Infection - then autoimmune disease
Moderators: Rosie, Stanz, Jean, CAMary, moremuscle, JFR, Dee, xet, Peggy, Matthew, Gabes-Apg, grannyh, Gloria, Mars, starfire, Polly, Joefnh
LOL - what a great story Gabes - thanks for sharing .........
My 10 year old grand daughter has loved piglets since she was born. I better not tell her about PNG, or she'll want to move there .
Love,
Kari
My 10 year old grand daughter has loved piglets since she was born. I better not tell her about PNG, or she'll want to move there .
Love,
Kari
"My mouth waters whenever I pass a bakery shop and sniff the aroma of fresh bread, but I am also grateful simply to be alive and sniffing." Dr. Bernstein
- Gabes-Apg
- Emperor Penguin
- Posts: 8332
- Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2009 3:12 pm
- Location: Hunter Valley NSW Australia
MC versus Cerebal Malaria - I think i prefer the MC.Hmmmmm. I'd have to think about that for a while. LOL. I had forgotten that the antibiotics required for traveling to PNG were the likely cause of your MC.
and in the scheme of things, given my genetics and lifestyle to that point in life, I am pretty sure the MC was going to happen, it was just a case of when. If it wasnt the doxycycline, there would have been something else that would trigger the MC.
the chance to see a country like PNG, stand next to an active volcano, experience culture in a pure natural way where people live very happily (and healthy) without electricity, internet, supermarkets, GMO foods, etc
I wouldnt change a thing (except maybe for shaking hands when drunk )
Gabes Ryan
"Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned"
Dalai Lama
"Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned"
Dalai Lama
I see your point — it's like a journey back in time.
Tex
Gabes wrote:I wouldnt change a thing (except maybe for shaking hands when drunk )
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
Hi Gabes,
I'll have to ask Maria about that movie - if I remember correctly, it came out before she was born, but they watch a lot of movies at their house as my DIL is a HUGE movie buff.
Maria had her first "piglet experience" when she was newborn - her cousin had placed a little stuffed piglet in her bassinet :). It goes on and on from there...... Her "good luck charm" is a little plastic piglet figurine that's been with her since a baby - can't tell you how many dramas have been played out over the years, when she has "accidentally" misplaced it :).
PNG sounds like a fascinating country - hard to believe places like that still exist.
Love,
Kari
I'll have to ask Maria about that movie - if I remember correctly, it came out before she was born, but they watch a lot of movies at their house as my DIL is a HUGE movie buff.
Maria had her first "piglet experience" when she was newborn - her cousin had placed a little stuffed piglet in her bassinet :). It goes on and on from there...... Her "good luck charm" is a little plastic piglet figurine that's been with her since a baby - can't tell you how many dramas have been played out over the years, when she has "accidentally" misplaced it :).
PNG sounds like a fascinating country - hard to believe places like that still exist.
Love,
Kari
"My mouth waters whenever I pass a bakery shop and sniff the aroma of fresh bread, but I am also grateful simply to be alive and sniffing." Dr. Bernstein
Oh boy! I so needed that! I have been having a particularly hard time with my MC, and not wanting to post about it because it is more of the same, but reading here and I am so glad I did!
I was falling of my chair laughing, spraying my keyboard and screen, probably scaring my neighbors, who already think I am slightly nuts and more than slightly eccentric.
That was the funniest story I have heard/ read in a very long time.
The next time someone tells me how whacky I am I will say I HAVE never shaken hands with anyone and thus married him while drunk, and have not made a contract not to breast feed piglets either, therefore and quite sane!
That is now me new yardstick for sanity!
I was falling of my chair laughing, spraying my keyboard and screen, probably scaring my neighbors, who already think I am slightly nuts and more than slightly eccentric.
That was the funniest story I have heard/ read in a very long time.
The next time someone tells me how whacky I am I will say I HAVE never shaken hands with anyone and thus married him while drunk, and have not made a contract not to breast feed piglets either, therefore and quite sane!
That is now me new yardstick for sanity!
Mine is triggered by campylobacter.
It's indeed My immune system mistaking that the pathogen is still there.
After My infection.. I was 2 weeks normal. Then MC came. It had notthing To do with gut flora for Me! If gut flora is damaged.. Then i would had diarrea right after the infection Too.
My diarrea cleared after the infection for 2 weeks! All normal. Then immunity was building mistaken signals and Mc came and It gets gradually worse. Ibd has multiple causes! One of them is infection trigger - confused immune system. I am almost 100% Sure that u dont have intolerances. I can only do a soft diet for My inflamed gut. Less fat and Sugar. I am 100% Sure My immune system is mistaken things.Just like he is doing inflammation To My bladder Too. I did try every diet possible for 3 months. Doesnt make a diffrence. Its Just sending immune cells that attacks My own tissue.
It's indeed My immune system mistaking that the pathogen is still there.
After My infection.. I was 2 weeks normal. Then MC came. It had notthing To do with gut flora for Me! If gut flora is damaged.. Then i would had diarrea right after the infection Too.
My diarrea cleared after the infection for 2 weeks! All normal. Then immunity was building mistaken signals and Mc came and It gets gradually worse. Ibd has multiple causes! One of them is infection trigger - confused immune system. I am almost 100% Sure that u dont have intolerances. I can only do a soft diet for My inflamed gut. Less fat and Sugar. I am 100% Sure My immune system is mistaken things.Just like he is doing inflammation To My bladder Too. I did try every diet possible for 3 months. Doesnt make a diffrence. Its Just sending immune cells that attacks My own tissue.
Tex.. The fact why norrovirus doesnt trigger IBD or other viral virusses.. Is bcoz viral virus is too weak. It isnt a micro organisme. If a hard infection like campylo or salmonella comes.. The immune system HAS a very hard Time To clear It. It can take weeks To fight It off. Also.. Viral doesnt make u shi* Blood. Campylo does! It's SO hard the immune system goes into overdrive. Also.. When People like Me take antibiotics.
The immune system starts To fight a bacteria that is getting wiped by the antibiotics! It gets confused.. It keeps fighting but the antibiotics did erase It a long Time ago. It cant Down regulate immune cells. We disrupted the normal immune proces. Celiac or gluten intolerances are diffent ibd causes. They can Be managed by diet exclusion. Mistaken immunity... I dont think any diet can help mu stop the mistaken signals
The immune system starts To fight a bacteria that is getting wiped by the antibiotics! It gets confused.. It keeps fighting but the antibiotics did erase It a long Time ago. It cant Down regulate immune cells. We disrupted the normal immune proces. Celiac or gluten intolerances are diffent ibd causes. They can Be managed by diet exclusion. Mistaken immunity... I dont think any diet can help mu stop the mistaken signals
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- Rockhopper Penguin
- Posts: 1150
- Joined: Wed May 18, 2011 5:10 am
- Location: Palm Beach Gardens, Fl
Oh, Gabes. I love your PNG marriage contract and negotiating a no-baby-pig-nursing clause. Baby pigs are adorable but, good grief, just thinking about the reality is painful.
My drinking days are far behind me, thank goodness.
Since we humans began eating processed food, heavily modified food and GMO food, as well as living with various pollutants, we have become fatter and sicker. I think that we sufferers of celiac, MC and other AI disorders are the canaries in the mine of this generation.
Sheila W
My drinking days are far behind me, thank goodness.
Since we humans began eating processed food, heavily modified food and GMO food, as well as living with various pollutants, we have become fatter and sicker. I think that we sufferers of celiac, MC and other AI disorders are the canaries in the mine of this generation.
Sheila W
To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.
A person who never made a mistake never tried something new. Einstein
A person who never made a mistake never tried something new. Einstein
Hi Kenvh,
MC has many known causes, and it's certainly possible that your MC may have been caused by a campylobacter infection, because campylobacter infections are very common, infecting over a million people each year. However, it's not true that the immune system of most people has a difficult time controlling a campylobacter infection. Most people completely recover within 2–5 days. If your infection lasted for weeks, your immune system may not have been working correctly. The immune system cannot function properly without adequate vitamin D. Maybe your vitamin D level was too low. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with a much higher risk of developing an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), such as MC. And IBDs deplete vitamin D levels, so that the immune system cannot heal the body from the damage done by the inflammation associated with the IBD.
Research shows that when the genes that predispose to MC are triggered, the genes that predispose to gluten sensitivity are almost always triggered at the same time (unless they have been previously triggered). Therefore, while it is certainly possible that you might not be sensitive to gluten, it would be very uncommon for an MC patient to not be sensitive to gluten. And when we are sensitive to gluten, that causes increased intestinal permeability, which opens the door to additional food sensitivities.
Many, many MC patients have done what you did — they tried some diet for a few months, and when it didn't stop their symptoms, they mistakenly concluded that the diet doesn't work. Well sure, obviously that diet didn't work. For one thing, a few months is not enough time to allow the diet to begin healing the gut, and for another thing, we can't use just any diet. We have to use the one specific diet that totally excludes all of our personal food sensitivities, even trace amounts. And if the diet we choose to follow misses 1 or 2 of our main food sensitivities, then no matter how long we follow that diet, we will probably never see remission of our symptoms. It's very difficult to treat MC. If it were easy, anyone could do it, and GI specialists would be able to successfully treat most MC patients.
I made the mistake of doing what you did back when I first attempted to treat my symptoms. This was almost 15 years ago, so I didn't have any idea how to treat the disease. I started by cutting gluten out of my diet. Before I started avoiding gluten, nothing made any sense. I seemed to react at random, to anything and everything. But after I had been totally avoiding gluten for a few months, then I could begin to see patterns in the food and reaction journal that I kept, as I experimented with avoiding other foods. But except for gluten (which I continued to totally avoid), I would avoid certain other foods for a few weeks, or a few months, and when I continued to have symptoms, I would make the mistake of adding those foods back into my diet.
After doing this for a year and a half, it dawned on me that if I intended to control my symptoms, I would have to totally avoid every food that had caused me to have a reaction over that year and a half. So I cut out everything that I had found to be suspicious, and within 2 weeks, I was in remission. The point is, We Have to Avoid Each and Every Food (and all of their derivatives) That Causes Us to Produce Antibodies. Avoiding most of them will not work. And since gluten causes extensive damage to the gut that usually requires a long healing period, we have to avoid gluten long enough for the gut to at least begin to heal. That means that most of us will have to follow our diet for 6 months to a year before we see remission. Kids heal much faster, but it takes adults a long time to heal gut damage caused by inflammation.
I realize that treating this disease can be extremely frustrating, and it's tempting to blame our lack of success on something beyond our control. But the truth is, there are very, very few MC patients who cannot find a diet that either allows them to completely control their symptoms, or at least reduce their symptoms to the point where they can lead a happy, productive life. Most of the people who are unable to control their symptoms by diet changes either are unwilling to follow such a restrictive diet, or they have so many food sensitivities that they cannot avoid all of them, or they are taking a medication that causes their MC, and they are unwilling (or unable) to stop taking that drug.
It's not easy to develop our own personal safe diet, but it can certainly be done, and many hundreds of members here have proven that it can be done. Read the success stories in the Member Success Stories forum. You will see that initially, many of us doubt that diet is the problem, until we give it a fair chance to work. It's easy to claim that the diet doesn't work, because if we do even one single thing wrong, it will not work. To make the diet work, we have to do everything right.
And it's not as easy to be dedicated to controlling the disease if we are not extremely sick. I was lucky. I was so sick that I didn't have a choice. I couldn't live that way much longer, so I did what I had to do, and figured out how to control my symptoms by following a very restrictive diet. And the diet continues to work just fine for me. It can work for you too, if you will do it right, and give it a fair chance.
If you haven't checked your vitamin D level lately, I would highly recommend making sure that it is well up in the middle of the so-called "normal" range, because without adequate vitamin D, our immune system cannot operate normally, and it can make mistakes.
Tex
MC has many known causes, and it's certainly possible that your MC may have been caused by a campylobacter infection, because campylobacter infections are very common, infecting over a million people each year. However, it's not true that the immune system of most people has a difficult time controlling a campylobacter infection. Most people completely recover within 2–5 days. If your infection lasted for weeks, your immune system may not have been working correctly. The immune system cannot function properly without adequate vitamin D. Maybe your vitamin D level was too low. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with a much higher risk of developing an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), such as MC. And IBDs deplete vitamin D levels, so that the immune system cannot heal the body from the damage done by the inflammation associated with the IBD.
Research shows that when the genes that predispose to MC are triggered, the genes that predispose to gluten sensitivity are almost always triggered at the same time (unless they have been previously triggered). Therefore, while it is certainly possible that you might not be sensitive to gluten, it would be very uncommon for an MC patient to not be sensitive to gluten. And when we are sensitive to gluten, that causes increased intestinal permeability, which opens the door to additional food sensitivities.
Many, many MC patients have done what you did — they tried some diet for a few months, and when it didn't stop their symptoms, they mistakenly concluded that the diet doesn't work. Well sure, obviously that diet didn't work. For one thing, a few months is not enough time to allow the diet to begin healing the gut, and for another thing, we can't use just any diet. We have to use the one specific diet that totally excludes all of our personal food sensitivities, even trace amounts. And if the diet we choose to follow misses 1 or 2 of our main food sensitivities, then no matter how long we follow that diet, we will probably never see remission of our symptoms. It's very difficult to treat MC. If it were easy, anyone could do it, and GI specialists would be able to successfully treat most MC patients.
I made the mistake of doing what you did back when I first attempted to treat my symptoms. This was almost 15 years ago, so I didn't have any idea how to treat the disease. I started by cutting gluten out of my diet. Before I started avoiding gluten, nothing made any sense. I seemed to react at random, to anything and everything. But after I had been totally avoiding gluten for a few months, then I could begin to see patterns in the food and reaction journal that I kept, as I experimented with avoiding other foods. But except for gluten (which I continued to totally avoid), I would avoid certain other foods for a few weeks, or a few months, and when I continued to have symptoms, I would make the mistake of adding those foods back into my diet.
After doing this for a year and a half, it dawned on me that if I intended to control my symptoms, I would have to totally avoid every food that had caused me to have a reaction over that year and a half. So I cut out everything that I had found to be suspicious, and within 2 weeks, I was in remission. The point is, We Have to Avoid Each and Every Food (and all of their derivatives) That Causes Us to Produce Antibodies. Avoiding most of them will not work. And since gluten causes extensive damage to the gut that usually requires a long healing period, we have to avoid gluten long enough for the gut to at least begin to heal. That means that most of us will have to follow our diet for 6 months to a year before we see remission. Kids heal much faster, but it takes adults a long time to heal gut damage caused by inflammation.
I realize that treating this disease can be extremely frustrating, and it's tempting to blame our lack of success on something beyond our control. But the truth is, there are very, very few MC patients who cannot find a diet that either allows them to completely control their symptoms, or at least reduce their symptoms to the point where they can lead a happy, productive life. Most of the people who are unable to control their symptoms by diet changes either are unwilling to follow such a restrictive diet, or they have so many food sensitivities that they cannot avoid all of them, or they are taking a medication that causes their MC, and they are unwilling (or unable) to stop taking that drug.
It's not easy to develop our own personal safe diet, but it can certainly be done, and many hundreds of members here have proven that it can be done. Read the success stories in the Member Success Stories forum. You will see that initially, many of us doubt that diet is the problem, until we give it a fair chance to work. It's easy to claim that the diet doesn't work, because if we do even one single thing wrong, it will not work. To make the diet work, we have to do everything right.
And it's not as easy to be dedicated to controlling the disease if we are not extremely sick. I was lucky. I was so sick that I didn't have a choice. I couldn't live that way much longer, so I did what I had to do, and figured out how to control my symptoms by following a very restrictive diet. And the diet continues to work just fine for me. It can work for you too, if you will do it right, and give it a fair chance.
If you haven't checked your vitamin D level lately, I would highly recommend making sure that it is well up in the middle of the so-called "normal" range, because without adequate vitamin D, our immune system cannot operate normally, and it can make mistakes.
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
I agree that changing our diet so that it is safe for us takes a lot of work and patience and dedication, but once our gut begins to heal, and we begin to feel better, it becomes easier to follow the diet, and easier to notice foods that cause problems.
Some of us react to certain meats, so we have to find meats that work the best for us. Turkey and lamb and wild game (such as venison, rabbit, goose duck, pheasant, and quail) are usually the safest meats. Meat is important because protein helps to heal the gut.
Good luck, and I hope that you will soon be feeling much better.
You are very welcome,
Tex
Some of us react to certain meats, so we have to find meats that work the best for us. Turkey and lamb and wild game (such as venison, rabbit, goose duck, pheasant, and quail) are usually the safest meats. Meat is important because protein helps to heal the gut.
Good luck, and I hope that you will soon be feeling much better.
You are very welcome,
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.