Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that causes inflammation in your digestive tract anywhere from your mouth to your bowels. Symptoms are painful and long lasting due to the disease spreading to the deep layers of the bowel tissue.
Symptoms such as abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, malnutrition, ulcers, mouth sores, and perianal disease are often embarrassing and debilitating. However there are five steps that you can take starting today that can encourage a symptom free life.
Step One – Be Informed
You have a disease but you are not your disease. With Crohn’s, symptoms vary between patient to patient. Even though your mother or father might have the disease, your symptoms may be different and you may have different triggers for flare ups.
Keeping a food journal is a great way to record and understand your body. Knowing the difference between a symptom of Crohn’s or a symptom of another health problem is essential to getting better. A well kept record of what causes flare ups will help you avoid triggers.
Understanding what treatments are available to you and being fully prepared for each appointment is essential. Have your close family members and trusted loved ones educated on your disease will also keep you encouraged and motivated to making good choices when it comes down to choosing between fried or grilled.
Step Two – Diet
Even though there is no one diet for all Crohn’s patients, there are foods that you should avoid and health foods that you should move towards. Keeping the food journal will help you make those good choices so you remember how certain foods benefited or damaged your system. This is considered the elimination diet.
Step Three – Sleep
Simply put, lack of sleep or disturbances in your sleep cycles will increase inflammation in the tract and cause a variety of problems. You might notice that when you wake up, you have an acid taste in your mouth or there is a sudden case of diarrhea.
Sleep disturbances will trigger Crohn’s disease relapse so it is of the most importance. Since sleep disturbances can be cause by the symptoms you must take extra steps of avoidance to break the cycle. Avoiding naps, caffeine, alcohol, late-night meals, and watching t.v. late at night will all encourage a healthy sleep cycle.
The amount of sleep a person needs varies so making a note in a journal will help your doctor better understand your disease.
Step Four – Exercise
Moderate exercise 3 times a week and being physically fit will help regulate your body to working in the right direction. Doctors who treat the disease say many patients often don’t feel like working out, but should try anyway to reduce get their symptoms under control, and avoid diarrhea.
Step Five – Reduce Stress
Stress doesn’t cause Crohn’s but it sure is a trigger for a flare. To live a symptom free life, a Crohn’s patient needs to moderate stress. The sympathetic nervous system acts on the lining of the colon and exacerbates existing inflammation during stress. There is also evidence that stress hormones may help harmful bacteria take up residence in the intestines making symptoms longer lasting.
