Does the colon play a part in hot weather tolerance?

I don't think there's a known effect on heat tolerance per se, other than the significant hydration issue. You write about how much you're drinking, but how are you assessing whether you're hydrated? Unless your urine is light colored and coming a few times daily in reasonable quantity, you may be a little dry.

 

Heat intolerance can be a sign of other medical conditions. Have you mentioned it to your doctor?

well quite frankly i have found the same thing my heat tolerance is not good..i too would have thought it just aging but i do believe there is a correlation now with my lack of a colon and any other chafes it makes..so i would not discount it..my husband whip is a few years older than me does not get the same reaction i do when its very hot..neither do many of my friends who are my age..so although it might not effect everyone the same i do believe for you and i there is a connection..

I was just talking about this the other day with my hubby. I cannot take the heat anymore. And I have always loved summer and warm weather. But if it's just the slightest bit humid out with the heat, I have to move indoors to the ac. It's aggravating because it's hard getting things done outside around the house that need to be done. 

I also have some heat intolerance, When I was younger I loved the heat and humidity. Not anymore. I work in a very hot power plant 12 hours/day it is brutal.

Only a few people responded, saying they were no longer comfortable in warmer environs, so it's not possible to draw any conclusions. Hopefully more J-Pouch members will respond in the future. Thanks

I have a pouch but the reason for my intolerance to heat is my age.
Have worked outside all my life.  Only had a couple short stinks working inside. 
I don't have an immediate intolerance to it it's more of an accumulated reaction.

Phone was updating and somehow just posted before I could finish.
Anyways... By the time Thursday comes up I can feel I get weaker quicker.... Friday.... Definitely.  It takes me most of the day on Saturday to recoup. 
Now the cold is the same way.  But that takes more out of me than the heat.
I work outside in Ft Worth Tx.  Gonna be 102 today and it will be easily 110 in areas that I will be.  I just break more often and certainly drink a lot of water.
I believe it is more from my bank get... 59.....than losing my colon.

I have had to ponder this. I have never had good heat tolerance, even as a teen. But, I also had UC since my early teens, so I was always battling dehydration and anemia. Still, I pushed myself with activities like backpacking.

 

I had my colectomy at age 40 and heat tolerance was worse. But, also my weight was up and I was perimenopausal. I am now 60, ten years fully menopausal, and lower weight. I still can't handle heat, but it seems better than it was before.

 

So, either I've adapted to not having a colon or my general health is better or hormones settled down or all of the above. Plus, I just avoid being out in the heat and sun.

 

Jan

I also am seeing a change.  I never used to sweat the way I do now. I just figured that my body is changing I never connected it to the surgery.

I've never noticed this to be an issue. I mean, I've never been a sun worshiper in my life, ever, always hid from the sun, but never had any more intolerance than the next person to heat.

Now COLD is another issue, I've always been much more affected by cold weather. I take a sweater with me everywhere.

As years go on, I'm having a much more difficult time with the heat.   Simply cannot handle it anymore.  And when I am outdoors in the heat/sun, I sweat like I've never sweated in my life.  I've never sweat at all until the last few years.

 

I admit - I do suffer from hot flashes - but those are recognizable as very different from the constant heat intolerance. 

 

Yeah, my suspicion is that the heat intolerance is indeed somehow related to the lack of a colon and/or whatever else is going on inside us connected to that.

I'm finding my second post-Colon removal Texas summer pretty damn brutal.  Once it climbed up over 95 or so, my body was just like, "The hell with this.  Get back inside."

 

But the sweat thing interests me a lot; as I've gotten more active in the last 7 months, I too have noticed a marked increase in how much I sweat.  I'll get off the exercise bike and be absolutely drenched, in an air conditioned gym.  Heavy exertion used to make me sweat, but nothing like this.

 

Is this a known thing?

Interesting.  I live in Florida and have no problem with the heat but can't tolerate the cold!   I wonder if the excessive sweating has to do with the fact that we are all taking in lots more water than when we had a colon?  I've always sweated during workouts but noticed that when I had my temp ileo and was pretty dehydrated I didn't sweat at all!  Now that my pouch is working & I'm not dehydrated I'm back to sweating!

Oh my, I too developed UC immediately after quitting smoking in 1987. There was absolutely no information other than that to be found on something called the Internet. A doctor I knew was using what he called a computer to find articles on that Internet thing and when he did the search the evidence associating quitting smoking and the onset of colitis appeared in several scientific papers. What a choice, start smoking again or deal with colitis. Damn! As for the sweating and heat intolerance, I too seem to pour out sweat from my head when I play golf on sunny days so it's appears there is some possible connection to be found.

I struggle with heat intolerance too. Love the heat but it is not so easy to tolerate. I sweat so much too. I did not have this prior to my UC days

 

I haven't noticed much of a difference, other than I worry more about hydration, but I should qualify that I've never been a huge fan of hot/humid weather to start with. If anything, I am at the other end of the scale; I actually find that I am worse in colder temperatures than I was prior to having my colon removed (as a horseback rider, I'm pretty active with outdoor activities year round), but I also struggle with anemia on and off and that certainly affects one's tolerance to cold temperatures.

As a young person I had not trouble dealing with the heat. Now I'm in my 60's and have had a J pouch for 6 years I can not tolerate the heat.  I love to work outside but unless I do it in the morning I will get to a point were I feel like passing out.  So, I measure the   amount of work and complete it in a couple of days instead of one.

It could be our age, we were never the age we are today before. So it would be interesting to hear from younger people to see if they experience the same change.

I had my pouch created when I was 19. I never had a heat intolerance with removal of my colon thru many, many years. As I said earlier, I tend to be more *cold* intolerant, always have been. I'm in my 40's now, and likely have less heat tolerance, but I notice some peri-menopausal things as I get older, and I would blame hormone changes way before I'd blame lack of large bowel. I just don't see how there would be any correlation with that, physically speaking.

Rachel...I so agree!  I feel the same way when people talk about waking up at night!  I certainly don't blame that on my J-Pouch...I haven't slept thru the night in 10 years due to menopause!!!  It's called aging!!!

I'm in Central Texas (Austin) and I have discovered that I am more tolerable to the heat nowadays (J-pouch installed January 2015); however, I sweat like crazy even though I do my runs in the morning when its relatively cool outside in the summer months. 

 

Additionally, I found out that hydration is key. I liken it to an engine needing oil to run properly. I've had multiple trips to the ER due to what I perceived as a blockage, but was cured with a few bags of saline and a couple doses of Phenergan and Dilaudid (most recent ER visit was two days ago - spent about six hours there.). The CT Scan showed inflammation of the bowels, but no blockage. This was my eighth or ninth visit to the hospital for a blockage this year, but only the second where I wasn't admitted.

 

I cannot stress how important hydration is (to my body, at least). It can be a struggle since I run and cycle and have two dogs that love their daily walks.  

i too have no tolerance for heat since colon removal, but hadn't thought of that as the cause until i read this post.  during the summer i live on my boat and find i spend much of the day down below, where it is cool, instead of outside--always feels like a waste of good 'outdoor-ness', but the only way i can tolerate being on board.

 

look at the current thread on dehydration for more input on this topic.  i think we are on to something that the docs have not mentioned to us.  it makes sense in a physiological sense as the colon extracts water/liquid.  not sure what it does with it, but maybe that's where our dehydration/intolerance of heat comes from??   

Hi JLH, that's exactly what I was thinking. Colon equals water removal equals something to do with internal body temp etc. This summer was actually better for me. I was given a water bottle which was an old fashion thermos design so that I was not only hydrating but hydrating with ice cold water. I can't say if there was a direct correlation but it seemed to help. Thanks

when i'm at hospital in nov--for the j to k pouch conversion--i'll ask the doc about what the colon does with the water it absorbs and how the lack of such function, once colon is removed, effects our dehydration.  interesting.  i'm also wondering, now that i think about this a bit more, if the colon's absence has anything to do with the small intestine's osmotic behavior.  some years after my colon was removed, in 1999, i developed the small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO).  this was only diagnosed last year when i happened to go on the lowFODMAP diet in a last ditch attempt to control pouchitis--it helped a bit.  SIBO happens, in part, because of osmotic effect that draws water out of the intestine.  perhaps that is why i am constantly drinking water throughout the day?  btw, the other part of SIBO is the fermentation effect of those nasty foods.

 

in case you are interested, here is an article that might shed some light on this issue.   or google lowFODMAP diet.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3388522/

 

would be interested in other's thoughts on this.

I also noticed that I can not tolerate heat.  I now sweat and get irritable when I am hot. The heat never bothered me before.  I never connected it to not having a colon.  

When I was first symptomatic and diagnosed with colitis in 1987, I knew there had to be a direct connection between my having quit smoking in April with Smokenders and the almost immediate onset of problems. None of the doctors believed me, none of them was aware. I finally went to a doctor friend who was active on that new gizmo The Internet. He searched the available online articles and found several papers linking the two. Perhaps we'll find heat intolerance will follow this course, or, not. Thanks

upon reviewing older records, several years ago, i found out that i had been diagnosed with uc in 1992, but nobody told me.  that's good.  when i was diagnosed with the full-monty flare in 1997 they said that one way to control it was with nicotine, but of course didn't suggest i start smoking.  i'm wondering if you previously had uc and the smoking controlled the symptoms.  that's a different tack from saying that quitting caused the uc.  make sense?

 

i'd like to  know if anybody else has the small bowel bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) problems.  symptoms are stomach ache, bloating, or perhaps diarrhea or in other ways changes in one's bowels.  it effects the pouch function--i think, but would like more info on this--as pressure is exerted in the pouch from the gas or expansion from overgrowth and gives me a feeling that i need to evacuate.  however, very little comes out and then the cycle of hell begins.  

 

refer to my prior post for a bit more info on sibo.  i'm beginning to think there is a connection......

I currently have a loop-ileo. Just had a pouch revision at CC and my 2nd takedown is in December.

 

I played a 5-hour round of golf this weekend in West Texas. Temps were in the mid-80s, I believe. Not too bad for Texas. I drank a couple G2's while playing and immediately feasted after. But I got sick hours later (fever, pounding headache, nausea). I was getting ready to go to the ER for IV fluids since I assumed it was dehydration. I laid down in a luke-warm shower for half an hour and then took a quick nap with a fan on. Woke up feeling fine. Seems like we are on to something. Especially considering that all my "colon-having" friends were fine: they're my age (30-ish...1 guy is in his upper 60s), not in any better shape than myself, and a couple drank a lot of liquor.

Since I know Ping never made G2's, I own G10's, I'll assume you mean drinks. I don't drink any energy drinks, only cold water, could those G2's been the source of your problem? As I said earlier, this summer was a bit easier possible due to the ice water in my thermos. Who knows, maybe it's a combination of water and temp and it's relationship to the colon.

Haha, I have Cleveland Irons -- TA5's...they're pretty old.

 

Yes, I meant Gatorade 2s. I don't think they would have caused me any problems. Gatorade 2s (especially w/ a teaspoon of salt) are highly encouraged drinks for those with pouches/ileostomies. They have a lot electrolytes and are low in sugar. Around 7 grams of sugar, I think.

LOL.  I used to play G10s...now Mizunos (about 3 years old).

Seems like everyone I know moves over to Mizuno's. I keep trying to find a reason to leave my G10's for another set but so far they still play just fine. I also came down with or had my disease revealed by quitting smoking. This thread has deteriorated a bit hasn't it.