New blog location

So my new blog is (basically) finished and it's live.

I won't be updating on this blog again so please visit me at my new blog!

I decided to name my new blog Listening to my gut as I'm on this journey to try and understand the disease and to read the signals my body is giving so that I can live the healthiest life possible!

See you on the other side! :)

What to do when your Crohn's is in Remission

Awesome post from Bright Side of Crohn's blog with some good points on how to keep your Crohn's at bay and what to do to make the most of the renewed health & energy! Definately something I've been thinking about lately and trying to implement when I am in remission.

I feel like the time periods that I'm in remission is getting longer - between the shorter more infrequent "flares" or start of a flare.

Must be a good sign! :)

Moods and Crohn's flares

My Crohn's disease has decided to poke its head out after a long struggle from my side to keep it at bay. I shouldn't complain really.

This time round I haven't landed up in hospital and I also don't have major pain which both normally happened whenever I had a huge flare.

My doctor put me on Entocort instead of the stronger Prednisone. I'm very glad about this seeing as I usually experience intense side effects when I'm on Prednisone.

The side effects I'm experiencing most are headaches, tender body, slight night fever, constant feeling of thirst and dry mouth, mood swings and depression.

Today I'm feeling particularly down in the dumps even though I know logically that I shouldn't feel that way. It makes being productive at work very challenging! Wish me luck - that I don't bite somebody's head off today!

Picture source

Update

So I've been very bad at blogging lately. ..
My aim was to have my new blog ready and just announce it here, and continue blogging on the new domain but that couldn't happen.
Largely due to the fact that somebody hacked (!) into my newly created site and caused some weird error so that I couldn't log into my admin panel. Can you believe it!
I still don't get of what use that is to a hacker.
So the end result is I have to rebuild my site....all from scratch.

Health wise I've been doing quite well until a few weeks ago. Had some major stress levels in my life and since then I've been trying very hard not to stress and be pro-active to keep myself as healthy as possible. In between all of it I even changed jobs! Not necessarily the best timing but o well...

To keep my body strong I've stocked up on some goodies like nutritional milkshakes, lots of fruit, vitamin supplements (like vit c, iron, vit B's) and making use of yoga and massages for relaxing!

I just want to get through this as healthy as possible...
Crohn's flare, stay away!

Crohn's flare and coping tools

So I've been trying to find mini projects to keep my mind off the Crohn's flare and its struggles...
Sometimes it's tough to stay positive when you feel low on energy most of the time and generally not feeling that great. Granted it could have been worse, so I really want to stay as positive and relaxed as possible.

So I decided to buy a domain, give my blog a make over and do what I can to motivate myself to blog more. I've noticed that I struggle to blog about the emotional and mental challenges I face when I get sick or struggle with something Crohn's related. Which is kind of stupid, especially since I feel I should share these as it will help both me (being bit therapeutic) and hopefully help others that go through similar stuff! So I'm trying my best to just sit down and write and not necessarily plan each blog post to the tee.

Hopefully that will get me going!

I'll give more details about my new blog as I get closer to launching it! :)
Stay tuned!

10 Tips on Belching, Bloating and flatulence

Found these useful tips on things you can do or stop doing that might be causing some discomfort or aggrevate symptoms associated with Digestive problems.

Don't think all of them will be applicable to all of us, and is in no way a complete list but a good 'checklist' to go through and see whether a small change can make a big impact in symptoms or pain!

Irritable bowel disease and arthritis now linked

For those of you who don't know or haven't experienced arthritis type symptoms, sometimes these symptoms can be an indication of underlying bowel inflammation that is getting worse.

Other times the link is still between these two diseases but isn't necessarily an indication of what state the bowel inflammation is in.

Found this nice article that gives examples and explanation about the link between arthritis and irritable bowel disease like Crohn's disease.

Personally I always suffer with bad arthritis-like symptoms whenever I go through a stretch of Prednisone or other variance of cortisone. I have found that these symptoms can last for months after I've stopped the cortisone treatment.

Something that helps is definitely yoga, even if it's very painful the first few sessions.

photo credit: lululemon atheletica