Hi everyone, I'm new to this site. I decided to join up because I'm afraid I might have IBD, more specifically UC. I have a number of questions and I would greatly appreciate any feedback. I guess before I jump into the questions I'll give you a little background and how this all started and the symptoms I am experiencing.
So my gut issues all started about 2 months ago when I got a bout of diarrhea that last about 2 days and then went away. I thought nothing of it since it was a very short bout. About a month later a got another bout of diarrhea. This time I thought maybe I'd help my situation out by taking some imodium. Only after I did I ended up being constipated for about 5 days. After the second day I started pumping myself full of nothing but fiber and bran which didn't help the situation, but eventually I started pooping a bit, but still not like my regular self so after about two weeks of this mild constipation I decided to visit the dr so brushed me off as just being constipated and told me to take some Metamucil. Well, I insisted on at least a blood test, which she provided but nothing useful. Just WBC, hemoglobin, potassium etc which all came back normal.
Anyways after this is when my symptoms started getting worse as I continued to eat a lot of fiber. I started noticing a very small amount of mucus in my stool. Usually just one tiny little strand that you wouldn't notice unless you looked carefully. I also started getting stomach pains/cramps from time to time and constant bloating. When I would get bowel movement I'd always get nausea before hand that went away after passing a bowel.
Finally I decided to do a little research and I stopped eating the high fiber foods, and started taking some metamucile and fish oil suppliments after reading up about IBD. The mucus dissapeared at this point, but I didn't see much change in the rest of the symptoms until about 10 days ago when I cut out all gluten and foods with insoluble fiber and started juicing twice a day (spinach, carrots, apples, blueberrys, and bananas mix) and eating chickpeas and other low fat foods the other times. After a couple of days I saw some big results in terms of bloating and nausea, but the pain was still present so after doing more research I found smoking might help. So I started smoking half a cig a day. Fast forward 7 days my constipation is gone, bloating and pain is 95% gone, and nausea is all but gone as well. Now I'm not sure if my results are from the diet or from the cig, or a combination of the two. Infact the last 3 days I haven't had any symptoms at all except for a bit of nausea which came before passing 3 normal bowels the other day. Until today when I switched the chickpeas to beans and I got a bit of pain and bloating again, but that went away after 3 drags of a cig (weird I know).
Anyways my questions are:
1) I don't really have much mucus, would I have more mucus if this was UC?
2) I don't have any blood, would there be blood in my stool if this was UC?
3) Do my symptoms sound like UC?
I know you can't diagnose me, but until I get in to see a GI I would really appreciate any feedback what so ever since this thing is driving me nuts. I'm working on getting a GI appointment, but until then I'd really like to discuss this with others who are living with this disease and already have accrued a lot of information on it.
So my gut issues all started about 2 months ago when I got a bout of diarrhea that last about 2 days and then went away. I thought nothing of it since it was a very short bout. About a month later a got another bout of diarrhea. This time I thought maybe I'd help my situation out by taking some imodium. Only after I did I ended up being constipated for about 5 days. After the second day I started pumping myself full of nothing but fiber and bran which didn't help the situation, but eventually I started pooping a bit, but still not like my regular self so after about two weeks of this mild constipation I decided to visit the dr so brushed me off as just being constipated and told me to take some Metamucil. Well, I insisted on at least a blood test, which she provided but nothing useful. Just WBC, hemoglobin, potassium etc which all came back normal.
Anyways after this is when my symptoms started getting worse as I continued to eat a lot of fiber. I started noticing a very small amount of mucus in my stool. Usually just one tiny little strand that you wouldn't notice unless you looked carefully. I also started getting stomach pains/cramps from time to time and constant bloating. When I would get bowel movement I'd always get nausea before hand that went away after passing a bowel.
Finally I decided to do a little research and I stopped eating the high fiber foods, and started taking some metamucile and fish oil suppliments after reading up about IBD. The mucus dissapeared at this point, but I didn't see much change in the rest of the symptoms until about 10 days ago when I cut out all gluten and foods with insoluble fiber and started juicing twice a day (spinach, carrots, apples, blueberrys, and bananas mix) and eating chickpeas and other low fat foods the other times. After a couple of days I saw some big results in terms of bloating and nausea, but the pain was still present so after doing more research I found smoking might help. So I started smoking half a cig a day. Fast forward 7 days my constipation is gone, bloating and pain is 95% gone, and nausea is all but gone as well. Now I'm not sure if my results are from the diet or from the cig, or a combination of the two. Infact the last 3 days I haven't had any symptoms at all except for a bit of nausea which came before passing 3 normal bowels the other day. Until today when I switched the chickpeas to beans and I got a bit of pain and bloating again, but that went away after 3 drags of a cig (weird I know).
Anyways my questions are:
1) I don't really have much mucus, would I have more mucus if this was UC?
2) I don't have any blood, would there be blood in my stool if this was UC?
3) Do my symptoms sound like UC?
I know you can't diagnose me, but until I get in to see a GI I would really appreciate any feedback what so ever since this thing is driving me nuts. I'm working on getting a GI appointment, but until then I'd really like to discuss this with others who are living with this disease and already have accrued a lot of information on it.