ASACOL question during flare

You can take up to 6 pills per day for a total of 4.8 grams. If you were only taking one pill three times per day that wasn't enogh to keep you in remission, particularly just one pill. Asacol is a topical med and you have one pill vs a 6 ft long colon. You were trying to put out a skyscraper fire with a garden hose.

Call your gastroenterologist first.

If you are taking a single 800mg pill, three times a day then that equals 2,400 mgs a day. 4,800 mgs is the maximum dose, ask about having it increased.

TY for advice. I am new to this and learning from veterans.

Whatever happens, please remember that what you were doing before to stay in remission didn't work so that program needs to be scrapped when you're feeling better and replaced with a new program. If you get better and go back to what you were doing before you will likely get the same results again. As I said in my first post, one Asacol pill at a time is nothing. Asacol is a topical med and not systemic. It's not like taking a tylenol which will work for either a headache or a stubbed toe. Asacol has a coating and the coating is designed to dissolve in the colon where it releases a topical medicine to work on the inflammation in the area where it releases. It is a small pill and can't possibly release enough medicine to cover the whole 6 feet of a colon. If you are able to you might want to consider switching to Lialda, where you can take all 4.8 grams all at once and it has a better chance of covering a much larger area of your colon. I would equate taking one Asacol pill per dosage to falling off your bike, scraping up your entire leg, and putting an antibiotic ointment on just two inches of your leg instead of the whole leg. It's just not going to work. You are basically taking nothing three times per day.

TY! Last year when I got diagnosed I took Lialda first. It did not put me in remission. Then Dr changed Lialda to ASACOL and I went in remission with 3 pills a day. Since then I had no issues. I was eating almost everything. One bm per day and no blood. Then in Jan, I was starting to have nerve issues. Neuro thought side effect of ASACOL. GI took me off the ASACOL and put me on Aza. After two months nerve issue did not go away and I was flaring, so they put me back on ASACOL. Just got a call from GI to increase 6 pills of ASACOL a day. Also I was using Hydrocotizone enemas that I asked to replace with Rowasa. I also received a prescription for VSL#3 DS probiotic as I found out that is covered under my insurance, so I will start that today. Seems like a plan now to get into remission. I am not sure what is going on with Small Fiber Neuropathy though. Just talked to Neuro and he says it is unusual that he cannot find the cause. He can just treat the symptoms. I am more concern about SFN, then UC at this time. It is wide spread pain. I still cannot understand what is going on with my body as I always took care of my self, never ate processed food, exercised etc. Where all these came from? It will ever get better? UC may be but not sure about SFN.

With probiotics you should start out slow and work your way up. I would take just a quarter satchet a day for the first few days and then maybe move it up to either a quarter satchet twice daily or try a half satchet all at once. You can continue to increase every few days as needed and what makes you comfortable. You can go up as high as you want because there have been VSL studies where they took as much as 3600 billion CFU's per day and I'm pretty sure your prescription won't get anywhere close to that. I'm glad you've got a game plan and hope you figure the other out. Could you possibly have Fibromyalgia?

You can mix VSL with just about anything. I've personally never heard of the Barley powder but if you want to go ahead. There is a lot of conflicting info on weather you should take probiotics on an empty stomach or a full one. Personally, I don't think it really matters one way or the other and I'm not even sure what it says in the directions. Good luck.