Night and day, anyone else?

my flare is clearly finally getting better...or at least better than I was two weeks ago, but it's crazy to me the contrast between night and day. 11pm, like clockwork I start getting the gurgling, crampy pains. Pretty uncomfortable trying to sleep...1:30am, BM, usually expelling my rowasa. 5-6am BM; more D than formed. uncomfortable again trying to go back to sleep. But by 9-11am I feel fine and then feel pretty great all day long, don't go at all, no gas; although I am always conscience that I have SOME discomfort in my guts. But I feel so "normal" during the day that I tend to forget how bad the night before was.

I haven't been to work in a month, and am hoping to go back by the end of this week, but I usually prefer to work early mornings (5am or so), guess I'm going to have to try to work afternoons.

Plus side....haven't seen blood in at least a week!

Probably has to do with eating pattern or med pattern. Mornings are bad for most UC'rs.

Being miles worse in the evenings/night than in the late mornings/afternoons has been my pattern for many years. Sometimes I would wake up feeling like a brand new person, the contrast was so great. I'm a lot less ill now without my colon, but the general BM pattern still continues.

It wasn't rocket science to work out why it happened either. Food triggered the acute inflammatory response after reaching the lower, diseased, part of my GI tract. In the mornings I would have pooped all the food out of me the evening before and during the night. (In a normal person, it takes 2-3 days to evacuate a meal. With me, it was more like 6 hours.) Thus I would often wake up feeling great, then gradually feel worse as the day wore on: fever, fatigue, diarrhoea, etc. Once the food was out of my system, I wouldn't have to worry about it again until the following evening.

Eventually even that pattern broke down and I was ill and in pain all day and night if I wasn't on steroids. That's not really relevant, but I'm bunging it in anyway.

Uc is always difficult in the mornings for the majority of us. We often have multiple bms, often within a short time span in the early am hours, it's frustrating and annoying. It does gets better as you heal, but in the interim, expect mornings to generally cause anxiety due to frequency/urgency/unpredictable aspects of uc. Once you've emptied out then you can go about your day without worry.

The cause is rectal inflammation, once stool hits that area we have to evacuate it as it is uncomfortable (and even painful) to retain. Rectal inflammation is often the last to heal, it is really, really stubborn. That's a big reason we're big advocates for rectal medications meslamine and steroid suppositories and enemas, as they treat that area directly and are darn good at it.

I slept like a baby deep sleep. Then the pager went off and had to go off many times before I checked it then rolled over and went back to sleep.

Night and Day difference from flare at start of 2015. January was the all night nonsense every hour. Thank GOD that is over with.

Need to keep it together for 3 more months of 2 hour driving per day.

Good luck getting out of the flare. Qing Dai, wheat grass powder, DHEA, MSM, Chia ( Warrior blend with maca ).

pb4 said...
Mornings are definitely the nature of the beast when it comes to bowel issues, nothing crappier than having to start every darned day with multiple bowel movements for sure!!

Clearing out after a full nights sleep is optimal, means not likely to need to at the office.

Night poop'n is because bodies cortisol is depleted and will spike in the morning surge after seeing sunlight and wake for 30 mins.

From 8pm to around 7am is my witching hour. I think the night time to morning increased bms might have something to do with the producing less cortisol at that time. Just a theory. Are you on Prednisone?

And i just realized someone already mentioned that....so yes, maybe try some licorice tea before bed? It is supposed to help the adrenal glands