I had the unpleasant experience of discovering a carpet beetle problem in my residence. While I have not positively identified the insect, I believe it to be a dermestid beetle. I did a lot of online research and the hairs of the larvae are an irritant and according to a few sources found doing a google search for "ulcerative colitis" dermestid beetle site:.gov, I found a few government websites indicating that ingesting larval hairs from these things can cause ulcerative colitis.
Whether coincidence or not, after a thorough cleaning of my room, I have been gaining weight, not had any asthma or skin problems, even my unexplained muscle twitches have diminished greatly. Now, I have recently switched from Colazal to Lialda as well, so I can't quite rule anything out yet. If I continue to improve, however, then I would kind of know.
So this got me thinking. Perhaps I had an infestation of these things following me around in the years since I moved here. I found them on my clothing - they like natural fibers and most carpets these days are evidently synthetic. Another alternative is that they are a contaminant, or as you will see, in some cases evidently food manufacturers might add bugs to food on purpose (I have NOT discovered any information that dermestid beetles would be added intentionally) Of course, it may not be the cause of my UC, but it's not every day I run into something I have contact with that is mentioned as CAUSING UC?
I am bringing this up so that other smarter folks can do their own research, or even people with more time available than me. I still have cleaning to do.
Here are some links, I can't exhaustively list so you'll have to google yourself. You can even specify google to search government websites by adding site:.gov after your search terms.
Are you as surprised as I am to hear of a link between these beetles and, specifically, UC? Well, so was I. And I wonder why I was never told this with the myriad information I've read on UC.
Perhaps this isn't a useful bit of knowledge, but it certainly can't be good for a person with UC, and in combination with garbage like genetically modified food or BPA in plastics, who really knows?
Department of Defense
http://www.afpmb.org/pubs/tims/TG20/tg20.pdf
USDA
http://www.scribd.com/doc/1686097/USDA-nprgkhapra
Video about another kind of beetle added intentionally to food for coloring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLZHE_pV5c0
others:
http://www.insectslimited.com/docs/Issue%2060.pdf