Does anyone prefer to sleep on their right/left side? (Rectal tear/infection)

Since before 1998 I remember knowing that if I slept on my right side my UC would act up and the next morning's stool would be bloody and mucusy. OTOH if I slept on my left side my gut would pass gas and I'd have a fairly normal looking BM as long as I wasn't actively flaring.

Just over a year ago I had an episode where my gut shut down because of an infection that was probably in my rectum. That area of my rectum has become inflamed again and even shows up on CT scans as thickened tissue. My yearly colonoscopy revealed it definitely wasn't cancer - multiple biopsies were negative.

I was diagnosed with UC in 1986 and I don't remember many details. Just before I started having blood and mucus in my stool I recall I had a few weeks where I was very constipated. This leads me to believe I must have torn something in my rectum and it got infected either from my food or my dad's Crohns disease (ie MAP).

A week ago I was shuffling stuff around in my brain and something clicked into place. What if the initial infection and the current infection of my rectum are one and the same? Except for recently nothing obvious has shown up on colonoscopies in the rectum but I'm pretty sure I've never been tested for MAP. I used to be on Cortenemas - roughly fifteen years - and that helped me a great deal. I discontinued enemas after 11/13/2015 because the docs told me they would cause problems with healing. Now that I've been off them I've seen the rectal problem area slowly get worse. I've also noticed my UC flaring when sleeping in any other position than on my left side. My rectal spot became inflamed after drinking root beer weeks ago and it hasn't recovered even after fasting for a few days.

Now I'm planning on starting the Oil of Oregano/Reuteri treatment to see if I can get my current inflammation down. Currently having traces of blood and choppy (lots of small pieces), loose stools.

Anyone else have a similar story or advice?

Current symptoms are 1-3 small choppy BM/day, usually some trace blood (or more), significant mucus with mild urgency. Prescribed meds are 15mg Pred and 6x Asacol HD. Also taking 50mg DHEA. Calcium, magnesium and zinc.

After some web searches I decided to see if colloidal silver might knock down my inflammation. I took a teaspoon of CS last night an hour before going to bed and thought I felt less restless. Woke up and felt even better. Took my AM meds with another dose of CS and hopefully I'll see continued improvement.

Thanks for chiming in platinumpixie. When I was trying to figure out the cause for the sleep position issue I wondered if it could be stomach acid but I always take a PPI before bed. Now I'm pretty sure that in my case its because of the rectal infection.

The good news is that my 1tsp of colloidal silver 2x/day with Serrapeptase seems to be knocking out the infection quickly. I've been passing significantly more gas than usual and said farts have very little odor. It will be interesting to see if healing the infection will have any other effects. Hopefully it will get me closer to remission. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that colloidal silver kills MAP/Johne's/Crohns bacteria and I am 99% certain I'm MAP positive because my dad had Crohn's disease.

I wonder if anyone has tried treating Johne's cattle with colloidal silver. In the research I read that its far easier to see if cattle intestinal tissue is MAP positive because it will show up in a stain test. If somebody tested CS on a bovine MAP biopsy it should be relatively easy to see if CS kills MAP in bovine tissue. Not exactly human trials but it would be interesting to see if it works.

Post Edited (weirdal1968) : 12/17/2016 11:00:49 PM (GMT-7)

I only ever sleep on my left side too, 100% of the time, so much so that I actually hurt my shoulder and they told me that it was because I am constantly lying on that side - I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to do it anymore but my shoulder got better and I went back to it :) It gives me so much relief, and I find that if my tummy is upset that I can't properly pass wind standing up so it just builds up and builds up at work until I'm in agony by the afternoon. So I race home and lie on my left side and I can get them all out :)!