Stupid Question

I have been thinking.

Is there something that you think was a trigger point for your crohn's, before you ever got sick.
Like some sickness you had or something...

This is my story:

I was a really healthy kid but in 2006 I was diagnosed with pre cancer cells on my cervix had to have op to have them removed.
After that I got endometriosis and the doc thought that I got that because my cervix was not the way it used to be.
And the Endo attacks my immune system so that i am more likely to have my crohn's go active..

Just on theory I have for my case..

You should try reading Donna Nakazawa's 'Autoimmune Epidemic' It has a lot of theory and explanation as to what could be a trigger for our disease. The two main ones being environmental as in body burdens i.e. toxins and then viruses or bacteria that trigger an autoimmune response.
Many people have been linked to having Epstein-Barr virus before being diagnosed with lupus for example (and many doctors cite this as the cause for the onset of their autoimmune disorders). It may also be linked to the diagnosis of other autoimmune diseases as well...
More research is still being done, but I highly recommend this book.

My GI kept trying to link my smoking with my Crohns, I never really paid much attention to it. I mean I know smoking is bad for your stomach, and just bad for you in general, but I never thought it triggered my Crohns; until he asked me..

Doc:"When did you FIRST get sick?"

Me: "When I turned 16"

Doc: "When did you first start smoking?"

Me: "When I turned 16."  

*DOH!*

I do believe it played a huge role in my Crohns activity. 

bar77 said...
 My surgeon said he believed also that there was some environmental factor, because he saw patients in spring and fall typically.

My doctor said the same thing!

I was diagnosed in the fall..... a few months after I had been working at Steak 'n Shake and eating food there for lunch everday... (It might have been a trigger... all that junk food at once...)

I once fell in a cesspool... (Maybe that contributed at some point, too?)

I have endured many traumas in my life.... (Connection there, maybe?)

//>.>\\'.... I used to eat leftovers that were a week old... (No more than a week, but maybe that had contributed, too)....

Oh... and I've been exposed to secondhand smoke (I don't that's a single factor, though)...

My dad has Crohn's, and he was diagnosed after the military sent him to San Antonio for training. He thinks that something there must have triggered it.

I was a pretty healthy kid, was only on antibiotics one time, and often was one of the few kids in my class who didn't come down with the flu. I started having Crohn's symptoms about a year or so after moving across state to a new city. I also had been having major anxiety/panic attack problems for a couple years prior, which I bet sped up the process of me getting Crohn's.

My dad also has a cousin and an uncle with Crohn's, and intestinal problems run on both sides of my family. I know someone who has crohn's, and her son was just diagnosed. I think genetics play a part in the disease, as well as environment.

I was a very healthy kid.  I had the occasional cold and I've had the flu twice in my life.  My parents used to tell me I had a really strong immune system because when kids were sick around me at school, I never seemed to catch what they had.

But my dad's sister has UC (she's now 81-years old)...and my dad's cousin has CD.  So possibly for me Crohn's is genetic and I was just born with it and it didn't become ACTIVE until my 30's.

I also think environmental factors MUST somehow play a role...possibly CAUSING the disease in some people and possibly triggering the disease into an active state for those who already have the disease from some other source.

When I first started to get ill, I was under A LOT of STRESS.  Two things were going on.  First, I was working 4 jobs: one full-time and 3 part-times.  At one of my PT jobs, I had a massive problem with a co-worker.  I'm not the confrontational-type...but with this girl I was a totally different person.  She knew how to push my buttons and we would argue and fight and curse each other at the top of our lungs.  I LOVED the job but hated being around her.  We'd started off as friends but an illness she'd had in high school surfaced again during the time I knew her - bulemia.  Her personality changed and she started drinking .  She became unbearable to be around.  She would come to work drunk and just start an argument with me for no reason.  I just didn't know how to control my temper when she'd start in.

While that was going on, I had an AWFUL infestation of MICE in my apartment.  This wasn't just a case of killing 1 or 2 mice.  There was a family breeding in the walls between my apartment and the apartment next door (who had a dog and a cat inside so the mice knew to go to MY place where there were no animals!).  I would find mouse droppings in every room along the walls; on the couch & chairs; even IN MY BED.  I couldn't sleep at night for fear of them crawling in bed with me!  I fought with the apartment management who didn't want to admit there was a mouse problem.  They sent a pest control person who did nothing but set out blocks of poison which never worked.  I used glue traps and spent MANY nights hauling "alive and squealing but stuck" mice to the garbage...until I got the bright idea to start putting them on the steps of the apartment management's door.   It was awful and I was a nervous wreck.  I ended up staying with my parents for the longest time until I was able to MOVE OUT of the apartment and get a new, "mouse-free" place.

And during all this time, I was having worse and worse abdominal pains & loose BM's up to 15 times a day.  I was Dx with IBS and given meds that didn't work.  The pain and the LBM's got worse and I eventually quit the PT job I mentioned so I'd have time to find out what was wrong with me.  It took another year for a Crohn's diagnosis.

I can't help but wonder, though, if those two stress factors played a role in ACTIVATING my Crohn's.  Maybe I'd been born with CD from a genetic perspective but the stress I was not used to dealing with activated the disease.   Had I NOT had that PT job...had I NOT had that mouse-infestation...would I be on this Crohn's Forum right now?

It sure would be great to one day know the REAL answer.

I find it interesting that several of us were healthy kids who had good resistance to colds and flus. I guess our heightened immune systems were once good for something!

Well, in the interest of possibly helping family members to avoid the problem, the environmental factors would be nice to have some ideas about. One of the ideas that has arisen in recent years is the possibility that a vitamin D deficiency is responsible. The genetics is another disposing factor, but gene expression is also dependent on environmental factors including diet and exercise (worse luck!). The vitamin D idea is interesting - smoking depletes vitamin D and so do infections. It seems that vitamin D deficiency impairs the immune response - so that other things that impair the immune response (genetics, drugs, toxins) may also be responsible for Crohn's initiation. @duplessis3 - there is a study linking psoriasis/psoriatic arthritis with a previously undiagnosed IBD condition. In your case, they have already made the connection. Stress is a well known trigger, but I don't see it being a sole cause of IBD. Stress can directly damage your gut because of the presence of intestinal neurons that receive signals from your brain. They are found in close proximity to mast cells in the gut and it is suggested that the mast cells are triggered by the neurons under stress. Mast cells, when triggered, release a toxic cocktail of histamines and other inflammatory agents. They non-selectively destroy both foreign and self cells. The suggestion is that that reaction is a response to parasites and it is almost the only response that the body has that does anything to deal with parasites. Normally, the reaction is self-limiting. In Crohn's, there may be factors like autoimmunity or just impaired immunity that keep the reaction going.