smoking cigs to cure flare?

So my GI suggested smoking cigarettes to get over this flare up I am having. Has anyone heard of this or tried it?

I have been flaring for 6 weeks now. I am currently on 60mg of prednisone and taking 12 asacol a day. He said to just try 4 cigs a day for a week. Is this crazay!!

btw...my flare isnt getting better from the steroids and Im kinda ready to get the hell over it!!!

Is there anything else yall think I should try???

I have suppositories for night time and enemas for the morning but It hurts to bad to use them right now and they dont hold anyways!

HELLPPP ME!

Several of us on here have had success using electronic cigarettes (in which you get the nicotine but not the tar etc).
I'm not a former smoker and I decided to try getting out of my last flare (in December) with nicotine. I ordered the e-cig and while waiting for it to come I smoked regular cigs (2 per day). By the time the e-cig got here (about 2 weeks) my flare was under control.

I continue to use the e-cig because when I tried tapering off the nicotine I started having some UC issues again.

So it may work for you or it may not, but you may need to use it long term and if that's the case, regular tobacco cigarettes would not be a wise thing to get addicted to.

I had UC for 30 years totally in remission. I drank coffee every day. Then I stopped drinking coffee......UC returned. My GI said "after all these years...what is different?". Told him i stopped drinking coffee. Nicotine and CAFFEIN are very similar and are known to help keep UC in remission. I did not know the connection between caffein and UC. Never back in remission. I belong to the ostomy forum. Oh, and I never smoked.

Dan

Great question. The reality is that cigarette smoking, strangely enough, does get UC into remission. The pathway behind this effect is that smoking cigs alters the flora of the intestines. E-cigs do not have this effect, since you need the actual smoke. It is not nicotine that does this, it is smoking.

There have been numerous documented cases where people who quit smoking suddenly develop UC, and often have to pick up smoking again to get it back in remission.

Strangely enough, smoking cigarettes makes Chrones disease worse.

Best of luck!

I was a former smoker and had just started to cut back/ quit when I got diagnosed with colitis. I have been smoking the cigs for almost a week now and still no improvement!!

I think my next option in remicade...

Wouldn't it be great if the tobacco industry funded a study that showed that smoking prevented UC? Haha. Or (in a conspiracy theory) they've already done the study and it showed that it didn't help any more than a placebo.

Smoking and LDN are in my "next to try" if my current remission fails (knock wood).
I've been following the e-cig and LDN threads plus wondering if organic additive free tobacco would be good. In my Mother Earth magazine I always see an ad for American Spirit cigs which have no additives which I guess is like e-cigs but having smoke too.

Mankind didn't just happen to smoke for no reason, there must be positive benefits for the custom to have survived through thousands of years. I am a non-never-smoker except for 2 rebellious teenage months but it seems intriguing to me.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_American_Spirit

Durango Kid,

The author of blog post you sourced is greatly exagerating IMHO. This the study he claims proves carbon monoxide controls IBD inflammation. It's a study on mice with something called chronic murine colitis.

jem.rupress.org/content/202/12/1703.full?sid=e75cbbb8-54a2-4004-b34f-424cb11e71e4

One of the problems with the entire nicotine/smoking for IBD is there is not a lot of clinical evidence. The population studies that show higher rates in non-smokers and even higher rates in exsmokers don't show that dramatic of a increased risk. One of the doctors at MAYO did a preliminary trial of patches which isn't that definitive. Patches are probably relatively safe compared to smoking.

Smoking is extremely dangerous. Your chances of getting a serious disease are far higher than any UC treatment or untreated UC in most people. I don't think doctors should be telling people to smoke. Really nuts when so many doctors thump on supplements and diets that appear relatively safe.

If you believe CO helps UC symptoms, smoke clove cigarettes or something else without a addictive ingredient .

Post Edited (AZYooper) : 6/12/2011 2:41:12 PM (GMT-6)

the thing about smoking anything is you're going to get tar and that is not good.

I'm not saying vaping (using an e-cig) is GOOD for you, but it's a heck of a lot better than smoking.

And as far as lack of clinical evidence goes... how many other things do we use (some of us with more success than others) without any clinical evidence to back it up?

Obviously you've got to weigh the risks of what you are trying against the possible benefits, and if no benefits come from it will you be able to quit?

With so many having success with using the e-cig, it just isn't true that it is only the carbon monoxide in tobacco cigarettes that is affecting UC symptoms.

Ima, E-cigs do have "smoke". Actually it's water vapor and the smell reminds me of a cigar to be honest. I really don't care for the smell but I do believe they have unscented cartridges. I've seen the American Spirit cigs here and often wondered about them too. They're actually cheaper then regular cigs too (at least here they are).

Interesting threads..

I gave up smoking 2 months ago, and for the past 6 weeks have had a flare up of uc, been on preds 30mg for 6 days and as of yet no improvement. I have had uc for approx 6 years and was smoking through that time and only had 2 short flare ups in that time which cleared up quite quickly. Asked my G.P. If their could be a link with the flare up and me quitting...he basically told me not to be so silly!!!
Off work at the moment, not feeling the best, maybe I should experiment with some nicotine!!!!!

I just posted in the other thread regarding cigs/UC. There is a well respected Dr. in Chicago (Dr. Hanauer) who recommends cig's 3-5 a day IF you are an ex-smoker and IF you are not being helped by medications. Check out this article he wrote - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ibd.3780040413/pdf

I'll copy/paste what I wrote in the other thread:

"Hi everyone! I've been collecting forum posts, articles and clinical papers that deal with smoking/uc. I thought I'd post a little bit of what I've found so far and perhaps some of you find some benefit from it! Over on another website - www.ihaveuc.com there have been a few users who have claimed that their doctor - Dr. Hanauer at the University of Chicago - has recommended they start smoking 3-5 cigs a day to get into remission. Intially I thought this had to be BS. But I did some digging on Dr. Hanauer and found it it probably wasn't BS. Dr. Hanauer has written extensively on the link between smoking and UC. And his credentials speak for themselves

http://www.uchospitals.edu/physicians/stephen-hanauer.html
"He is the past chair of the Immunology, Microbiology and Inflammatory Bowel Disease Section of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA). Dr. Hanauer is also a recipient of the AGA's Fiterman Award for Clinical Research and the AGA's Janssen Award for Clinical Excellence. Additionally, he has been named one of America's Top Doctors by Castle Connolly Medical Ltd.

Dr. Hanauer previously served as a member and chair of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Gastrointestinal Drugs Advisory Committee. He currently serves as chair of the International Organization for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, secretary-elect of the American College of Gastroenterology, and a member of the GI Specialty Board of Internal Medicine."

Here is an article that he wrote back in 1998 titled - No Butts about It: Put the Fire Out by Lighting Up! - It should be .pdf format. And he explains that he is not recommending that non-smokers with UC light up. If and only if you are an ex-smoker and med's are not working for you than you should consider low-dose smoking to get your symptoms under control. He argues that the side effects of low dose smoking may be less than that of the chemo agents they use to get peoples symptoms under control.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ibd.3780040413/pdf

I don't want to write a huge novel here but I have many more articles/papers/personal testimonies of people who have used smoking to stay in remission for years. This last link is a great summation of the link between Colitis/Chohns and Chrohns-Colitis. A bit long but very in depth.

http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/13/6134.asp"

xfinite,
Thanks for that!

I truly believe, at least for me, that there is a heavy correlation between smoking and remission. I was a heavy smoker for years and 10 months after I quit I was diagnosed with UC. That was almost ten years ago and I can tell you that every time I quit smoking I have a flare. I was in remission for the last three years but decided for health reasons to once again quit smoking in February. I was afraid of the UC coming back so decided to start using an E-Cig so I would at least get the nicotine my body was used to. Well sure enough I am once again flaring so I have to assume it's not just the nicotine in the cigarettes that helps the UC. I saw the doctor today and off course she told me not to smoke but she doesn't have to deal with UC misery, I do. So, once again I've made the decision to start smoking to get out of this awful flare. I'm going to try smoking only 2 cigarettes a day to see if it helps because I really don't have any desire to go back to smoking but I feel like I have no choice.
Glad to see that there are at least some doctors that recognize the connection!