Smoking short-term (2 weeks) to induce remission?

gavin, I don't know whether using cigarettes to induce remission would be useful. It may reduce symptoms while you smoke and they could come back when you stop - they could come back more mild or more severe - or maybe not at all... I don't think there is any way to know how your colitis will react. I don't think many of the members would condone smoking, as it has its own health risks, but I have seen people here have success with e-ciggs/smoking. There is one user who has been using the e-cigg for quite a while and got into remission from it. I think e-ciggs are generally safer than tobacco but I don't know much about them, I've never tried one.

Check this out:
https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=38&m=2036693

I've heard that only people who were smokers previously find any help from smoking. And I assume that one would have to keep smoking in order to stay in remission.

Can you tell us what meds, supplements, and/or special diets you are currently using? We can all try to offer advice as to other things you might want to try or discuss with your doc.

I'm currently tapering off on Prednisolone (at 15mg right now) and Asacol HD (3200mg). Have had 3 doses of Remicade, have the 4th one scheduled this week. I try to avoid pro-inflammatory foods/foods which are generally bad for UC such as spicy foods/soda/dairy etc but don't really have a strict diet as, for me, food doesn't play such a huge factor in my colitis.

I've tried supplements such as multivitamins, l-glutamine, psyllium husk, omega 3, probiotics, literally everything that's been recommended for UC. To be honest they never really seemed to help much and some made symptoms worse. The only supplement which seems to really help is Acitve Manuka Honey UMF 20+.

Thank you for offering to suggest advice, it means a lot :).

I hope so to gavin, have you tried any other 5ASAs, oral or rectal?
You could also try increasing your dose of Asacol to the max.
Did your GI mention this?
Did you ever try 6mp/Imuran?

Oh and I have an appt. with my GI tomorrow so any advice you give me can be taken with immediate effect :).

Currently I'm a student at university in the UK so I can't really afford to fly out to Australia to get the fecal transplantation as that's the only way i'd get it done (too many variables involved in self-administering in my opinion) but if everything else failed and the only option left was surgery then I would fork out the cost and get it done as I have seen it is quite effective for UCers and am almost certain it would work for me.

Since you already have an e-cig, could you try a higher dose of nicotine? If smoking 2 regular cigarettes per day helped your symptoms, it is possible you are just using a nicotine liquid that is too low (compared to tobacco cigs).

When I first started with testing out the nicotine to get into remission I ordered the e-cig but knew I'd have to wait a while to get it so I did smoke some tobacco cigs for 2 weeks and got into remission smoking 2-3 per day.

Once I got the e-cig I found that I had to use a higher nicotine dose than I thought. The site recommends the 12mg/mL for a "light" smoker, which I figured 2 cigs a day would be. However, using the low dose, I started having UC symptoms again although not a full on flare. When I went up to 24mg/mL for the first part of the day and 12mg/mL for the second part of the day, my UC was doing great (just like it was when I was smoking 2-3 cigs). That is the dose I am still using because when I lower it my UC symptoms come back.

Anyway, so maybe try a higher dose but it may not work as a short term fix.

If youre going to smoke cigs at least smoke American Spirit cigs which are the ones that I smoke. The difference from marlboro, newport and all those other cigs is that American Spirit is additive free and has more tobacco which means more nicotine so dont go smoking the whole pack

Bridget, I am tempted to try the patch but after my failure with the e-cig I feel that maybe it's not the nicotine that's helping me but the carbon monoxide from the cigarettes themselves (CO has a potent anti-inflammatory effect) but thank you for the suggestion.

Hekela; I tried the ecig with 32mg/l throughout the day and all it really seemed to do was make me go to the toilet after puffing on it for a while (as nicotine promotes peristalsis).

Thanks for your concern Sara, I agree with you. I've decided against smoking as a remission-inducing activity as it only seems to end badly. Plus I'd rather not risk getting addicted to it unnecessarily.

I use the V3 which I ordered from puresmoker.com and I get liquids from tastyvapor.us

It's an expensive e-cig but I wanted something made in the US that would last a long time. There are several options with it (you can choose different sizes of atomizers and different battery sizes) so I recommend looking at their forum and seeing why those options differ from each other.

Are we all *certain* that's it's nicotine, and not tobacco smoke, that foils the autoimmune system? I'm not.

And Gavin: before you resort to smoking as a last-ditch effort: have you tried radical diet modifications?

Good luck!