Stress is definitely the singular common denominator here. It looks like some had a previous infection, some took antibiotics, some ate terribly, but EVERYBODY had a period of serious stress during or before the onset.
Genetics, diet or a previous infection probably weakens the immune system and mucosal wall of the intestine, and it looks like stress finally just snaps it. If that's the case, then what we are experiencing isn't a recurrent or persistent bacterial infection, but a breakdown in the wall that lets normal luminal bacteria attach themselves to the intestine each time we have a movement. This becomes a vicious cycle, albeit different from what Gottschall described in the SCD, as each movement deposits more and more bacteria on the compromised section of the gut resulting in chronic inflammation and ulceration.
The question is why the mucosal wall doesn't manage to repair itself after said period of stress passes, so normal bacteria from movements can't be strewn along it anymore. I remember reading somewhere that the immune system "never forgets," and that might explain why. Once the immune system learns how to combat a disease, it retains that information. That's why we get vaccines for other diseases: we are given a dead version of a virus like measles to teach the immune system how to fight it, and once it learns, it never forgets. You only need to be vaccinated once for that kind of thing. If this is true, then at some point our immune systems learned that the gut is diseased, and is quite frankly failing to forget, and stop sending chronic inflammatory signals.
At least that's the argument behind all those godawful immunosupressant drugs so many of us have taken/are taking. Standard GIs believe we have an overactive immune system, and it needs to be depressed to leave our poor guts alone. Thus, UC is an "autoimmune" disease. I still don't buy it. If anything I feel the medical community should be focusing on rebuilding the mucosal wall, not dampening or depleting the immune system itself. I think if the wall were successfully rebuilt, the immune system would finally chill out and the inflammation would stop because no more normal bacteria were making it too close to the blood stream through the intestine.
Besides, if it were truly just an autoimmune disease and all of us have been blessed with masochistic immune systems, then why would things like controlled diet work so well for so many? Or why would others have found relief through taking this or that tincture or supplement (i.e. olive leaf extract or vitamin D)? There has to be many different causes for UC, and an overactive immune system I think is just a result of whatever one's particular cause is, not the cause itself.
Anyway, stress is always, always part of someone's UC story.
Let's keep these testimonials coming. I'd like to see someone post here who DIDN'T have stress as a major factor when their disease hit
