Ulcerative Colitus

I'm sorry to hear about your wife's condition. This is an engineering forum (and not a medical one), so you won't find many doctors here. So, my suggestion is to Google the phrase "ulcerative colitis" and take a look at links such as this one. You may also want to take a look at a Web site called WebMed.com.

Moose

Double what Moose said, but your best method forward is to work with medical professionals. Researching the symptoms, pathology and possible alleviations is fine as part of the process, but doctors will generally provide the best information.

Hi Jurie from SA - I am sorry to hear about your wife.

artsmith provided a link to http://www.pubmed.gov Try it and search for relevant publications.

Sterkte ek hoop dit help.

Jurie,

I did some reading this evening about this problem. I first tried to find about the cause of ulcerative colitis: there isn't positive knowledge about a single cause, but the damage is related to immune responses.

Once a person is on drug treatments like steroids and immune suppressants, you can't give these up suddenly or you could have a serious or life-threatening reaction. They have to be tapered off slowly so your immune system can find its balance again. Also, it is risky to combine drug treatments with herbal treatments, unless you have a doctor who is able to assess the risks and advise how it should be done.

Luckily, it looks that there is a very safe and fairly effective food treatment which has been tested in patients with ulcerative colitis not only as a treatment but also as treatment while tapering off the doses of steroids. The product is referred to as "Germinated Barley Foodstuff" in the literature. That is barley sprouts: if you can't buy the sprouts you can easily sprout them yourself from unhulled barley: instructions for sprouting (for example) http://www.chetday.com/sprouts.html

PubMed listed this multi-center open trial n=21 showing long term benefits and no side effects (2003) and this one n=59 showed it was safe and effective in tapering off the steroid meds, and helped patients to stay in remission.as well. You might want to print these abstracts and talk to her doctor about it.

Also in the food and safe department, yoghurt has been studied: it seems to help some people but there's not as much evidence as for the barley sprouts. If your wife finds it good to eat, she should include it in her diet: it's really very good for establishing a normal flora in the gut: anyone who uses antibiotics should follow up with yoghurt to help it back to normal. So it might not cure the colitis but it could help to develop a friendlier flora.

In the herbal treatments department, there are two that should be readily available in South Africa and appear to have some promise as safe and effective: something to consider AFTER tapering off and getting off the drugs but not before unless your doctor recommends it.

Aloe vera gel has been studied in a randomized double-blind trial n=44, for mild to moderate ulcerative colitis with good results. Also, boswellic acids or triterpenes from Boswellia (frankinsence) gum preparations are reported to be promising for a number of inflammatory disorders: the lupane and ursane triterpenes make awesome medicines: very safe, small amounts do it, generally.

Hope this is helpful. Good luck.

I thank you al for the trouble you took.

My wife's colon was in such a bad shape..so it was removed completely.

Monday she wil have her smal-intestine coupled to her anus so that she would not have a stoma any more. Another 12 days in hospital!

Regards

Jurie