UC -- alternative outlook, living without meds

Correct diet is important for all healing. I drink Kombucha tea and eat homemade sauerkraut to give my gut the probiotics it needs. Think it is important to have a healthy gut.

http://bembu.com/5-ways-your-gut-affects-health

Hey, I do not know if it is clear to everyone, but it isn't to me - so maybe someone can enlighten me: what are SCAAs?

Here's my personal .02cents. UC does not start in the colon, rectum, or anus.

UC doesn't appear one day ,the day of diagnosis.

UC/ IBD, really any disease takes years and years of build-up

For me, not going to the bathroom daily as a child. I would often go a week without a bowel movement, was toxic and constipation. Very unhealthy.

Now my thoughts on cause of disease, UC, Crohn's etc..

I personally feel to find the cause one must look at root-cause. Some Doctor's say only 5% of disease is related to gene's. So we're looking at 95% not related to genes. And even if that numbers is off, there's still a percentage not gene related. In addition, our genes, our DNA is given at birth, our phenotype are determined by our lifestyle, our choices in life. We can literally turn on and off genes based on these choices. That's just genes, regardless if we disagree there... there are many causes, including structural, which is why a chiropractor can help UC patients so much, sometimes. There's a mental/psychic component. Ever notice how stress can cause a flare, stress is relative and different per person. Then there's things like Biochemical, Nutrient Deficiency, Toxicities(Metal, Metal, pharma, Organic Toxins, biotoxins) Infectections, Metabolic

I recommend looking into the The Institute for Functional Medicine or other holistic or Integrative ways to clinically look at our body. Dis-ease is formed over many years, through all the above root-causes, and likely more....

Genetics influences uc. My 2 brothers and I, cousins, maternal grandfather.
Extent and age of onset may differ but genetics not lifestyle the issue. Meds, j-pouches, cancer all encountered.

Genetics don't explain the majority of uc cases (only 5.5 to 22.5 percent of patients have family with IBD), and neither does lifestyle choices (the majority of people with UC don't eat poorly or have bad lifestyle choices).
www.ccfa.org/assets/pdfs/WomenandibdFamily-IBD-Link.pdf

I don't believe shaming the patient is helpful, whether we say IBD is psychological, lifestyle, etc. We just can't confirm that was a cause and changing said things for doesn't fix it in most cases either. IBD causes enough depression as it is, why add to it? Call me skeptical.

Cool interesting on the gene diagram, I'll have to look at mine and see how neatly I fit in those circles. I had a dozen or more of IBD genes from 23andme and prometease reports. Been meaning to read up more on em.

I do believe a genetic deficiency is underlying IBD. I'm sure you're right that a percentage of the population have the capability (based on genes) to have IBD but not everyone within that subset of the population does get IBD. It's kind of like having a bunch of nice vacation homes right on the ocean, all are at risk of receiving storm damage based on their proximity to the ocean. However, it takes a perfect combination of a strong enough storm, heading in the just the right direction, at one of the highest tides of the month to hit your individual building. Often, most buildings are spared. With uc, we don't know the exact cascade of variables for that perfect storm. But we are the lucky recipients of meeting them perfectly (not as cool as winning the lottery) :-/

Nope, that's a mischaracterizion of my point completely. There's nothing wrong with discussing anything that can help someone with their uc symptoms, lifestyle, medication, meditation or otherwise. Everyone is unique in response and having a large toolkit full of many options to work from is a very good thing. What I was referring to is at times those who don't eat healthy or live clean enough are judged negatively. I've seen posts over the years asserting that if many of us only chose to live cleanly and eat healthy that we wouldn't need strong uc medications at all, but we don't, so it's our fault we need biologics. That's the blame the patient. Many of us ate heathy and lived cleanly, were low stress, and very happy within our lives when uc occurred (myself included) with no antibiotics or anything else to explain uc either.

Uc has got to be incredibly complex disease or umbrella of disease with similar symptoms. I'd gander our underlying genetics determine who gets an easy or difficult case of uc and what we'll likely respond to specific treatments. Until there's an easy test that spits out what individual solutions are (far, far future), I'd try anything and everything that can help uc symptoms.