A little meds help for a newbie

Cbird. Welcome to the Family. I took Pentasa as my first medication, which like Asacol in that it is a 5-asa drug. I too had frequent chest pains, the doctor seemed to think the medication was not the cause, but I knew it was. He switched me to a different form of the medication, Lialda, which for what ever reason did not cause any chest pain. Needless to say neither medication helped me.

As far as taking or not taking the medication, that would be something you would need to call and consult with your doctor about. However I know in my case, I made a decision that I felt was best for my health, which was to stop taking the medication.

Hi and welcome to the forum. it sounds like you have a mild case of crohns. you shoulden't go to immune suppresents yet cus you might be able to control it with milder drugs such as pentasa and the like. for some people it works others not but its better to start out with the drugs that have less side effects cus they might just work. for me i have taken pentasa for three years and it has pretty much done nothing for me. it could be working but i just cant feel it i guess. you might be able to control your crohns by modifying your diet and finding what works for you. everybodys different so its not like one diet woks for all. you have to really pay attention to how you feel after you eat a certain food. some of the most common things people cut out of their diet is dairy,nuts,red meat,popcorn,rough vegtables,fried food,spicy food, and fiber. i did a low fiber diet and it seemed to help and you can then slowly add in different foods if they dont bother you. i have done the elemental diet several times and found that it does help but theres a catch, once you start going off the liquid diet it pretty much starts to stop working(my doc didn't tell me this til after i did the darn diet for like 5 months). it can help thouh but believe me it sucks. there are natural things that can help like omega 3 fish oil capsuals,probiotics,calundula tea, tumerick,and probably a bunch of other things, you just have to reaserch it. good luck and hope you feel better and find something that really works.

I have not been with out some form of medication for the last year. Prior to that, I was on no medication, for three plus years, living with the disease, not yet diagnosed. To be honest, the entire time, both while on and off medication has pretty much been horrible. I went from being a super healthy 23 year old, who lived in the gym and was 230lbs of solid muscle, to a now very tired and constantly fatigued 28 year old, who does not have the energy to work out. I now weigh 185lbs.

Cbird, if the mesalamine meds don't agree with you, it's time to try something else. I'm sorry to say that everything else will come with more serious side effects. There are a few folks on here who've gone with an alternative route, but those options require serious attention to diet and/or supplements and off-label use of meds.

Check out the UC board for more active discussion of these options. For the Crohnie's, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet seems to be a reasonable option but one that does require close attention to what foods you eat, and restricts a lot of food.

Something to consider in the short term to get you through the wedding is entocort. Do you know where your inflammation is? Entocort is active in the terminal ileum and ascending colon, so if that's where your disease is (about 80% of Crohnies have inflammation in the TI) this can work for you without terrible side effects. You shouldn't use it for longer than 6 months though.