Colitis Awareness

01/27/2012

This week, I had a friend ask me about Colitis, and how he was running into more and more people who had it. I told him that we are actually seeing more and more of it in people, but the medical community currently isn’t sure why. 

So you know, Colitis is an inflammatory disease of the intestines – in the large intestine or the entire intestinal tract – that can make you very sick, even lead to colon cancer and death. So, it’s worth knowing about.

The two most common versions are:

Crohn’s Disease is where you can get inflammation all the way across the wall of your colon. It can start all the way up to your throat and down to your anus. What happens is that you get fever, muscle aches and pains, and you’ll even develop connections between loops of bowel – where food will pass from one side of the digestive tract to the other without being properly digested. This can cause bleeding and fever. Crohn’s Disease can also cause infertility for women, as there can be so much inflammation in the pelvic area that the fallopian tubes can be obstructed.

Guys tend to do a little worse with it. It can cause you to have mucus and blood in your stool, and can create a situation where you lose a lot of blood. Lots of diarrhea, and weight loss – you feel terrible.

Crohn’s is treatable, particularly when properly diagnosed. Crohn’s Disease can be treated with diet treatments, but most folks will be put on some sort of steroid followed by a disease-modifying agent (a souped-up Aspirin). And in some of the worst cases you’ll be on medications that you see for conditions like Psoriasis.

Crohn’s Disease itself does not lead to cancer. However, it’s brother disease does…

Ulcerative Colitis affects only the inner linings of the intestines and can lead to premature colon cancer. Typically it only affects the large intestines – the last twenty feet of the colon.

The presenting symptoms are very similar to Crohn’s – mucus-y stool, blood in the stool, diarrhea, fever… just feeling really bad. There could be some weight loss as well.

(As a sort-of aside – WHENEVER you see blood in your stool, GO TO THE DOCTOR. There are too many serious things that could be going on there for you to disregard it.)

Medications are the number one treatment, and diet changes – for the rest of your life, that’s how serious we are talking – are prescribed as well.

The key lesson here is that this situation is not something to be taken lightly or disregarded. As you can see, if there is a situation developing with your colon – Colitis is a possibility, and your doctor needs to help you find out what you are dealing with and help you manage it.

Be Well,

Dr. R