How does ulcerative colitis start? What are the most effective treatments? An expert in the field answers your most common questions about ulcerative colitis symptoms and other types of inflammatory bowel disease…
You're racing to the restroom more than 10 times a day with bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramping.
Was it something you ate? Or a stomach flu?
But then your symptoms disappear, so you let it go. You feel fine — until they come back with a vengeance.
"If symptoms come and go, it could be ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation of the large intestine (colon) and rectum," says David Jacob Kaufman, D.O., an internist and gastroenterologist affiliated with Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach and Irvine, Calif.
"Unfortunately, many women ignore [ulcerative colitis] symptoms or attribute them to something else, such as food poisoning, stomach flu or even a gluten allergy," he says.
Even doctors can be thrown off by symptoms of ulcerative colitis. The disease has been misdiagnosed as Crohn's disease, celiac disease and appendicitis.
And because ulcerative colitis is a systemic disease, symptoms – such as joint pain, skin rashes or blurry vision – can crop up elsewhere in the body and make you feel like you have arthritis, an allergic skin reaction or like you need new reading glasses, Kaufman says.
Luckily, "doctors have an arsenal of advanced medications at their disposal, ranging from anti-inflammatory drugs and corticosteroids to new biologic drugs," he says.
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