Introduction

I'm a 37 year old guy with Crohn's disease.  I diagnosed myself, slowly, over the course of the past two years.  It took me that long to chip away enough denial and to summon enough gall to make a self-diagnosis, and then really believe it.

A confluence of experiences has led me to this point of certainty.  First, I am a practicing family medicine physician, and my girlfriend is too.  Also, my father was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease - ulcerative colitis, the counterpart to Crohn's - around the time that I was born.  Later, my brother was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (initially ulcerative colitis, but this was later changed to a diagnosis of Crohn's) almost twenty years ago, when he was in high school.  In addition, I have seen a few specialists in recent years for my various symptoms, who have addressed the possibility of Crohn's.  A gastroenterologist, reviewing all my tests, cautiously concluded that I "don't meet criteria for a diagnosis", and a colorectal surgeon, reviewing the same studies, clairvoyantly declared that he wouldn't be surprised if I "developed Crohn's disease in 5 years, and could then look back at those initial problems - my current symptoms - as the initial manifestations of the disease."

People with Crohn's disease have some things in common; in particular, most of us have problems with our guts like abdominal pain, nausea, and diarrhea.  My brother has had severe problems with this over the years, and I'm increasingly having my share of these symptoms. But Crohn's takes many additional forms and can disturb a lot of other body systems.  For my brother, Crohn's also means that his gut frequently bleeds. He's anemic and frequently tired.  And five years ago, he suddenly lost his hair.  All of his hair from head to toe, even his eyelashes.  For me, Crohn's has also caused fissures and a fistula in a "sensitive" area (ahem), and chronic inflammatory joint pain, especially in my spine.  I also have chronic depression, at least in part from my Crohn's, and I'm beginning to see that I too fatigue easier that I used to.  And both of us tend to lose muscle mass and get skinny at times.  And the patients I've seen and treated for Crohn's over the years each have their own unique collection of problems.

Western medicine does a fantastic job at treating a lot of medical problems, but it falls short with others, including Crohn's.  Crohn's drugs, the mainstay of Western treatment, are often as toxic as they are effective.  So it goes for many of the autoimmune diseases.

I haven't tried any Crohn's drugs, and that is the point of this effort here.  I don't want to.  I'm concerned that I am getting worse, slowly, and may be heading towards a level of disease burden where Western drugs are needed.  Instead, I'd like to get healthier without those drugs.  Many people believe that Crohn's can be treated effectively with other medical systems, like Traditional Chinese Medicine or Ayurvedic Medicine, which take a more holistic approach to health and disease.  Many treatment programs incorporate (and exclude) very specific foods, and I am also particularly interested in how psychotherapy and behavioral therapy can directly modify the disease process.

Increasingly, I feel like such a holistic approach is probably helpful for most medical conditions, but especially the chronic autoimmune diseases, where the body is actually harming itself.

I'm excited to document my ideas here, and my treatments.  I'm depressed, tired, and in pain. It's time to make some changes.