A high-quality food supplement might also help to prevent deficiencies if you struggle to eat enough of some foods.
Always speak to your GP before starting a supplement or changing your diet.
Stopping smoking can help reduce the severity of symptoms of Crohn’s disease and also reduces the risk of symptoms recurring. You can seek the help of a smoking cessation service to help you quit.
Some medicines you buy from the pharmacy might trigger symptoms and interfere with your Crohn’s disease medicine. An example of this is an over-the-counter painkiller like ibuprofen. Other medicines of the same class (like diclofenac, high-dose aspirin and naproxen) should also be avoided.
Always check with your GP or pharmacist before buying and taking medicine from the pharmacy, especially ibuprofen or drugs to relieve stomach cramps or diarrhoea.
Taking immunosuppressant medicines like azathioprine, methotrexate, and mercaptopurine might easily get ill with the flu or other infections. If you take these, avoid vaccines that contain live viruses (like the MMR vaccine).
Vaccines that don’t contain live viruses, like the yearly flu and the one-off pneumonia vaccine, can help protect you against flu and serious illnesses like pneumonia, sepsis (blood poisoning) or meningitis.
You'll most likely have a risk-free pregnancy and healthy baby even with Crohn’s disease. But some medicines you take for the condition might harm an unborn baby so you should inform your GP immediately if you:
Don’t stop your Crohn’s disease treatment without advice from your GP first.
Crohn’s disease will likely not affect your fertility, but it might be harder to get pregnant during flare-ups. Some medicines for Crohn’s disease might also reduce sperm counts and egg production temporarily.
Mood problems like depression and anxiety are common in Crohn’s disease. Stress can also play a role in triggering a flare-up.
Psychological therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy, hypnotherapy and mindfulness meditation can help with psychological symptoms. They may improve symptom control and quality of life and can also be used to help Crohn’s related pain where no physical cause is found.
Crohn’s disease might increase your chances of bowel cancer. Your risk is low at first but increases the longer you have the disease, for example:
You might be recommended regular colonoscopies if:
Support groups like Crohn’s and Colitis UK are great resources for extra information. You can find information on all aspects of Crohn’s — on things like treatment, symptoms and diet — and area is a great source of support.
National Health Services (2021), Crohn’s disease. Retrieved 10 August 2022 from https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/crohns-disease/
Clinical Knowledge Summaries. Crohn’s disease [online; accessed 8 September 2022]
Chiarello MM, Pepe G, Fico V, Bianchi V, Tropeano G, Altieri G, Brisinda G. Therapeutic strategies in Crohn's disease in an emergency surgical setting. World Journal of Gastroenterology. 2022 May 14;28(18):1902-1921. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v28.i18.1902. PMID: 35664965; PMCID: PMC9150057. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9150057/)
Lamb CA, Kennedy NA, Raine T, et al. British Society of Gastroenterology consensus guidelines on the management of inflammatory bowel disease in adults [published correction appears in Gut. 2021 Apr;70(4):1]. Gut. 2019;68(Suppl 3):s1-s106. doi:10.1136/gutjnl-2019-318484