Complaints & connections · borters.ch
The inflammation stays limited to the large bowel — it runs in flares and is well controllable today.
Also known as: ulcerative colitis · IBD
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
A chronic inflammation of the colon lining that always begins in the rectum and spreads continuously upward — distinguishing it from Crohn’s disease, which can affect the whole digestive tract in patches. Typical: bloody, mucous diarrhoea, often with urgency and cramps, in flares over weeks with symptom-free phases between. Joint pain, eye and skin involvement can accompany it. Diagnosed by colonoscopy with biopsies. Treated with anti-inflammatory therapy, aiming for the longest possible remissions. The disease raises long-term bowel cancer risk, hence regular check-ups.
Crohn’s affects the bowel in segments and through all wall layers, can occur anywhere from mouth to anus and causes narrowings and fistulas. Blood in the stool belongs more to colitis. The distinction determines the treatment.
Varied plants (veg, legumes, whole grains) feed a broad microbiome.
Can promote diversity and provides live cultures.
Anyone who has ever lived in the tropics or subtropics can carry a threadworm unnoticed for decades. Under cortisone or a treatment with antibodies it can multiply massively. So this question belongs before the treatment starts — checked with antibodies in the blood and the eosinophils.
Amoebic dysentery looks very like colitis in the bowel. Because cortisone makes it worse, it is looked for first when a journey to the tropics is in the history.
Mucous, bloody stool with constant urge can also come from a heavy worm load. In children from warm countries the stool sample comes before the diagnosis.
A threadworm can stay silent in the gut for decades and, under cortisone, biologicals or other immune suppression, flood lung and bloodstream. Anyone who ever went barefoot in the tropics or subtropics is looked for beforehand with a blood test — one effort, and it prevents the worst course this worm has.
Mesalazine acts locally on the lining, cortisone in a flare, biologics hold the remission. The aim is a healed mucosa, because that is what sets the risk of relapse and the long-term outcome — not the feeling alone.
About two to three in a thousand people are affected. Unlike Crohn’s it always begins in the rectum and spreads upward from there — which makes it clearly distinguishable at endoscopy. After eight to ten years of disease, regular surveillance of the lining begins.
The leading sign: visible blood mixed into the stool, often with mucus, over weeks. Unlike with haemorrhoids it does not stop after a few days.
A constant, painful urge to open the bowels with only a little mucus and blood, with night-time diarrhoea that wakes from sleep. Both speak against a plain irritable bowel.
The inflammation always starts from the rectum and spreads continuously upwards — without healthy stretches in between. That is exactly how it differs from Crohn’s disease.
Joint pain, a red painful eye, painful red lumps on the shins, mouth ulcers or abnormal liver values. They can come before the bowel inflammation.
More than six bloody stools a day, fever, a racing heart, a distended and tender belly. A severe flare belongs in hospital and not in the next appointment.
The single most important hint of worms in the blood. They are raised with worms that travel through tissue — not with giardia, threadworms and amoebae, which stay in the bowel. A normal value therefore rules nothing out.
Taken up right at the end of the small bowel and needing a helper from the stomach. If either place is affected a deficiency arises — often only after years, because the liver holds a store.
With chronic inflammatory and autoimmune pictures low levels are common — partly because the illness itself lowers the level, partly because less time is spent outdoors. Whether correcting it changes the course is being studied; for bone and muscle it is worthwhile regardless.
Taken up in the upper small bowel and needing stomach acid. Acid blockers, an inflamed lining and silent blood losses often come together here.
They give rise to messengers that tend to end inflammatory reactions rather than fuel them. Oily sea fish twice a week is the simplest route; capsules are an option but replace no treatment.
Needed for steering the defences and for the healing of tissue. A lack is more common with chronic diarrhoea, little meat and pulses, and under cortisone.
A yeast, not a bacterium — which is why it works even under antibiotics. In colitis the evidence is weaker than for antibiotic diarrhoea. Advised against with severely weakened immunity.
Blood loss drains the stores. Iron tablets further irritate the inflamed bowel and are often poorly tolerated — with marked deficiency the infusion is the gentler route. That is decided by the treating team.
Clearly worthwhile and well supported when deficient — vegan, older adults, certain drugs. No energy boost without a deficiency.
Clearly worthwhile and well studied when deficient; fewer data for the wider uses. Fat-soluble — check blood levels at high doses.
Effects on inflammation and triglycerides established; cardiovascular prevention is mixed. Watch quality and freshness.
Cortisone brings the flare to a halt but does not keep it away — other medicines are there for that. Anyone who cannot get off it over months needs a different treatment, not a higher dose.
Repeated cortisone bursts and the inflammation itself cost bone. With chronic inflammatory bowel disease osteoporosis is therefore common and too rarely looked for.
Many women report a worsening around the period. That is described and rarely taken seriously — a symptom calendar over three cycles turns it into an observation instead of a feeling.
In a flare coarse fibre is often poorly tolerated; in remission it is wanted. There is no colitis diet that fits everyone — go by tolerance, best with a food diary over 2–4 weeks.
Blood loss and steroid therapy drain all three. Measure, do not guess; ferritin below 30 counts as deficiency even when the blood count still looks normal.
One particular mixture is better studied in this condition than in most other gut topics.