Ella Rhian, a world-traveling Londoner, has gone viral after sharing her battle with a bad bout of food poison that awakened a chronic disease with no cure.
The 30-year-old was in the best physical shape of her life before she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that can case debilitating symptoms.
She had traveled to Vietnam for a friend’s wedding. Much as she has many times across continents, she indulged in street food – a banh mi sandwich. A few days later she ate a grilled lobster.
Ms Rhian said: ‘I started having stomach pains, which I never have… It kept me up all night.
‘The context is, I’ve never had a bad stomach in my life. Even when I have food poisoning, it goes so quickly.’
She endured a range of symptoms for about four months – severe fatigue, blood in her stool, recurring fevers, and constant bloating. It wasn’t until the new year that she decided she could no longer avoid the symptoms.
She went to the doctor, where testing revealed she had developed ulcerative colitis (UC) in January 2024.
UC is a type of inflammatory bowel disease that causes inflammation and ulcers in the large intestine and rectum. UC, an autoimmune condition, occurs when the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue in the colon, leading to ulcers.
Doctors are still unclear about what exactly causes UC, but they are confident that it results from the body’s attack on itself
Still, Ms Rhian does not regret her trip or what she ate, telling her thousands of TikTok followers: ‘I was traveling 10 years prior to that, I’ve been to multiple countries, I’ve eaten street food… I don’t regret anything. It hasn’t put me off traveling.’
Ms Rhian has been in remission from UC for six months, meaning the inflammation in her colon is under control, her stomach pains have gone away, and she no longer has blood in her stool.
She said in a TikTok: ‘With the help of medicine and also good diet and looking after myself, I feel so much better.’
To keep her UC manageable, Ms Rhian fills her diet with anti-inflammatory foods, including leafy greens, ginger and turmeric juice, green tea and black tea, bone broth, and ginger.
She also avoids gluten, which triggers an immune response that causes inflammation in the small intestine.
Before traveling to Vietnam, she didn’t have to think about her diet at such a granular level.
She said she has traveled to dozens of countries and, while she has had food poisoning linked to street food, nothing like this had ever happened.
Still, she noted she has a predisposition to autoimmune conditions and believes the food poisoning awakened UC.
Food poisoning does not cause UC, but it can be an activating trigger.
Infections caused by bacteria such as salmonella and E. Coli can damage the lining of the intestines, allowing that bacteria to invade the gut wall, thus exposing the immune system to a barrage of harmful bacteria that spurs the immune system into action.
Food poisoning can also throw the gut microbiome – balance of healthy bacteria in the body – out of balance. The gut is naturally populated with beneficial bacteria, but when invaded by the types that cause harm, the protective bacteria die out while the harmful ones replicate.
Doctors are still unclear about what exactly causes UC, but they are confident it results from the body’s attack on itself.
Genetics also come into play. The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation estimates that up to 30 percent of people with a close family member will develop the condition.
While Ms Rhian does not have a history of UC in her family, she can still carry the genes that trigger it. Irritable bowel diseases such as UC involve hundreds of gene variants, each contributing to some risk.
Irritable bowel diseases are common in the US, with one estimate showing an estimated one in 100 has one. UC specifically affects more than 1.2 million Americans.
Her family members may also have genes that increase the risk of developing the condition but they’ve never been activated by outside triggers, such as food poisoning, taking antibiotics, eating too little fiber and too many processed foods, and an imbalance of gut bacteria.
Members of her family have been stricken with colorectal cancer in middle age, however, ‘so it was really key for me to get the message out that blood in your stool is not normal and to see a doctor,’ she told Newsweek.
She chalks the ordeal up to bad luck, telling her thousands of followers that, given her globe-trotting, adventurous appetite, and genetic makeup, ‘it was going to happen at some point in my life.’
‘Don’t avoid traveling,’ she said. ‘It didn’t put me off anything. I went to Costa Rica in December. It obviously makes it a little more tricky with my symptoms… but I’m ok.’
