Important message about smoking cigs and Crohns-
I have friends, two sisters. The younger sister has had crohns since before we became friends, was diagnosed when she was little. The older sister stopped smoking almost a year ago and started having symptoms a few months ago. She went to the gastro and they diagnosed her with ileitis crohns. They told her that smoking tobacco somehow had frozen the disease in it's tracks and by quitting smoking she allowed it ti rear it's head.
I know this sounds crazy, but you can read about it here:
http://ibdcrohns.about.com/cs/ibdfaqs/a/smokingguts.htm
They have Crohns because of genetics, but pretty wild about cigs being the reason the older sister didn't have any symptoms for so many years. She's lucky her symptoms aren't severe, but she's so mad she quit smoking.