major flare was during the first master exams. My f irst intestinal obstruction was during doctorate degree exams and was the reason of my diagnosis at 2003.
 
My mother has Multiple Sclerosis and Grave's Disease ( Removed her thyroid ). Both are auto-immune so I have the genetics.

It triggered my senior year of high school when my mom's disease took a nose dive from then through my freshman year. That followed by a really stressful second year of college kind of cemented it. Spent almost the next decade thinking I was just one of those people who pooped when they were stressed or ate something weird.

Turns out it was Crohn's. So genetics triggered by extreme stress events is my guess.
 
Crohns is a fungal infection due to death of good gut bacteria by antibiotics, NSAIDS, accutane, or other bacteria-killing subtances.
 
I have lived at least the last 28 of my 36 years in some combination of worry or anger. I feel that stress has caused the progression of my disease.
 
Genetics for DS all the way
Did 23&me study
He has tons of genes for crohns
He started to show signs at two weeks old and was dx at age 7.
Definitely genetics in his case
 
When I was 29, my wife and I bought a house that happened to have underground streams. The problem was essentially unsolvable so this gave me a lot of stress. On top of it, it caused cesspool backups and cleaning these up continually exposed me to all sorts of bacteria. But notice that 29 is a typical age for Crohn's to blossom. So these contemporary factors might have been mere coincidence.

On the other hand, my worse and ongoing flare came when I severely sprained my ankle and took long term daily doses of NSAIDS. I know -- I repeat, KNOW -- this caused the flare. This was no mere coincidence. Now I know better and won't go near NSAIDS.
 
no title

this topic seems to have gone dormant. I have the gene - family members have Crohn's. I have the kind of genetic mutation that requires a trigger, and my trigger was food poisoning. I had lunch with 2 friends, who got mildly sick afterwards. I got very sick, and it just didn't go away. My doctor finally isolated the bacteria that caused the food poisoning, and gave me the appropriate antibiotic, and I got better.

Then it seemed to come back. I convinced the doc to give me the antibiotic again, and again it cleared up. After several go-rounds with the antibiotics, my doctor didn't want to give them to me any longer. He did a gazillion tests - but he couldn't figure out what was wrong. Finally he tried to send me to a psychiatrist. After numerous similar situations over the years, where doctors (and family members) insisted it was in my head, I just decided I had to deal with it.

When it got bad, I went to a doctor I didn't know and convinced him/her to give me Cipro, because that was what it responded to. I figured out what I could and couldn't eat, took vitamins, and managed. I figure it would kill me one day, and then they'd find out what it was. It almost did.

Although this is not the "story" section, I'll finish the story. In 2008 I got terrible stomach pains, and nothing stopped them. I couldn't eat at all, and started vomiting some nasty stuff. I had an emergency laparotomy, and the surgeon removed part of my small intestine and some other stuff. I had a perforated colon, peritonitis, and sepsis. They weren't sure I would make it because of the sepsis, but I did.

I've been in remission for 2 years now on Humira. I eat whatever I want. Life is good. :)
 
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Interesting question that I think we've all asked ourselves but requires a certain amount of brutal honesty.

I was 18 and thought I was immortal. I didn't live in very hygienic places. I liked enjoying myself. I drank. I smoked. I took recreational drugs. I didn't sleep alot. I lost.

So I lived with that for many years as the explanation.

Many, many years later my mum said, "Well, I don't know where this Crohns came from, there's nothing on my side of the family and on your dad's side there's only his mum who had Ulcerative Colitis...." :angry-banghead:

This information came after I had already propagated my skanky DNA and, now I have teens who are about to be 18 and I have to try and get them to look after themselves and try not to be 18 too much.
 
I think mine was caused by genetics, stress and a dodgy chicken sandwich. I used to have a bowel of steel! Perfect regular bm! It wasn't until I got gastro in 2014 that I started to get sick and although after a week of gastro I got slightly better, little did I know it was the beginning of a 2 month decline in which I ended up in hospital.

At the time I got sick i had also lost my grandmother to bowel cancer 2 months previously, graduated from uni and was working two jobs, so i was very stressed and run down.

On the genetics side, we suspect my grandmother had undiagnosed Ibd. My grandfather on the other side also passed due to bowel cancer. My sister is lactose intolerant and has ibs and my mother has two other autoimmune diseases not associated to the bowel. So I guess I'm from a family with dodgy bowels and immune systems!
 
1. Quitting Smoking then wheatgrass for cleansing
2. Anxiety/Panic Attacks
3. Stress at home
4. Bacterial / Yeast imbalance
5. Good diet strict / poor diet (not balanced, always very good or very bad)
6. Took adult acne cream sparingly for 3 months. Could be irrelevant dunno.
7. Rule out ibroprofen/antibiotics as i rarely needed either
8. No known hereditary link as of now
9. Believe i remember first issue being after taking wheatgrass a few times to detox after quitting smoking. Could be linked , maybe, maybe not.
 
Mine may have been a combination of 2 things. First, I was hiking in the Alps with some friends and I didn't take enough bottled water. I had to drink from a stream. It was actually quite pure water but something didn't agree with me because I became very ill several hours later with issues at "both ends". I don't remember much of the rest of the trip. I came back to the States and got some
Cipro at the doc and that took care of it. That was in October 2006. In April of 2008, my step-daughter moved back in for awhile. She contracted Strep Throat and it turned into full-blown tonsillitis. She had her tonsils removed at age 25. She did well. I developed an upper sinus infection that ended up turning into or was conjoined with Strep Throat. So I went on 850mg of Augmentin twice a day. I was never the same after that. For over a year my abdomen distended whenever I ate and I could usually be found on the toilet if I could be found nowhere else. One doc affirmed it wasn't C-Diff. My Primary Care doctor didn't wish to speak about it when I brought it up. She looked at me like I was crazy and I thought that if she didn't care then I shouldn't either. I am much more assertive these days. My hubby became ill and I took care of him over the next few years and only in early 2013 did I start noticing new abdominal pain and great fatigue. I was so tired one day that I just sobbed at my desk at work. I had no pain at that time. I even lost 10 pounds in less than two weeks but then gained it back. Finally, I could stand the pain no more and went to the ER in August 2013. The estimated time for active disease according to the doctor was 5 - 7 years at least. That would correspond to either one of those events. I now state that I have an allergy to Augmentin. If anyone takes Augmentin and starts having very watery stools or worse, please STOP it immediately and notify your doc. I really think that is what did it for me.
 
I have no idea, but if I had to throw an idea out, I would probably say a combination of having far too much fun at university, and eating too much fast food.

When I started uni I weighed 15 stone, but when I graduated it was 18. 2 months later when I was diagnosed it was 15 again, so maybe my body just thought I needed to lose some weight. In an unusual turn of events, my crohns helped me be better at sport as I lost weight so quickly that, once my first flare finished and i had some energy back, my agility and speed went through the roof. Silver linings I suppose
 
I got food poisoning in college, I've had problems since then. But I was also on antibiotics a lot as a kid. So that could have something to do with it.. I have an uncle with UC or Crohns or some IBD I'm not actually sure.
 
Mine was definitely stress! I had a job I loved, got wind of the company going down the pan and that week a family member had a accident and nearly died. Also found out he had cancer. I started having symptoms right then, I was 21. Then made redundant days before my birthday and my partner was made redundant 2 weeks later! Then had a whole world of stress from money worries and no jobs in area, jobcentre stopping money all the time. Feeling so worthless and not affording to eat most of the time was the final nail in the coffin.
 
A bad case of food poisoning on holiday in Scotland in 2000 (Mussels ?) and an even worse bout in 2002 in Australia.Also complications after a hysterectomy twenty years ago,but that's a maybe.......Dx'd in 2006.
 
One reads this thread and is amazed. Many people are blaming it on perceived stress/a bug/the like, but we have not used a control. My guess is that if one picks 100 random healthy individuals, most will complain of stress/bug at some point in their life. In that sense, this group is not much different from controls. What is undeniable, though, is genetics. Since Crohn's is a rare condition, it is quite clear that genetics is the culprit. The most that can be said for stress is that it is a moderator.
 
smt said:
One reads this thread and is amazed. Many people are blaming it on perceived stress/a bug/the like, but we have not used a control. My guess is that if one picks 100 random healthy individuals, most will complain of stress/bug at some point in their life. In that sense, this group is not much different from controls. What is undeniable, though, is genetics. Since Crohn's is a rare condition, it is quite clear that genetics is the culprit. The most that can be said for stress is that it is a moderator.
Click to expand...

Agree Genetics is a major factor!
 

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