Relationship

I would imagine it is coincidence. Hopefully things improve, but there's a good chance that you, on your own, eventually will suffer with the same symptoms you've suffered with while she's around, and you will realize it had nothing to do with her at all. I can say though, if she causes that kind of physical turmoil in your body, there's more to it.

Your girlfriend didn't cause the UC but she may be a trigger. I find that living with people, even loved ones, creates tension. You may not even be aware of the tension but it's still affecting your body.

It has taken me years to learn that my biggest emotional trigger for flaring is anticipation. It's not even day to day stress, it's knowing that something big is about to happen. When it's actually happening I feel fine, but waiting for it to happen is what wrecks my body. It took me a long time to observe this.

I can't live with other people, I live alone. It has made the disease hard to deal with, but I find other people too unpredictable and stressful to deal with. Trying to anticipate their next move or what might happen next wrecks me.

You may actually love someone but their presence may affect you in ways that aren't obvious because when you were healthy it would've been a non-issue.

I was reading CanadaMark's thread about amino acid therapy for IBD, which increases dopamine. I then found out that dopamine is the neurotransmitter of anticipation (not reward, like some people think), and that my dopamine is genetically low (COMT-/+ mutation). So I put two and two together and realized that anticipation might make my IBD worse because it's depleting dopamine. Even though my IBD is not gone, I did find that taking tyrosine and l-dopa really helped a lot. It reduced my tendency to worry and try to predict the future to alleviate the anticipation feelings.

Sorry for the long post, I'm just trying to show you that you're not crazy and something real could be happening. I'm NOT saying you should do what I did. You might have something else going on. When you write on this forum all we're seeing is your mind at work, but maybe if I saw you in person I'd realize that you actually seem tense or stressed out. Maybe your mind doesn't know what your body is already saying.

I agree with ipoop. Mind-gut connection. I would consider meditation or even counseling/behavioral therapy to help you route out anxiety related to the relationship. Lots of neurotransmitters are contained in and/or regulated by the gut so it is not uncommon for people with UC to have a whole host of physical anxiety symptoms that they may or may not even realize are caused by anxiety. I've dealt with this myself.

Are you on meds?

q

Is that the only medication you have been on? Pred should only be used on a temporary basis to give maintenance medications time to work. You then taper off the pred and stay on the maintenance meds long term.

Pred can do all kinds of awful things to you, including being short tempered. Best to use that med as little as possible and only when you really need to on a short term basis.

Prednisone is a deal with the devil, it's temporary relief but at a cost... Pred makes us emotionally nutty: happy, to crying, and then angry within the span of minutes. Pred can "exacerbate existing physiological tendencies," so if you're prone to depression, anxiety, and other such feelings then they're going to be a lot worse while you are on pred.

Pred is synthetic cortisol, cortisol is a fight-or-flight chemical that's often paired with adrenaline in natural usage (enabling you to run on a broken bone to survive another day). Great in short life or death situations, but not so good for months straight when you're on high levels of pred/cortisol months to recover from a UC flareup. Just know pred will make you a bit nutty and our spouses, friends, and family need to be aware that we're not going to act like ourselves while we are on it. We had a user get his/her significant other a Frankenstein-themed cake that read "sorry I've been such a monster lately" related to pred...

Pred is necessary at times, but it is always a bridging medication giving instant relief while we wait for our other meds to work. So, definitely get back on the asacol, as that's the safer med meant for long term usage.

I haven't heard of people having those types of side effects from asacol. He was speaking of prednisone sending us through a loop. I was so irritable on pred. Asacol, I felt like i lost some hair for a short period, but that was the extent of my side effects from that drug. The hair grew back and things were great. pred is the devil. Good luck tomorrow.