New theory on one potential cause of UC

I randomly stumbled upon a study where a group of individuals who had UC and Sinusitis (nasal infection) underwent a sinus surgery FESS to open up their nasal pages and allow for proper mucous flow to alleviate the possibility of infection and improve nasal function. Almost all reported a significant reduction in their UC symptoms. This study lead me to read more and think about other studies I have seen in the past. The following text summarizes my unorganized findings and theories. Some related links are at the bottom as well.

Believe it or not but on average we swallow roughly 1L of snot every day. My belief is that either the pathogens potentially dead or alive by the time they make it to our colon or the inflammatory markers present in our snot are triggering an immune response in our colon. The cause of UC could be that the colon sees a potential pathogen or substance it deems unfit which triggers an immune response. The issue being that because we have a constant supply of snot into our digestive system whatever is triggering this response continues to constantly enter our colon. This continuous supply of whatever unfit substance leads to an ever increasing immune response as our colon believes that the previous response was not strong enough to eliminate the threat.


I then started to think of more related UC things that I have read about that seem correlate in some way.

The first being that studies have shown that smoking tobacco can help with UC symptoms and stopping smoking can trigger flares. Many believe that this phenomenon is related to the nicotine or potentially another compound, but at least for the nicotine there has been no consistent evidence that it is responsible for the alleviation of UC. This leads me to believe that the smoke inhalation/exhalation itself is regulating either the microbiome or immune response within our sinuses.

Th next potential correlation I found is that studies have shown higher incidents of UC flares in the following weeks after flights. The act of flying can cause sinus issues do to the change in pressure. In addition the dry stagnant air within the cabin of a plane is known to be terrible for your sinuses. My first flare ever was weeks after my first flight in a long time.

Many people with UC have also noted a correlation between antibiotic use and flares. One theory could be that the non sinus specific antibiotics alter the nasal microbiome in a negative way.


Also certain foods are known for some to trigger inflammation in our sinuses that could further manifest down into our colon.


https://bmcgastroenterol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-230X-5-28
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC555745/
file:///C:/Users/OWNER/Downloads/621-Article%20Text-2543-1-10-20080324.pdf
https://academic.oup.com/ecco-jcc/article/8/3/191/527967
https://academic.oup.com/ecco-jcc/article/8/8/717/530121
https://academic.oup.com/ecco-jcc/article/6/7/756/333904

Implications are different if the immune response is due to pathogens in mucus or do to host (self) tissue in mucus. One is not autoimmune the other is.

The causal direction could also be different. Without precise timing of when inflammation (versus symptoms) starts, the relationship could be that then the immune system is inflamed in gut membranes, that there is also some inflammation in respiratory/sinus membranes. This would also be consistent with other extra-intestinal manifestations of IBD.