Thursday 29 August 2013

Where I'm at...

If I was writing a report about my current UC condition I'd say, "it's good, but it could be better". This is because I'm still taking mesalazine tablets and my thought is that if I have to help my body with man-made drugs then it's not working properly. Personally I can't call it remission until I am drug free, but that's just me!

There are plenty of UCers who are happy to get to a place where they have a normal life on maintenance drugs and I can't argue with that. The phrases, 'each to their own' and 'horses for courses' was invented for this disease I think.

At the beginning of the year I started to improve from my longest and most recent flare-up. I slowly decreased the mesalazine tablets as I have always done until it got to May, when I was down to 1 tablet per day. However, unlike previous flare-ups where I was able to stop the tablets, this time mild symptoms began to increase as I continued on 1 tablet per day.

Wisely, before things deteriorated, I immediately increased the dosage to 6 tablets a day which meant I only experienced a mild flare-up that lasted until about 5 weeks ago. However, if I look back at my Colitis diary, I can see how I lapsed back into eating the wrong things. For someone with a disease of the large colon I am annoyed I allowed myself to do this!

I'm not saying my diet was terrible, I've learnt that I have to be careful with my staple diet, I can't allow man-made/processed foods to become part of my routine. However, I had started eating them occasionally. That, along with some BBQs and the odd snack, meant that I was creating work for my system.

So where am I at today? Well, I've started to decrease the mesalazine tablets again. I'm about to go to 4 per day in September (I decrease the dosage by 1 tablet per month). This time however, I'm watching my diet very carefully (my current regime can be found here). I've learnt that not only do I have to change my diet until my symptoms improve, I now have to stick with it.

I'm also hoping to help my entire digestive system by adding new healthy areas to my regime, for instance, I've recently begun juicing - and that's a topic for a new blog post!

No comments:

Post a Comment