| Diet has been looked into time and time again.While some foods and beverages definitely can stimulate the gastrointestinal tract to cause more daily bowel movements, there has been no consistently prescribed diet to counteract the effects of the diseases, not to mention a preventative one. Cigarette smoking has been found to irritate a case of CD but the opposite is true for those with UC; smokers giving up the habit were found to have exacerbations of their symptoms. In fact, some UC patients use nicotine patches to control some of their symptoms. Stress is something that nearly every human being lives with and yet not every human being has IBD. While it can worsen the symptoms, stress does not cause IBD. There are, however, theories as to what causes IBD. The first has to do with branches of a tree-your family tree, that is. Genetics plays into a number of things that make you who you are. Perhaps, like me, you have your grandfather's eyes. Or maybe you inherited, like my sister, your olive skin from your mom. Your ability to play music or to pick up languages like lint may be in your genes as well. Well, it only makes sense then that these same genes you inherited may have brought the bad with the good. Many different kinds of diseases are carried through the ages through the DNA of our ancestors. In some families, the same is true for UC and CD. It is not unusual to find that someone who is newly diagnosed is related to someone who is already a patient. Statistics show that risk factor for developing IBD is 10 times greater among individuals who are related to someone who has already been diagnosed with it. That number jumps to 30 percent if the relative is a sibling or parent. This finding prompted researchers to examine more closely the possibility of a genetic basis for IBD. In recent years, scientists have determined that a segment of chromosome 16, called the NOD2 gene, may be related to CD. Other researchers found that people with UC had a 41 percent higher chance of having something called antinuclear antibodies than people in the general population, a marker that appears to be genetic. Since genes are commonly carried in ethnic or racial bloodlines, certain groups of individuals have historically had a higher risk of developing IBD. Ashkenazi Jews, those who are of Eastern European descent as opposed to the Sepharidim who descended from Jews who initially settled in more Mediterranean areas, are four to five times more likely to develop either UC or CD than the general population. Caucasians are more likely than other racial groups to develop the disease followed by blacks, Hispanics and Asians. Because you didn't get to pick your parents or your bloodlines, you are not to blame for having this disease. Genes aside, scientists theorize that there may be other causes for the disease found in certain environments. For example, researchers have examined various bacteria and viruses as the possible causes of IBD. At the same time, other researchers are focusing on the lack of certain substances within developed countries, areas with the highest density of IBD in the population. Many scientists also feel that a combination of genetics and environment contribute to the formation of IBD. In this case, they feel that the presence of the gene alone is not enough to the onset of the disease. At the same time, environmental factors alone will not account for the presence of IBD. The combination of the two, they feel, is the reason that some people get this disease and others don't. Again, even if a pathogen is someday discovered to be the cause of either CD or UC, there is nothing you could have known and possibly nothing you could have done to avoid it. In a sentence: It is not your fault, nor is it anyone else's fault. Click here to continue reading First Year: Crohn's Disease & Ulcerative Colitis. All information is copyrighted by Jill Sklar, 2002. All rights reserved. |