New Allergies After Crohn's or UC Diagnosis - Share Your Experiences

Let's start this topic and see where it goes.

When I was 20 or 21, that was when I first experienced the first symptoms of UC and it went full-blown within a few months after turning 21. I lost 60 pounds in a month and lived next to the toilet, but got lucky to have a strong mother to help me get the flare-ups under control and find the things that made it so bad.

I never was allergic to any food or environmental things except for dust, but it took a lot to set my allergy off when I was growing up.

The first thing the UC caused was an allergy to lactose, which was the thing that caused the bad flare-ups. Later, I was checked when I was 30 and found out I had a very bad allergy to corn (mainly high fructose corn syrup), like a peanut allergy reaction if overdone. Later, I reacted badly to ant bites, and when I was in my late 30s, I became allergic to latex.

All of these things happened before my colectomy surgery to have my ileostomy.

Has anyone found things go the same way from the time frame they were diagnosed to when they had their surgery, or if they are still living with UC or Crohn's and have not had to go the surgical route yet?

What are some of the allergies that have popped up?

Hi Longroad78, sorry you are having so many problems with all the allergies. I have not had any problems with allergies. I was diagnosed with sugar problems a few months ago. I was put on medicine and was told to cut down on my carbs and sweets. Cutting carbs has been the hardest thing for me. I have not cut them out completely but have cut way down. I have a colostomy due to damage to my colon from radiation for cancer from female organs. Hope you can keep things under control. Good luck.

Hi longroad,

Pull the pin on the grenade and roll it into the room, eh? That's some topic you came up with........and a pet peeve of mine. First thing is we need to understand what a food allergy is. It's defined as an unpleasant or dangerous immune system reaction after a certain food is eaten. So in other words it's an autoimmune disorder. I was first diagnosed with UC back in 1989. Before that I was the model of health......never sick except for a common cold once a year or so, and no history of anything like UC or Crohn's. I still remember the day it started......I was fine on Tuesday and on Wednesday I was crapping my brains out. I started losing weight and when my crap started coming out white I went to see a Doc. The rest of the story is the same as everyone else's. What's interesting is that autoimmune diseases weren't common back then......and then almost overnight autoimmune diseases were everywhere. All throughout elementary, junior high and high school I never knew one kid with a "food allergy"........never even heard the term. They didn't even track autoimmune disease statistics as a whole until 1997. So something changed in the United States in that timeframe that caused this epidemic. I can't talk to incidence of autoimmune disease expansion outside the US because I'm not that smart. So what changed here in the US?

Well, that's an interesting question. GMO food came into being in the mid-90's. Today more than 95% of our corn, soybeans and cotton (cottonseed oil) are genetically modified. What else......in 1983 aspartame replaced saccharin as the artificial sweetener of choice and diet drinks exploded onto the scene big time in the early 90's. I'd say it's pretty obvious we screwed up our own food supply, but can't prove it's what caused the autoimmune disease explosion of the late 90's right up thru today. But I can say that it seems a bit coincidental that today all the major medical institutions are investigating how different foods affect gut flora......just sayin'. I don't want to steal this topic, so I'll leave it here and see what others have to say........then I'll chime in later. Good topic, really.

Later,

Bob

Hi Longroad...sorry for all your troubles..I believe that the food we eat is in some form or another causing our bodies a lot of distress.

Like Bob said, GMO food; plus steroids in meat, etc. Back in the 60's, there was none of that....cancer was around but now it is like an epidemic...I'm sure the food we eat and the air that we breathe is making people very sick. Allergies to gluten are quite common and the grocery stores sell specialty food for those who have it, but it is so expensive to buy. Sure, if you can afford $6 for a loaf of gluten-free bread which is half the size of a regular loaf. Hope you can get help with all of your problems.

Best wishes

Ange

Hello Longroad.
Thanks for your stimulating and interesting post, which I too have thought about over the years. I like Bob's and Ange's coincidental associations with things we, as human experimenters, have done to our environment, but cannot definitively 'prove' that they are causing problems. I would add to the list things like nuclear testing and so-called 'accidents' with nuclear power stations. They talk about 'background' radiation levels as if it is somehow 'normal'. However, they omit to say that they only started taking these readings after many of the early nukes had already been tested. There have been many 'accidents' with nuclear power stations on this side of the pond, which they don't really want us to know about. When Chernoble happened and the fallout came as far as Wales and contaminated the ground, they told us that the sheep were still okay to eat!!! This contamination has had plenty of time to spread right across the globe. I found it interesting that when the 'Windscale' nuclear plant had too many problems with contamination, they managed to resolve all the issues successfully overnight, by changing the name to 'Sellafield'. This shows the thinking on these sorts of environmental problems. What often happens is that the firms who are responsible for pollution go out of business and start up again the next day under a different name and begin all over again.
My own allergies are almost all airborne, so I have a particular issue with monoculture crops. Oilseed Rape has been one of my biggest allergy enemies in the past. and it affects me most when the plants come into flower. I tackled one of the big farmers about it once when he was promoting it at an agricultural show. His response was that it was probably not the pollen from the flowers, but all the chemicals that they are obliged to spray on the crop at that time of the year. Air pollution is a known cause of allergies amongst many other deleterious health conditions, yet there are still many people who don't want to face up to this fact. I find it interesting that these people are often the ones who are making a profit from polluting the atmosphere and have a vested interest in denying their involvement in pollution. When I had my recent heart surgery, the doctors gave me lots of literature, all indicating that cardiovascular problems are linked with air pollution (among other things).
It often reminds me of the words of the song – ‘When will we ever learn? – when will we ever learn?’

Best wishes
Bill

Getting Support in the Ostomy Community with LeeAnne Hayden | Hollister

Hi Longroad, I was diagnosed in '81 with UC and had ileo surgery in '85. The only food I react to is dairy. I believe in my case that stress has more to do with flare-ups than foods.

Bill,

Interesting about the nuclear aspect...totally unaware of it, so thanks for discussing. As for your parting question...when will we ever learn? That's easy to answer...when it becomes financially profitable to do so.

You know what I don't understand...they can estimate how much money it will take to cure things like cancer and other big ticket diseases, and the numbers are big. So why don't we write down the names of say the top 20 medical killers of man and stick them in a jar, then have some twit stick his hand in the jar and pick one. Then whatever he picks gets ALL the medical funding and donations and EVERY researcher works the problem until that problem is cured. Even if it's not something I suffer from I'd be fine with then curing SOMETHING in my lifetime. Then once cured they reach back into the jar and pick another and fund until a cure for THAT one is found. At least over time the jar would get emptied. The way we do it today with a little funding going to this disease and a little funding going to that disease none will get solved expediently. Hmmm...I sense I'm ranting now. Too early for that. Anyway, thanks for letting me vent.

Regards,

Bob

I was diagnosed at age fourteen with UC in 1960. At that time they didn't know too much about the disease and since I lost a lot of weight they told me to drink a lot of milkshakes, etc......

Little did anyone know that I was lactose intolerant. I realized later that I had always had this. It isn't really an allergy, just an inability to digest most dairy products. I've never had allergies until very recently and neither has anyone in my family. However, I had a recent outbreak of hives which the doctor attributed to aspirin which I had been taking daily for RA. More recently I had tip to toe hives which I think was related to Tamoxifen which I had been taking for five years after breast cancer. The oncologist was very surprised since this is not a common response. When I stopped taking it the hives disappeared. The hives are an accurate result of an allergy. The thing about having an ileostomy and total colectomy is that we don't process or digest the way we are supposed to. I have to take pediatric doses of meds since I have strange reactions otherwise, not allergies. We are not the same as we were once were, but I would rather have these minor problems as compared to the hell that was UC.

Hope you stay well

Ann

Just another thought, unrelated to allergies. I had no idea that having an ileostomy can cause kidney stones. Be aware of this and if you pass something, have bubbly urine or rusty urine, go straight to the doctor.

Ann

Great topic! My allergies have exploded since my first major Crohn's flare in 2013. I had food and environmental allergies growing up but now they are much worse, and it seems like they are intensifying as time goes by.

Totally agree with you w30bob.

Most of his life, my son had atmospheric allergy problems (severe hay fever), so in high school, finally had allergy tests done and started taking the shots. Most of his allergies were atmospheric, but it also showed bunches of food allergies at a sub-acute level (the scale goes from 0-8, and anything over 4 is considered allergic. Mild allergy at 5 ranging to severe allergy at 8. After 2 years on the shots, his food allergies exploded! Things he successfully ate in the past suddenly caused him to either break out in hives or get sick to his stomach and throw up. All through high school, he never weighed more than 115 pounds and had to be seriously careful about what he ate. Never any diagnosis of Crohn's, although he tried the gluten-free, and several other -free diets. Stopped the shots, they were only making him worse. 6 years later, treatment for a mild peptic ulcer and a change in medication, after a nearly year-long stable period (no throwing up), and suddenly his appetite came back to go along with that, and he shot up to 180 pounds! Slowly fighting to get it back down to a healthy range. Doctors are clueless. The only thing they say is, you should lose weight.

Sorry I strayed off the Crohn's subject. Just saying there's a lot of stuff out there that can cause similar-appearing problems, and a lot of it we do systemically to ourselves (humanity as a whole, that it). I have no doubt there's some environmental factors out there complicating my son's life as he struggles to get more normal.