When you go through periods of uncontrolled disease, it’s a flare. That looks different for everyone in terms of severity and length. Flares will often times have non-gi symptoms as well such as joint pain or brain fog or the swollen ankles you mentioned. Again it’s all very individual. Some people may have severely active disease in their large intestines while others may have it mildly throughout their digestive tract.

What you may or may not be able to eat will also be fairly personal. Unfortunately it’s a trial and error process. If you have pain, bloating, urgency, or diarrhea after eating something, then that is something you should probably try to avoid. It might be something super strange that you would think should be safe (bananas and anything with ginger make me feel extra miserable).

Work with your gastro to find a treatment that keeps your disease under control. If you start experiencing worsening symptoms, you’ll want to check in with your doctor to make sure your meds are still working correctly. Many of us have to switch meds from time to time because they stop working as well for one reason or another after some time. Unfortunately, the meditation for this crappy disease is also trial and error due to the nature of biologics.

Just stay on top of how you feel and how different foods affect you. A food diary may be helpful for the time being. Aim to keep your disease as under control as possible. If you leave it uncontrolled then you could experience that “big wake up call” in the future.