Is ulcerative colitis related to the weather?

     My first flare started in Sept of 98.  I then suffered flares every two years until 2002.  They occured either in May or Sept (typical allergy season here in the northeast).  From 2003 until May of 08 I suffered yearly flares, still starting in May or Sept, until May of 08 when I seemed to be constantly flaring and unable to stay off prednisone for longer than six months.   I started Remicade in November.  Hopefully, I will never flare again .

well, i live on the gold coast of australia now. moved from san diego.
i still flare and i think it is still seasonal even though i live in a warm climate.
i am in sub tropics and its humid and hot.
i am flaring now.
always around aug-oct time and then again in feb-may timing.
very strange.

the rates of UC are more prevelant in colder first world country climates like canada, the northwest of USA and sweden, norway etc...
but moving to hot area has not helped my UC.
my first severe year+ long flare was here in the heat during the summer.

even if i dont have any allergies or dont get colds or flu's?

TrustyShellback said...
I know that my ulcerative colitis is believed to be seasonal (most flareups seem to happen between August and January). What I want to know is if by seasonal does that mean cold weather? Because if I knew for sure that cold weather triggered my flareups, I would pack up the family and move to a warmer climate in a heartbeat. I'm currently going through what could be another flareup.........it was -15 degrees this morning. Last November I ended up in the hospital for 5 days, and the year before that it was in September. Any thoughts and/or comments would be helpful.

I get cold easily when the weather turns colder. As a result, my body has a harder time fighting off disease. All my flares started in the end of August to the beginning of September. I've never flared in the summer.

I even just saw my doctor to try to find out why I've been getting so cold this year. It turns out that I'm no longer anemic and my thyroid is fine. One thing I have noticed is that I wasn't getting enough protein. So I've been eating more protein, and I haven't been nearly as cold as I was a couple of weeks ago. And then my boyfriend just bought electric padding for the bed. It has dual controls. He gets to stay nice and cool, while I get to feel nice and toasty.

My flares - the heavy ones with bleeding and that last 4 months - always start at the height of summer, end of July. I live in Texas. Before that, I lived in England and in Germany and couldn't detect a particular time of the year when I would flare. So personally it is not the cold months for me. Actually my flares ease up in the winter months.

My flares usually occur between September and January but I'd say they are more due to the stressful Christmas season than the change of season/weather.

As I have been reading some of the above comments on climate and ulcerative colitis, I noticed some of you said that climate did not seem to make any difference, or that moving to a warm climate made your condition better. Now, I was really puzzled by that comment. Let me understand, if I am correct, since I also suffer with this darn disease. Let me bring out this argument, just on logic itself, never mind my personal experience. If I am correct, most of us UCers experience a lot of the same symptoms, like for example, many times we feel anemic, weak, and lethargic. It brings to a point that, Duh, heat and humidity usually make these symptoms worse for us whereas cool weather, most of the time, I believe, helps you keep your energy more intact, you are more bright eyed and alert, because heat is not sapping you. Now for my personal experience, logic aside, that's the way it works for me, so I find the summer humid heat draining on me on what already is an energy drain from my disease, because we cannot draw all our nutrients as well as normal people can. So to the first individual who wrote inquiring about climate and our ulcerative colitis disease, I hope this is of help to you because I know myself in the next few months I am moving to northern New England, so I can preserve some of my energy that is being sucked out of my body by my disease and this S.W. furnace.

I've often wondered if mine was seasonal as well. Since being dx, seems like just about every flare starts to show symptoms in the late spring/early summer and then not completely diminish until closer to fall. Just my experiences though, could be because my daily routine changes based on the season too Seasonal allergy meds (Antihistamines) do more harm than good for me, very hard to find a good one.