World IBD Day: What is Crohn's

Hello IBD family and Happy World IBD Day. :) 

For my World IBD day blog post I wanted to do a post explaining what Crohn's Disease is. My hope is for you all to share this post with non IBD suffers such as family and friends who do not understand what Crohn's disease is. 

Just before I begin I would like to explain why I am not mentioning the other IBD family member Ulcerative Colitis. As you all know if your a regular are reader I have Crohn's and I don't feel right doing a blog post on Colitis because I don't have that illness and I do not want to write a blog post on something that I don't fully understand. So now let's get onto the what is Crohn's post.


What is Crohn's Disease? 
Crohn's disease is an incurable illness that can effect the whole the digestive (from the mouth to the bum) but the most common area to be affect by Crohn's disease is the bowel although in rare cases Crohn's can affect the oesophagus and mouth.

Warning!!! the picture below is a picture bowel with Crohn's Disease. 

Symptoms of Crohn's
Not everybody will experience these symptoms but a lot of Crohn's suffer's will experience some of these.....

• Frequent Diarrhoea
• Stomach pain which can be made worse after eating
• Having blood and mucus in your stools aka poo
• Weight loss
• Feeling extremely tired.
• Feeling or being sick 
• Mouth ulcers
• High temperature's
• Joint pain and swelling
• Inflammation and irritation of the eyes 

Treating Crohn's

Currently there is no cure for this illness, there is medication's that can help improve things and even get people into remission but in some cases suffer's require surgery to remove parts of bowel. Unfortunately there is some people with Crohn's that no medication or surgery is going to help. 

Medications used to treat Crohn's......

Complications associated with Crohn's 
Unfortunatly there is a lot of complications associated with Crohn's some of them can be very serious while other's are not so serious. Below is a list of complications (I took this list of complications from the Bupa UK website).

• A fissure - This is a tear in the wall of your anus which hurts and bleeds when you move your bowels.
• A stricture in your bowel -Scar tissue can build up after inflammation and this can narrow and block your bowel.
• An abscess - This is a collection of pus. If you develop a stricture this can cause a tear in the wall of your bowel. The contents of your bowel can leak through the tear and cause an abscess. This can then cause a fistula to develop.
• A fistula - This is when the inflammation from your bowel spreads and causes an abnormal connection between your bowel and the surrounding tissues. A fistula can develop between two parts of your bowel, or between your bowel and other parts of your body such as your bladder, vagina or skin.
• Malnutrition and anaemia - Damage to your bowel can affect how well your body is able to absorb vitamins and minerals from your food.
• Osteoporosis – weakening of the bones caused by the intestines not absorbing nutrients and the use of steroid medication to treat Crohn's disease.

This blog post is just about what I call the "Crohn's basics". There is so much other things I could write about but that would make this post extremely long and probably nobody would be able to finish reading it.  

That is it for today's post, I hope you have all had a good World IBD day. Until my next post remember to....

Keep Strong, Keep Fighting

 xxxx

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