Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Crohn's disease along with ulcerative colitis is a something that affects those that suffer from it on a daily basis. They aren't really sure what its like to not have it. They say it is kind of like having a constant case of the stomach flu. The pain is random and triggered by food or stress. This is one of the reasons to discover it early before it takes of your life.
These are considered to be incurable chronic diseases and are grouped with inflammatory bowel diseases because they share the same symptoms. The symptoms include frequent diarrhea and abdominal pain which is also accompanied by swelling and sores all along the tissue in the intestinal lining. Crohn's disease is an ugly monster that attacks the digestive tract from the mouth all the way to the rectum. Ulcerative colitis is more in the outmost part of the colon.
Inflammatory bowel disease can be treated immediately if you can learn how to diagnose it early. The first thing you can do is have a sigmoidoscopy where they examine the rectum and left colon with inserting an endoscope, which is a tube with a camera on the end of it, into your rectum and then take pictures of your colon. When you ever have questions about your colon, this is what will be done first before any diagnosis can be made.
The second thing that you can do is a colonoscopy. Your doctor uses the endoscope to look at the rectum, and the entire large intestine all done while you are sedated. These are usually done when inflammatory bowel disease issues such as Crohn's disease or IBS need to be diagnosed. You can choose to have this procedure done just by asking your doctor. This is a good way to ensure the health of your colon.
Once your tests are done, you can get copies of the pictures taken with the endoscope. With Cohn's, they will see some random patches of deep ulcers or some even amount of inflammation in the colon that bleeds on contact, and if this is the case, this would be ulcerative colitis. Inflammatory bowel disease is not a friendly disease, but is more easily controlled when found early on. If there were samples taken, they will look at them under the microscope for inflammatory cells called granulomas. They are able to diagnose Crohn's this way.
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