Could this have caused and still be causing my UC?

Greetings! I've done a little search and had a look for a few answers and there's something I was wondering. This may just be all completely unrelated but I was thinking if there was anyone else who'd experienced anything similar.

I have ulcerative colitis, I was diagnosed not long ago but there's something that's made me think that the doctors either missed something or didn't look into. Ever since I've had UC the past couple of months, I've had odd, minor occurrences that aren't usually associated with this condition I believe. It leads me to consider that this may have been caused by an infection that's still causing my flare as I actually did catch an infection just before I got the ulcerative colitis symptoms. The start of December I was out with friends. I caught a minor bug or whatever that night as I became ill a couple of days later. It went away after a few days, but not soon after is when my UC began. Started off mild and became worse. Before I became ill I'd never shown anything to do with UC, I'd never even heard of it.

I have an odd feeling the following is connected to the UC. I've never had these things all at once. The past 2-3 weeks, and most of these went away after a couple of days, at seperate times I've had skin on my nose swelling a bit and painful to the touch, the insides of my nostrils also painful when touched, an odd, somewhat painful spot on the outside of the nostril, and this is weird but an assumed spider bite on the back of my neck which took weeks to go down and I still even have a tiny bump from it now, it would hurt without even being touched. We don't have dangerous spiders here so that's ruled out. Maybe an infection could somehow stop it from healing properly? As I said this may just be something completely seperate but as I said I have an odd feeling there's a connection between my colitis and these little things.

I should have spoken to my specialist about these but I haven't seen said specialist since I've been having the occurrences. Thankyou for your time.

if the UC was diagnosed by scoping and the pathology report on biopsies noted deformed crypt cells in the mucosa - then coincidence.

if you had acute inflammation, then the inflammation could have been infectious in nature. - but biopsies would not show evidence of chronic inflammation.

If your flare is bad, with mucous and blood and D, then it is surprisingly easy to transfer fecal matter to fingers and nostrils. just saying.

so what meds were prescribed, and how have you responded?

Interesting theory Gary, I prefer the one where the immune system is a lot smarter than that and would not continue to destroy healthy cells! That said, I also prefer a world without pain and suffering but I cant will it into existence.

I do suspect in most cases UC is caused by pathogens living in the gut. Sometimes MAP, sometimes something else. And the reason why some people get cured is literally because various interventions manage to kill off those pathogens. Fecal transplants from the right donor would probably send enough good bacteria to kill off the bad and in other people, the right combination of antibiotics and supplements would do the same thing. In many ways, I guess it depends on the unique flora living in the persons gut.

There's even a study on pubmed about a guy with severe active UC who had a heart attack and was "dead" for a few minutes. When the doctors manages to resuscitate him and he recovered, he was literally cured of UC, confirmed by colonoscopy and biopsy. It's totally possible that having been dead for enough time also killed off the pathogens. I realise this is all getting a bit sci-fi but let's just say I have that most people's UC is in fact entirely curable.

Anyhow, welcome dcundy! Hopefully, you'll find some stuff that brings you into a cure or long lasting remission. Look up posts by PthogenKiller, who took a similar path and cured herself completely. Also look into the Briggs protocol, which you can find by search on here. to give you some hope, I was diagnosed with pancolitis in 2011 and at the height, was going 25 times a day. I got a lot of help from the members on here and my whole life is now back to normal. I poop normally, once a day or once every 2 days and apart from cutting out toxic friendships, everything in my life is now as it was pre-UC. I'm not going to tell you I'm cured because all I know for certain is that I'm now in remission but let's just say my doctor is very happy that the outlook of my diagnosis is now a lot prettier.

It's a plausible explanation but what autoimmune disorders have in common is the breakdown of the mucosal wall. Mucous membranes cover the entire GI tract and lots of other places affected by autoimmune diseases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucous_membrane

I think it's equally plausible that the cause is external/environmental, rather than the immune system itself being faulty in some way. In a nutshell, I think what we blame on the immune system today is often a virus or other infection that lingers in the body, causing a low-level chronic infection. The immune system attacks, but is unable to eliminate the pathogen.

I wouldn't stake my life on it though - evidence for the immune system itself being at fault is that we don't fully understand the long-term effects of certain types of vaccinations across generations or how GMO's and chemical in the food we eat affect our body's ability to recognise and destroy foreign invaders.

Either way, it's ultimately caused by our human tinkering and not by nature itself.

Well designed equipment goes bad all the time. I've never met a piece of equipment yet that didn't break. As far as people go, even the healthiest grow old and develop age related health conditions.

I certainly agree that all the toxins we are exposed to can throw monkey wrenches into our health but I don't want to go back to being a cave man or have to live my life wearing a hazmat suit. Sometimes you just have to live with life's realties and whatever happens, happens. Not always fun if you draw the short stick as all of us have. Most of us would love to believe that the root cause of UC is simple and that the solution is simple. Unfortunately, that's not the reality.

I do love love your humour studman!

I think about it this way - suppose it's true our immune system goes faulty, just like when a person gets older, their equipment starts to falter...

Autoimmune conditions like UC have a tendency to be unpredictable - periods of remission can be 10 years plus. How has the immune system suddenly re-learned to work properly for that length of time, or in fact, any length of time at all? And how does it forget to work properly for the length of time it takes to come out of the "flare"? So there does have to be a mechanism of action outside of the immune system causing it to recognise a threat somewhere.

Gary - i think as time goes on, we'll see GMO's (and other practices that will turn out to be very bad for us) go the way of DDT and Cigarettes but not before a lot of people get very sick and Monsanto get very rich. Whether they damage our immune systems like HIV or not, it can't be good for us.

I personally don't believe that current GMO products are bad for anyone, although there is some potential that future ones could be if we get too carried away. Right now I think the anti-GMO crowd is similar to the anti-vaccine crowd in unjustified fears.