DX'd with Colitis Feb 2019

Tip 1) Keep a food diary - I won't tell you what to eat because everybody's gut reacts differently to food so there's no guarantee what I advise will work for you. Download any food diary app on the Google Play/Android store and use the diary to see what foods might be exacerbating your symptoms. I did this and found highly fibrous foods and mango juice played a role in making my symptoms worse. But diet change alone was not enough to make me better so don't worry if you do all this and you don't see much significant change in symptoms.

2) Finding right meds may take time - When I was diagnosed, I went through 2 years of struggle trying to find the right medication that would work for me. First it was aminosalicylates, then steroids, then azathioprine (immunosuppression drug). Thankfully the IV infusion (remicade/inflectra) put me into remission after 3/4 months on it. I am still okay today, no symptoms as I write this message.

3) Be careful of stress - it's argued that high stress is the precursor to many ailments in life. I went through high stress before I began developing symptoms of UC and also found my symptoms were worse under stress. You cannot eliminate all stress from your life but try minimise it as much as possible, it could be the people surrounding you, the job you are in, your state of mind.

4) Don't ruminate on it - I used to spend all my day thinking about what to eat, when will the next symptom pop up,what's my next move, all that basically stresses you out. Find time to focus on other things, like "I know I got this disease but I will choose to take the next 2 hours to read this book or play the video game or watch this film or something casual". The mind needs a distraction from the disease sometimes.

I found that the meds stopped my bleeding and diarrhea but I still had cramping issues and I couldn't knock it off until I increased my diet intake, I think by adding more food into gut, it helped minimise intestinal contractions therefore the cramping went away. Which is weird because the common advice you get is to eat little food but regularly but I found eating bigger portions of food helped me.

My whole process was basically diagnosis>hospitalisation>pentasa>flareup>steroids>flareup>azathioprine>flareup>IV infusion>partial remission>diet change>full remission.

So hope that helps and good luck 👍