Indian researchers have tested Manuka Honey as a potential treatment for Ulcerative Colitis. Using rats they found that manuka honey provided protection against colonic damage, and by reducing the oxidant load at the inflammatory site Manuka honey improved Ulcerative Colitis symptoms.
They also found that Manuka Honey when combined with sulpasalazine drugs had an additive effect, with even better results when the two were used together.

Manuka honey is also well known as a cure for ulcers which can also only be of benefit in Ulcerative Colitis.

Other research shows that active manuka honey seems to coat the digestive tract when taken before a meal which can help to protect the lining from irritations caused by food.

Whilst I don’t think that Manuka honey is a cure for Ulcerative Colitis, it is a beneficial substance to add to your diet which may help your symptoms. Try taking 1 teaspoon of high strength manuka honey about 20 minutes before you eat, and see how you get on, you may even find you need less medication as it seems to work to improve the effects of sulfasalazine drugs.
But one caution, don’t take too much as honey is mostly sugar and too much sugar is not good news for colitis. Other than that Manuka honey is a very safe product with no known side effects.

Japanese researchers have identified a particular bacteria called Fusobacterium varium as an Ulcerative Colitis Cause. Fusobacterium varium was isolated from the inflamed mucosa of Ulcerative Colitis patients and found to induce Ulcerative Colitis symptoms in mice. They found that the main toxin produced by this bacteria was butyric acid.

Interestingly a study  has been done by Dr Toshifumi Ohukusa to test an anti-biotic mixture known to be effective against Fusobacterium varium as a treatment for Ulcerative Colitis. Patients were treated for 2 weeks with anti-biotic’s or placebo, the response rate for the anti-biotics was twice that of the placebo. In fact of the steroid dependent patients in the study 34% of them managed to be steroid free after 12 months.

These seem like positive results for this anti-biotic treatment, and in fact the researchers suggest that this treatment be used alongside current medication in cases of severe ulcerative colitis where surgery is being considered.

So if your doctor is suggesting surgery for your Ulcerative Colitis, its definitely got to be worth asking if you can try this first, you might just get to keep your colon.

Scientists do not as yet fully understand what causes Ulcerative Colitis, but there are several different risk factors from which we can build up a picture of possible causes.

Family History – Apparently up to 20% of people with Ulcerative Colitis will have a family member who also has the disease. This could be due to genetic factors, where by there is an ulcerative colitis gene which is activated in some family members, or perhaps caused by environmental factors, such as bad diet and lifestyle within a family which leads to ulcerative colitis manifesting. There is also much higher likely hood of developing UC if you are of Northern European Descent. Colitis is also especially prevalent amongst Ashkenazi Jews

Geography – Incidence of Colitis is greatest the further you get away from the equator, which suggests a link between sunlight exposure and colitis, Sunlight produces Vitamin D which a lack of has been linked to Autoimmune conditions like Ulcerative Colitis. It is also much more prevalent in Europe and North America than in other parts of the world, which would fit with a link to sunlight exposure, as in these developed countries we tend to spend more time indoors, as well as there being not much sunshine in winter in many places in these countries.

Autoimmunity – Ulcerative Colitis is commonly thought to be an autoimmune condition, where the body’s immune system is reacting against itself. In the case of Colitis the immune system reacts in the wrong way to bacteria in the digestive tract, and that immune response leads to inflammation of the colon and ulceration. Autoimmunity has been suggested to be triggered by a ‘leaky gut’ whereby food proteins cross the gut barrier intact causing the immune system to attack them. If this is proven to be the case a leaky gut could turn out to be the root cause of colitis, and may well be curable.

Environmental Factors – Ulcerative Colitis is statistically a disease of non smokers. It is more common in non-smokers and ex-smokers, in fact nicotine patches have been tested with some success as a treatment for Colitis. Working & Living environment has also been suggested to play a role in development of Ulcerative Colitis – people living in cities and those who work in office environments seem to have a greater incidence of the disease than people who live in the country and or work outside. This is another indication that lack of sunlight exposure may play a role. Dirt may also play a role and there are suggestions that Colitis could be caused by living in to clean an environment so the immune system doesn’t have enough to do, so practices on itself, this is suggested by the apparent success of Helminthe worm therapy, whereby parasitic worms have been used to bring about remission in UC and other autoimmune conditions.

Bacterial Infection or Virus – It is possible that a viral or bacterial infection could be responsible for triggering an immune response, which continues after the infection has passed, possibly due to a genetic predisposition whereby the gene is triggered by the infection but fails to switch off after it has passed. Or perhaps a particularly stubborn pathogen that is never quite destroyed by the immune system.

Bad Diet – It is quite possible that a diet excessively high in sugar, alcohol and grain based carbohydrates, can lead to a disbiosis of intestinal bacteria, meaning an imbalance between good friendly bacteria and bad disease causing bacteria. This may initially show itself as foul smelling wind and general bloating and discomfort, ultimately leading to Colitis if things get really out of control. A bad diet high in sugars & carbs – typical in most western countries – is also likely to set the stage for a leaky gut which is another possible cause of colitis.

Conculsion -

Whilst there is still no clear proven cause of Ulcerative Colitis, we can take an educated guess from the information avaliable.
Personally I think that my Colitis was caused by several factors. For several years before my first flare up I used to eat a lot of junk food and sweets as well as being a big beer drinker, I think this set the stage for colitis to develop, as during this time I did suffer from some rectal bleeding – only small which my doctor told me was from piles, I was also often constipated and had foul flatulence !
Then I went on Holiday and had food poisoning which I recovered from – but a month after that my Ulcerative Colitis developed and I ended up in hospital with a massive first flare up.
Now I have colitis, if find that many things affect it but – most notably – diet, and the amount of sunshine I get. Interestingly nobody else in my family has colitis in any way so there does not appear to be a genetic link in my case.

I don’t know about you but I often find that my colitis symptoms are almost non existent in summer but get slightly worse in winter time – I get achy, tired, and some stomach ache. I also have a tendency to feel a bit miserable.

I’ve also noticed that more people visit my blog in the winter, which makes me think that something must be going on. Now I think it’s probably because there’s not much sunshine around in winter and this is connected with Vitamin D production in the body, because as we are exposed to sunshine our  bodies synthesize Vitamin D naturally from the UVB light rays.

Also there may be that there are some other factors in sunlight some other light frequencies that do us good. A lot of people suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) syndrome in winter which is associated with the lack of light, and is often treated with light therapy. There is also statistical evidence showing that autoimmune disease occurs less the closer you get to the equator where there is more and stronger year round sunshine. Seeing as Ulcerative Colitis is thought to be an autoimmune condition, It makes sense that a lack of sunshine may make things worse. Possibly even leading to a flare up.

So anyway all I really want to know what we can do to help ourselves in the winter time to feel better ! I seems that we may be low on vitamin D in the winter, so I guess topping this up should help.

One way of increasing Vitamin D in the body is to supplement with vitamin D3 but there are complications with taking vitamin D3 in that it’s a fat-soluble vitamin and there is a possibility of toxicity arising if you take too much – now you can protect against this by having a blood test which will analyze your levels of vitamin D3 and then you can work out what you need and keep retesting so that you then know that you have safe levels, but this seems a bit complicated and time consuming, as well as probably being expensive.

Another alternative in Winter time is to go to tanning salon. You need to go to one which has sun beds that emit UVB rays, the UVB rays will stimulate Vitamin D production. This seems like a logical course of action if you live somewhere, where in the winter there is not much sunlight.

But the best way to top up on vitamin D is to get outdoors in the sunshine, in the summer you probably only need about half an hour of sunlight a day to produce the vit D you need, but in winter if you live somewhere where the days get shorter & colder the light is not so intense, so you need to spend more like an hour outside in the sun.

If you have colitis and you’ve had a flare up (or even if you haven’t!)you may find that you are left having lost a lot of weight, you maybe feeling weak and you may not think that exercise is a particularly good thing – well exercise can be a good thing if you exercise in the right way.

The wrong way to exercise with Colitis and any inflammatory condition is to go out and do lots of very long duration cardiovascular exercise – because in fact that has been shown to actually increase inflammation levels in the body and that’s not what you want, because inflammation is the root cause of colitis.

So what you need to do is to find yourself an exercise program that can help you to reduce your information levels. Now the best way to do this is actually to take up strength training, strength training will help you build lean muscle mass and gain weight in a healthy way, it also will tone you up whatever your size. Strength training has been shown to have an anti-inflammatory effect on the body – initially it slightly increases inflammation – immediately post exercise. But the longer term effect of it is to increase your ability to deal with insulin well as this is connected with inflammation, and also it lowers certain markers of inflammation in the body.

Ideally as well is doing some strength training you want to do some of what is called interval training which is where you do very short bursts of cardiovascular exercise with rest periods in between. Interval training is done by performing a short burst of activity followed by short rest period. Sounds hard but you could still do this even if you’re not very fit.
Start off by walking briskly for 60 seconds and then walking slowly for 30 and again walking briskly for 60 etc.. for about 10 minutes initially. If you’re feeling a bit stronger and are in a healthy state you could do running  for 60 seconds walk for 30 seconds et cetera you could do it riding on a bicycle or in the pool swimming. To begin with really just about 10 min a week is enough – more if you feel up to it, but no more than 30 minutes once a week.

If you combine these two things you will soon find that you start to not only look a lot better and feel a lot better but your Ulcerative Colitis symptoms will also be helped by these types of exercises – so why don’t you give it a try and see how you get on with two sessions of strength training at a good gym focusing on the whole body evenly twice a week for about half an hour, and one session of high intensity interval training for 10 to 30 mins a week.

Its also well worth trying to get half an hour to an hour of easy gentle exercise every day, this could be a walk at lunchtime or something like a gentle swim or bike ride. But do remember start gently and build up slowly, in fact you’ll be amazed how quickly you see results, and how good you feel.

UEA researchers announced this news recently at the Digestive Disease Week conference held in New Orleans. Their findings revealed that people with a diet rich in oleic acid are far less likely to develop ulcerative colitis. Oleic acid is a monounsaturated fatty acid found in abundance in olive oil. It is also a component of peanut oil, grapeseed oil and butter.

The research team, led by Dr. Andrew Hart of UEA’s School of Medicine, studied over 25,000 people between the ages of 40 and 65 who lived in Norfolk, in the UK. The research participants were part of the EPIC (European Prospective Investigation into Diet and Cancer) study between 1993 and 1997. None of these EPIC participants were diagnosed with ulcerative colitis at the beginning of the study. They all kept detailed food diaries which were later studied by nutritionists who analyzed exactly what nutrients and fatty acids the study participants were consuming.

By 2004, 22 of the research subjects had developed ulcerative colitis. When the researchers compared the diets of these people to those who did not develop the disease, they found the study participants with the highest intake of oleic acid had a 90 per cent lower risk of developing ulcerative colitis.

“Oleic acid seems to help prevent the development of ulcerative colitis by blocking chemicals in the bowel that aggravate the inflammation found in this illness,” Dr. Hart said in a statement to the media.“We estimate that around half of the cases of ulcerative colitis could be prevented if larger amounts of oleic acid were consumed. Two-to-three tablespoons of olive oil per day would have a protective effect.”

Additional studies are underway in several countries to further document the potential of oleic acid to prevent colitis, the UEA researchers stated. In addition, they noted that oleic acid should also be assessed in the future as a possible treatment for those already suffering from the disease.

If you find your Ulcerative Colitis affects your state of mind and happiness then check out this cool video I found about happiness by Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, where he challenges the idea that well be miserable if we dont get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.

I just found this by accident while going online to buy some VSL-3, it’s a Prebiotic called Bimuno

which I hadn’t heard of before. Prebiotics are a way of increasing good bacteria in the gut, rather than introducing actual live probiotic cultures in to the diet, by feeding and energising the existing ‘good’ bacteria already present in the gastro-intestinal tract, they grow and colonize at a much faster rate than the ‘bad’ bacteria. This allows the ‘bad’ bacteria to be flushed from the digestive system for a much healthier bacterial balance. There are foods in our diet which have this effect like bananas and asparagus. Apparently this prebiotic product called Bimuno is better than common prebiotic foods because it was designed to be the preferred food of your good immune boosting bifidobacteria. It was developed at the University of Reading by experts in prebiotics.

A paper was Published in June 2008 by the Nihon University School of Medicine, Tokyo outlining the benefits of maintaining healthy levels of specific good gut bacteria. In a healthy gut, Bifidobactrium is the most predominant good gut bacteria and known for its immune regulating properties. Bifidobacterium is fuelled by prebiotics found in many fruit, vegetables and the prebiotic Bimuno which selectively targets Bifidobacterium.

The study aimed to determine the anti-inflammatory activity of Bifidobacteria against the painful inflammatory symptoms experienced by Ulcerative Colitis sufferers. The results showed Bifidobacterium enhanced the production of Interleukin-10, an essential immunoregulator in the intestinal tract, and inhibited secretion of Interleukin-8, an inflammatory component of the immune response. This suggests that Bifidobacterium specifically produces anti-inflammatory effects against Ulcerative Colitis, relieving suffers of some of the awful pain and suffering experienced from this condition.

In another study Research at the University School of Medicine in Tokai has discovered that Bifidobacteria, the most predominant good gut bacteria found in a healthy digestive system can potentially suppress the harmful bacteria responsible for IBD. Bacteroides, a commensal gut bacteria is thought to be responsible for IBD development.

The study examined the effect of healthy growth of Bifidobacteria against the levels of Bacteroides in mice and discovered Bifidobacteria highly inhibited the growth of the pathogenic bacteria. It also significantly suppressed systemic antibody responses and increased the number of Peyers Patches, the guts own immune protection. The results suggest Bifidobacteria, enhanced by prebiotics, found naturally in vegetables and the prebiotic Bimuno, protected the gut epithelial layer from Bacteroid invasion, suppressing an anti-body response potentially responsible for the inflammatory symptoms of IBD.

It looks like an interesting product which might be helpful for us Colitis sufferers, interestingly the clinically proven health benefits of Bimuno include:

• increase in bifidobacteria (good bacteria) levels
• reduction in harmful bacteria levels
• provision of an important immune regulation function by energising immunity boosting bacteria

In addition, prebiotics have been shown to:

• increase mineral absorption (for example calcium)
• help prevent occasional diarrhoea
• help provide relief of occassional constipation, particularly in the elderly
• increase bioavailability of minerals (for example calcium and magnesium)

The people who make this stuff are giving away a free trial pack on their website which is http://www.bimuno.com so I’ve sent off for a free pack to try it out. It seems like it may be a good addition to my Ulcerative Colitis Diet. I’ll post again on how I find it.

A leaky gut is something that is widely associated with Ulcerative Colitis and many other autoimmune diseases, and there are a number of substances that it may be worth avoiding. These substances are known to increase intestinal permeability and they are –

• Alcohol, adversely affects tight junction characteristics. Tight Junctions are the major barrier within the pathway between intestinal epithelial cells, which line the digestion tract. Disruption of Tight Junctions leads to intestinal hyper-permeability.
• NSAIDS like Aspirin and Ibuprofen, reduce tight junction stability.
• Quillaja is a food additive which is added to fizzy drinks to make them foam. It is a very powerful saponin adjuvant. Saponins degrade the intestinal lining.

So Alcohol is not good news for a leaky gut which will be a disappointing discovery for many of us, but if you give up drinking you probably won’t need the NSAIDS the next morning!

A leaky gut is something that is widely associated with Ulcerative Colitis and many other Autoimmune diseases, and there are a number of foods that it may be worth avoiding in your diet when your symptoms are active. These foods are known to increase intestinal permeability and they are –

• Wheat – The protein Gliadin in Wheat up-regulates a protein called zonulin which adversely affects tight junctions in the gut. Tight Junctions are the major barrier within the pathway between intestinal epithelial cells, that line the digestion tract. Disruption of Tight Junctions leads to intestinal hyper-permeability.

• Hot Peppers, cayenne paprika green peppers, all contain Saponins and Capsaicin which increase gut permeability.

• Beans – Soy, Lentils, Peas, Beans, Peanuts and all legumes, these also contain high levels of Saponins and some legume saponins up-regulate the immune response at the dendritic cell level in the gut thereby promoting autoimmunity.

• Potatoes have two glycoalkyloids which degrade the gut lining and increase leakage of lipopolysachharide from the gut into the circulatory system.

• Green ,unripe tomatoes and cherry tomatoes contain the glycoalkyloid alpha tomatine which increases intestinal permeability.

• Oats contain a saponin called avenacin which increase gut permability.

• All cereal grains contain lectins which adversely affect tight junctions in the gut.

• Alfalfa sprouts contain very high concentrations of saponins and dramatically alter intestinal physiology.

• Quinoa is also very high in saponins leading to a leaky gut.

• Amaranth again is high in spaonins.

• Dairy Products contain hormones and other substance which may increase intestinal permeability, also if you are allerginc to the milk protein casein this increase gut permeability.

It’s quite a list and there are some foods on it that are publicised as being very healthy, but if you’ve got Ulcerative Colitis and you are having a flare up then avoiding these foods  in your diet may just help you get better faster. In fact they are probably worth avoiding completely for a period of time during which you could concentrate on healing your leaky gut and your Colitis.