Sunday, January 12, 2014

Running with Crohn’s: Intestinal Bleeding



I apologize for not posting more topics over the last several months.  I’ve had a variety of critical family issues pop-up and I’ve been working hard to resolve them.  Some of the issues involve my Crohn’s disease.  So I’ll post several entries detailing them.  I also have some to share on the other crises in my life.

Occasionally, when I eat certain foods, I suffer from intestinal bleeding.  When it happens, it causes pain but I’m not always certain that I am bleeding.  Sometimes I can see blood in my stool.  Usually the blood is dull red.  Other times, my stool just looks black or has black streaks.  The color indicates how much the blood has been digested.  Bright red blood in the stool means the bleeding occurred lower in the digestive tract.  Black stool or streaks in the stool means the bleeding occurred higher up in the digestive tract.  Dull red stools or streaks in the stool indicate the bleeding occurred somewhere between those points.

Foods that cause me to bleed include foods with bulk fiber.  Of special note are foods like coconut, popcorn, string beans, corn on the cob, etc.  I’ve never had problems with blockage from coconut and popcorn but string beans and corn on the cob have also caused blockages.

This problem afflicts me only rarely, but it requires me to watch my diet and not eat foods that I really like.

My latest bought of problems occurred on 11/27/13 (the Wednesday before Thanksgiving).  I ate a package of chestnuts and did not ensure all of the nuts had the inner peel taken off.  The chestnut itself possesses lots of fiber but the inner peel can be abrasive and exacerbate the ulcers created by the Crohn's Disease process.  Eating the chestnuts caused me to bleed a little and also suffer a variety of other issues.  I’ll discuss those issues more in a later post.

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