does hydrocodone help anyone?

It does slow down your digestive system. It will not help your UC. You also have to watch out for addiction. I have been taking it for two years. I look forward to not needing it.

Moose,
that drug is great for pain and it WILL slow down the gut, but it is not for long term, trust me.
Its making you high dude, that's why you feel so great!!! I love that drug for my joint pain when its
really bad. I take it only when I'm miserable as it makes it hard for me to drive, stay focused, all that.

And when my rectal pain is super bad and nothing will touch it, I might take one of the Percocet/Vicodin (those
are the brand names for hydrocodone)
My Dr. Intestine also told me that Valium can really help some folks with bad rectal pain. Again, use sparingly and short term as its addicting as all get out.

Seriously, have you used the enema's to help with the bleeding?? It worked really well for me!! And I was on the flare from hell.....Cortisone enemas to start and then to Rowesa?? Check it out for real.

I was told by a friend now in addiction recovery that the amount ingested is an important factor in developing an addiction. A friend was prescribed 150 mg every four hours for back pain. She had no idea that 5 mg every four hours was the normal dosage. After two years she was unable to stop taking it even though her pain was gone due to surgery. I do not understand how doctors get away with such stupidity.

No, it won't heal your colon.


I wouldn't say it masks symptoms.... it just slows down your colon enough to not be spasming out.
So in effect, you're not freaked out by some of the symptoms that are still there, just don't be fooled.

Why are you not on rectal meds?

q

Moose,
That is BS that the doctors won't give you enemas.
I'd call those (expletive) and DEMAND that they give them to you.
WTH? Ask them if they'd like to bleed out their rectum!!! What can it hurt??

What jerks.
I'm so sorry you have to deal with this.
Mary A.

It slows down the colon, which doesn't directly heal it, but a less active colon tends to heal a little better. I'm sure the constant movement of the colon by going to the bathroom all day doesn't help the inflammation.

In Europe doctors often prescribe tincture of opium to help. You only take a few drops in the morning and at night. Has anyone heard of that being used in North America? It supposedly creates the same colon slow down but without a risk of addiction.

     Subzero...OMG...150 mgm of hydrocodone every 4 hrs???  And this person lived????  WOW...I take one 5mgm pill every other day..lol and I'M worried I may become addicted?  I just need it to take the edge off my back pain.  I have three back fractures from osteoporosis and when I am on my feet a good deal of the day, that old back can become prettttty painful.

Really interesting to see somebody have very similar results to me. I've had UC for about 3 years now, and very little has worked for me. (Only preds for a little while worked) but when I got my wisdom teeth taken out, I was prescribed Hydrocodone. I took it for about 2-3 weeks and it actually sent me into remission for about 3 MONTHS! Man it felt so great. I eventually fell back into a flare up and have been AWFUL for a couple of months now. I'm currently injecting simponi once a month and it's done nothing.

Reviving an old thread here.

Diagnosed with moderate to severe pan colitis in 2008. Been on everything. Remicade was amazing until new job insurance made it cost like $12,000 per infusion. Been on Humira since and it only seem to be holding me at about 50% remission.

For some reason about 2 years ago my GI changed his stance on not prescribing pain meds for IBD. Maybe realized it's true the only thing that can help some people live somewhat normally. I've been on norco 7.5/500, about twice a day for like a year, although I've been on and off opioids for a few years.

For me, when I'm not 100% in remission the opioids are the only thing that allows me to operate like a normal human. Cramps, urgency, diarrhea, bleeding, and fatigue are all gone while taking them. Although, I have to agree about the risk of addiction. Even taken as directed you will have withdrawal when stopping. The part that really sucks is that withdrawal symptoms are very similar to UC symptoms.

I've been feeling better and tapered off the pain meds. Still feel okay, but the bleeding has returned which is not a withdrawal symptom. I'm going to give it another week and see what happens, but like many have mentioned, the risk of being addicted to opioids is well worth the alternative in many cases. Especially compared to the side effects of biological and steroids.

Many GIs won't rx opioids including mine because of opioid induced hyperalgesia (OIH) which is a fancy way of saying a patient taking opioids can have a paradoxical reaction to long term use of opioids and have even more pain. There are several scientific articles written about OIH and can easily be found online.

Hydrocodone ABSOLUTELY cures my colitis! I am so glad to see this discussion! I am like many posters here in that the regular meds were not working. I would get some relief but I never went back to normal. The best that the typical UC drug regimes would do is stop my bleeding and get me down to 6 BMs and daily D.

I NEVER had a day that the rest of the world would consider normal.

Then I had dental surgery... From about my second Lortab I had no UC symptoms. I didn't connect it to the Lortabs at the time but I keep a really detailed food /mood/exercise/water/habits diary and have for years. I feed the data into a analytic program trying to make sense of why I get sick/sicker/sickest... Most of the time I get common sense answers; days I stress or drink less water I will bleed or be sicker, sneaking a sip of wine gets me sick, eating chocolate will put me into a flare I can't get out of easily, things I love like swordfish get me sick, etc... That is not news to UC sufferers...

Then I wrecked my knee a couple years later. A few Lortabs later I was COMPLETELY SYMPTOM FREE! I still didn't connect it to the lortabs but my data analysis program did. All the sudden I saw a new connection for a well day... It said Lortab. How weird I thought... It must be from pain relief or something. I am usually in some degree of pain but the Lortabs take it all away.

So fast forward another year. I have cosmetic surgery and get a Lortab prescription again. Two pills in my uc was cured... This time I remembered the connection and I started researching it.

I actually hate Lortabs, I hate pain killers in general but Lortabs just make me feel spacey. I usually take half or 1/4 of the prescription. Because of that I had a few extra pills to test my theory.

Sure enough, if I was taking a Lortab my UC went away. It is not from the fact that Lortab change the absorption or water in your intestines because I tried the same thing with Loperamide which is prescribed solely to change the water absorption in your intestines and while loperamide would reduce BMs I would still be bleeding and in pain. Also, the minute I stopped loperamide my UC returned. With Lortab, I could take it at bedtime and once in the day for about 7 days and live normal. If I did 14 days I would be cured for about 4 weeks after stopping. No uc drugs at all, just cured.

So I brought all my research and information to my Dr. Who, while he acknowledged he had heard of this from other patients, felt that hydrocodone is too dangerous to play with for off label prescribing. I agree, I don't get addicted to it but we have a friend who was the most normal, never done a drug in his life guy, until his knee surgery... He became addicted physically to Lortab from the second pill. It was horrible. He didn't take them for more than 90 days and he had full detox symptoms. Anyhow, I wanted the cure from hydrocodone but not the opioid.

I started to research it and I found that the cure from hydrocodone for UC may come from the endorphin receptors. Hydrocodone ties up the endorphin receptors fooling your body into making more endorphins- or at least that's one of the things it does. Low dose naltrexone does the same thing without the addictive opioid history of hydrocodone. Neuropeptides play a huge role in inflammatory bowel disease and are both present in the intestinal tract as well as regulate immune responses of both the large and small intestine. Low dose naltrexone reduces the inflammatory interlukins and has been show to CURE both UC and crohns in 24 weeks. In simple speak, low dose naltrexone does stuff that stops your body from attacking itself. All of the UC and crohns drugs on the market do not address the endorphin and opioid receptors but work on reducing white blood cells in various methods. Reducing your white blood cell count is the reason why most UC have reduced immune systems and become susceptible to other diseases.

I showed all of my stuff to my doctor but he said that low dose naltrexone being prescribed for uc is still off label and he wouldn't do it but he has referred me to a couple of physicians who work with naltrexone. Unfortunately, one is a methadone clinic for recovering users and the other is a pain management firm where they tried to get me to keep taking my Lortabs for my knee even when I said I didn't want to. (they threatened to cut off my physical therapy).

I am looking for a Doctor who is familiar with low dose naltrexone for UC as I have heard great things. If anyone e has any more tips about hydrocodone, naltrexone and UC please let me know.