Crohn's Disease What Is It?

By Author: Kirthy Shetty
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Are you suffering from pain in your abdomen, diarrhea, vomiting or weight loss? You may be suffering from Crohn's disease.

This disease, which is also known as regional enteritis or granulomatous colitis, is an infection of the intestines that may affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract. This means that you can develop this disease anywhere from your mouth, small intestines, large intestines, rectum to your anus. Although most cases of this disease happens in the ileum and the colon.

An inflammatory bowel disease, it is generally thought to develop when your immune system attacks your gastrointestinal tract causing the infection. Genetic and environmental factors have also been theorized to cause the disease.

While there is no known cure for this disease, you can alleviate the symptoms while avoiding remission and relapse.
This disease is difficult to diagnose. For one, many people who have the disease suffer only mild symptoms. This causes them to ignore it before it gets really difficult and painful that they seek medical treatment. The symptoms also vary depending on where the infection is, ...
... and how severe it is. However, if you have mild fever from time to time, and if you notice blood in your stool along with pain in the lower part of your abdomen, then you must seek medical help immediately. Other symptoms include:

appetite loss
boils or abscesses
fistulas
unintentional weight loss
general malaise

Your doctor could suspect Crohn's disease if you have had these symptoms for more than three weeks. To be sure, medical tests like x-rays, blood samples, stool samples and endoscopic examinations may be done to confirm the disease.

Besides having boils and fistula, this disease may also increase your risk of cancer in the affected areas, particularly colon cancer and small intestine cancer. People who suffer from these are also prone to be malnourished due to a lot of factors like decreased food intake and absorption.
The disease could also lead to bowel obstruction, free perforation and bleeding. In pregnant women, medications for such diseases may be bad for both the fetus and the mother.

Like most gastrointestinal diseases, this disease does not have a known cure, but symptoms may be alleviated by medicines, change of lifestyle and surgery. There are some alternative treatments that may be tried to this end.

Medicines like aminosalicylates and corticosteroid may be used for acute attacks. As suppositories or through an enema, these can reduce the inflammation in acute Crohn's disease that can be found in the rectum or the lower intestines. If rectal treatment is not successful, oral treatment using aminosalicylate and corticosteroid tablets may be administered. More serious attacks may need intravenous corticosteroids and hospitalization.

Some pharmacological treatments include the use of immunodepressants like azathioprine. Infliximab are also used. Antibiotics and vitamin supplements may also be indicated.

Lifestyle changes including changes in your diet, drinking lots of water, getting regular exercise and quitting smoking may also help manage the symptoms.

Surgery is to the last resort if complications like blockage and abscesses occur.

Other forms of treatment are currently being explored. Among these are probiotics, fish oil, herbal medicines, and hookworms.

Kirthy Shetty, Platinum author. Get all your tips related to: Crohns Disease Diet

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