Posted 9/28/2018 1:18 PM (GMT 0)
We've had a number of folks say that smoking has helped with their symptoms, yes usually the former-smokers only. I am sure you are not the only exception, but are certainly within the minority. The majority of successes have been with cigarettes, as I believe it takes more than just the nicotine to help (thus eCigs, patches, vaping, etc do not have the same success rates).
Certainly, you have to weight the long term health risks associated with cigarette smoking (well documented elsewhere) against the risks of other UC treatments. If it was me, I'd continue to explore other UC treatments and hope that you can find one that works as well, or better!
You can get as science-y as you want about the research and underlying reasons as you want to. Lots of pubmed crawlers here, who look at such things and have been for decades. In the end a treatment either works or does not work for an individual, and that is what matters most. It's really random on what works for individuals. We just understand so little, as a whole on why and when something works.