Ulcerative Colitis and Nicotine Replacement Therapy, a personal experience (post no.2)

Hi,
I wanted to update a few things about the post I made yesterday and provide a couple of links where people can read about this topic for themselves (from accredited peer reviewed sources)

yesterdays post was very factual and to the point. I find when reading blog posts or articles that I have to read through a lot of irrelevant text to find the information I'm seeking, so I wanted my post to be very straightforward.
To pad out the story a little bit more; I started taking over the counter nicotine replacement lozenges about 8 weeks ago.I take one per day. my UC was flared up for 20months+ despite taking pentasa, imuran, colifoam, salofalk etc. I was on and off prednisolone for 2 years.
Since taking the NRT my symptoms have improved gradually and I now have good bowel control, no blood or mucus when passing stools. before the NRT I was passing blood, pus, mucous, had very poor bowel control, lots of accidents and was always nervous about my bowel, afraid to go anywhere unfamiliar in case i had an accident. I also had anemia because of constantly passing blood.
In my case the terminal 12cm of the bowel was inflamed making my bowel control very poor. I still take all of my meds. NRT is something I tried myself and was not recommended to me by a doctor. NRT can make chrons symptoms worse. It sometimes helps those with UC.
I also intend to go for food intolerance testing as I already know for certain that some foods trigger my symptoms.
I wanted to share my experience as nrt has really helped me and maybe it could help someone out there who is struggling as I was.

World Journal of Gastroenterology : WJG

Baishideng Publishing Group Inc

Ulcerative colitis in smokers, non-smokers and ex-smokers

Guillermo Bastida and Belén Beltrán

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3122262/




Nicotine treatment for ulcerative colitis
M Guslandi
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2014383/#!po=5.55556

Ulcerative Colitis and Nicotine Replacement Therapy, a personal experience

I decided to write this post because I wanted to share my experience of using Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) to help with my Ulcerative Colitis (UC).

I have left sided UC which was in an active flare up for over 2 years. I am on pentasa and imuran which weren't inducing remission. I was steroid dependent.

I started taking one NRT 4mg lozenge per day, and within a month my flare up symptoms had cleared up.That was two months ago. 

Based on my experience NRT may be worth a try for those who have UC. I am still taking all of my regular meds.

I found a lack of information on the topic on the web from people who had actually tried it, despite the fact that there is an acknowledged link between smoking and a protective effect on UC. I don't smoke, so NRT was the next best thing!! 

I hope this helps someone who may be seeking answers. Please feel free to comment or ask me a question.

<3 DubLife!! <3