UC questions

Hi! I'm 30 and new to UC, was diagnosed with acute UC in Dec 2015 after colonoscopy (but I had strange bowel feelings and mild symptoms for at last past five or six years). Now I'm gathering and analyzing information on this condition and the more I go into details the more it seems that the most valuable data/information is the individual experience. So I wanted to ask all of you for helping me with some data input for analysis by providing your own experience and personal point of view. Please take into mind that ONLY by answering truthfully, honestly, "as is" you are helping me, yourself and others. If you don't feel comfortable answering some of the questions then please feel free to skip them or leave them blank. Thank you in advance and I promise to follow with feedback here if this analysis provides any useful results.

So here are the questions:

1) What is your gender, age and how long have you been suffering from UC? Do you have any other complications? Other diseases/conditions that impacts your everyday life?

2) Please take a moment and go back to a time before UC started and try to describe your typical weekly routine including eating habits, work, sports etc. Were you having long periods of stress, long periods of eating junk food, working hard, overtraining, using antibiotics, medicines, smoking? It's very important to be as honest and precise as possible with this question since from my experience so far it might hold a key valuable information.

3) How would you describe yourself as a person most of the time? Are you nervous or calm, spontaneous or planning everything ahead, angry or cheerful type, disappointed or happy with whatever happens, caring about everyone around or more like caring about yourself, religious or not religious? Do you enjoy living the life as it is? Has this changed over the years? Did UC changed you as a person?

4) Do you attend some classes/courses or do any sports? If you do, in what activities are you engaging in? Do you feel that these activities help your condition or worsens it? Do you consider yourself a maximalist? Do you push yourself to extremes often or never?

5) How would you define a "flare" and a "remission"? What clinical symptoms you consider a "flare" and when you consider yourself in a "remission"? How do you usually feel mentally in a "flare"? Do you think a lot about your condition? Do you talk a lot about it? Are you usually "flaring" for days/weeks/months? Do you have long or short "remission" periods in between?

6) Have you noticed any changes to UC state due to external factors? Can you name foods/food additives/environment fators/other factors that you feel trigger a "flare"? Have you noticed if moon phases (full moon) impacts your UC? Do you have any special diet/life style protocol you start once you have a flare?

7) What medicals are you on? Do you have any side effects from the medicals? Have you ever switched/stopped using any medicals?

8) Is there anything else important you want to mention?

this is a bit like a survey/study, although is looks for personal inquiry - still it is usually done only with permission.

do you actually have UC? Acute colitis is not IBD or autoimmune.

What meds are you taking?

Globetrotter said...
Hi! I'm 30 and new to UC, Please take into mind that ONLY by answering truthfully, honestly, "as is" you are helping me, yourself and others.

Forum rules require surveys to get admin (site owner) approval before they can be posted. So, I'm going to lock this.

Nobody knows the cause of uc. It seems increasingly complex, maybe multiple diseases classified as one, involving an immune deficiency, some genetics, environmental triggers, possibly food intolerances possibly additives like emulsifiers and other junk in the western diet, *shrug*. A lot of the more compelling research lately has been with Crohn's disease and MAP a tuberculosis-like infection. While it's amiable that you're trying to figure it out. I'm not sure asking 8 questions and compiling the results is going to solve it, if it were easy then it woulda been solved a long time ago. There's been many threads about what could cause uc (use search). We have a number of users who keep up with the latest research, try to connect the dots themselves, and have been doing this for a long time