I'm starting my liquid diet tomorrow - feel free to reach out, much love

Don't worry too much. Stomachs hurt regularly in healthy people too !

I totally understand the worry though, but the good thing about Crohn's is, if you're not sure you have it, one day you will be certain.

The disease is still reasonably rare only 1 in a 1000 people will have it so the odds are in your favour - just keep an eye out just in case !

Preventative measures are a good place to aim, but no one can agree on any hard and fast rules to prevent the disease occurring in the first place. The few we have are below:

. No nicotine or tobacco use.

. Regular exercise

. Limited processed food.

Please do some careful and diligent cross-checked googling to make sure I haven't missed anything out above and try to ignore the conspiracy big pharma peoples advice, they convinced me to go off my meds and I lost a year of my life !

I was 17, but recently we've seen younger and younger people get diagnosed.

I think the symptoms are different depending on what age you are when the disease comes and how much damage the disease had done behind the scenes before its noticed.

If you're in a country with free healthcare I'd really reccomend scheduling a talk with your sons doctor to chat through it.

For me personally it began with dizziness, fatigue and extreme abdominal pain. I let it get really bad and then the rectal bleeding and hospital stays began - but I believe most can avoid that if they catch it in time.

I dont think Crohn's is guranteed to be passed genetically, I believe the science is still out on its cause being a mix of genetic and environmental factors - although studies do show if it's in your family you have a higher chance of developing it.

It started when I startrd smoking around 17 years old. But I was a pretty ill kid, asthma, eczma and stomach troubles.

The symptoms were extreme abdominal pain, dizziness and rectal bleeding. It then escelated to large bleeding and internal damage.

That is genius.

I'm totally stealing this 100%. I love experiments like this. Please message me, I'm going to start tonight!

The mods ended the thread and muted my appeal but thanks for your questions guys !

The mods havr closed this thread down. I'm not sure why.

Im glad it may help your friend though !

Im hoping to be out on Monday !

It feels like I'm in a fight for my life so I'll take any weapons I can get!

Ebastine sounds interesting, I'm unsure about how its mechanism of action (antihistamine) would assist but there must be a reason why its helping you.

I'll definetly give this a google.

It always fills my heart with love when strangers take time out of their day to try and help me. Humans are good.

Thank you mate. Weirdly enough it actually makes my day when strangers show love, so I appreciate you.

I'm rooting for you too.

I also had a little look at your post history and it got me back in the mood for God of War - I can't wait to be discharged so I can replay it, shit, I might even watch all the cutscenes spliced together as a movie on youtube tonight.

Much love lad, thanks for dropping in, wishing you all the best.

I do have questions, thanks for offering !

Did Humira fail ? What dose were you on ? How was remicade ?

Sorry to hear your friend isn't a handsome ginger man !

Thank you for the time it took to write this and find the information for me. I appreciate it.

I will sip a little oral morpine later and go down this rabbit hole. Godbless.

Thank you very much for asking it. I enjoyed writing that.

If you liked it I'd recommend you have a little look at Stoicism. It's a philosophy that I try and live.

Avoid all the macho macho modern bastardisations of it and it's a beautiful heart warming philosophy that I credit with keeping me sane in these hospitals over the years.

Seneca is a great place to start especially "Letters from a Stoic". It's a collection of discovered letters between a famous philosopher and a young man he is mentoring, they dug them up from 2000 years ago and they still move me to tears. They talk about love, grief, anger, sadness, panic attacks and finding your place in the world. They read very modern and it shows you how little us Humans have changed since ancient times - we all still deal with the same issues.

Again, thank you for your lovely question.

much love.

Hello !

Great question - don't worry about your ignorance ! I know nothing about diabetes or other diseases so no stress !

Crohn's is a disability.

Crohn's isn't like IBS. Crohn's isn't just diarrea and pain and having a funny stomach.

It's infectious flesh tunnels in your organs (Fistulas), internal bleeding, sepsis, increased cancer risk, major surgeries, colostomy bags and shame and fear.

Nobody knows what causes it or what cures it. It's likely an umbrella term for a lot of varied causes that cause the symptoms, chronic and recurrent inflammation in your GI tract and all the complications that come with that.

It's a constant companion that you feel every day and think about thousands of times a day, it's the thing in your life that will always seemingly hold you back and return at the most inopportune times, it's your monkey on your back and there's seemingly no cure.

It feels like an unslayable dragon.

I am !

I'm also handsome, ginger and turning 29 tomorrow. Is this a match ?!

Shoot me a DM !

I love this question.

I don't stay positive and happy.

I accept there will be times, like now, where I'm trapped and in pain and missing my family and my birthday, and unsure if I will live much longer and I try and let myself feel sad about that and scared about that.

I prefer to be strong rather than positive.

Courage is a strange thing - it's a behaviour not a innate trait. It's a dipping line that follows you through life, sometimes it's high sometimes it's low, but I always try and remind myself to pick it back up again once I'm finished feeling sad.

I think we have to allow ourselves to have our emotions - not just the good ones but the bad ones too. Once we stop resisting our "bad" emotions and let them come and do their job we take all the struggle out and we feel them for normal and natural durations.

Ultimately, I've had a wonderful life filled with love and weirdness and funniness so when I am low I try and remind myself of how blessed I've been, even if for a relatively short time and I let myself grieve.

I'd really appreciate it if you could upvote this thread guys !

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I wanna spread more awareness about the disease and I also have a whole day to fill waiting for the doctors to visit my ward !

Also I'm not skinny !

People expect those with Crohn's to be frail and lanky but I'm around 180lbs at 175cm.

I try and lift a lot of weights and walk a lot. Also my go to safe foods are calorie dense and not considered healthy lmao. People see me eating potato chips, fries and chicken fingers and assume I'm making my disease worse ! Nothing I hate more than someone fit and well telling me I should eat dense fibrous foods like salads and raw fruit to be more healthy. Makes my blood boil

I wonder how many Crohn's cases are like this - dysbiosis of the microflora that goes undiagnosed. I think in general our healthcare systems are really poor at complex conditions, so it wouldn't surprise me if there were a lot of cases like this.

Doctors aren't like House MD - they're really not interested in mysteries or logical deduction they treat you like a tick box exercise - Crohn's -> 1st line treatment -> Steroids -> Send home.

How did you diagnose the altered makeup of your flora ? and how did you find a healthcare provider to organise and deliver a fecal transplant ?

I'm currently on a similar drug Humira - I'm just waiting on test results to tell me if it's in the right dose range and if I'm resistant to it. My hospital admission suggests it might not be doing the trick.

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I think remicade is the next bet - I know Mr Beast uses it for his Crohn's and he seems to be really healthy !

I get asked this a lot !

I don't use cannabis but I use a legal derivative called CBD - it's good as a painkiller and it really dampens down my PTSD anxiety without any intoxicating effects (minor a nice relaxed sleepy feeling)

However, like you mentioned, it helps to alleviate the symptoms temporarily, but I'm more concerned about the internal effects the disease has and it's course on my life and future - cannabis unfortunately doesn't help wit that.

Deep ulcers in my intestine that breached blood vessels connected to arteries - I bled..ALOT !

I lost 3 litres of blood quickly on two separate occasions - I still suffer from PTSD from those incidents. It can be hard to see "harmless" blood in your stool without being convinced you're about to die again.

Those events really changed my relationship with Crohn's Disease from an unfortunately life-long condition you try your best to manage to a real threat to my life I had to constantly be on guard about.

That's probably the worse consequence of my diagnosis - the survival mode I've been in for 12 years.

I do ! Well most of it.

I've had two operations on my terminal ileum, no stoma yet though !

That's very interesting...How did you deduce it was external factors and not genetic ?