How does ulcerative colitis affect my body?

Ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune disease where the colon is affected; it's one of the inflammatory bowel diseases. Watch Ask the Experts integrative gastroenterologist Robynne Chutkan, MD, ulcerative colitis' classic symptoms.

Transcript

00:00

The classic symptom with ulcerative colitis is bloody diarrhea. Patients may also have abdominal pain, anemia, weight loss,

00:07

nausea, fever. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:24

Ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune disease. It's one of two autoimmune diseases that are related.

00:30

Ulcerative colitis is one and Crohn's disease is the other and the two of them make up what we call inflammatory bowel

00:36

disease. Now, that's very different from irritable bowel syndrome,

00:45

where by definition there's no inflammation in the intestines. With ulcerative colitis, the colon is affected

00:52

and it can be just the bottom part of the colon, the rectum, or it can be the entire colon or it can be somewhere in between.

00:58

But ulcerative colitis is limited to the colon and it involves inflammation of that organ.

01:08

The classic symptom with ulcerative colitis is bloody diarrhea. Patients may also have abdominal pain, anemia, weight loss,

01:16

nausea, fever. But the classic symptom is diarrhea with blood in it. [MUSIC PLAYING]