Introducing Crohn’s & Colitis UK: The Podcast

Published 19 December 2023

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Living with Crohn's and Colitis Awareness news

We all know how hard it can be to talk about Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Every day is different when you’re living with a condition like Crohn’s or Colitis. Life is unpredictable. Some days you might want to shout about what’s going on, and on others it’s an effort to tell even your nearest and dearest how you’re feeling.

Despite that, it’s really good to talk. It’s also really good to listen – and that’s why we’ve come up with something new that we hope you’ll really like: our very own Crohn’s & Colitis UK podcast!

It’s presented by Geraldine Cooper, who works in the media team here at Crohn’s & Colitis UK, and Luke Bligh, a producer, photographer, and self-confessed Star Wars super fan. Here, Geraldine explains why they’ve chosen to work together.

I first met Luke when I’d been working at the charity for a few months and he got in touch to ask if I’d ever considered making a podcast about Crohn’s and Colitis. Funnily enough, I had been thinking about exactly that, so we decided to see if we could make it work.

Luke and I are weirdly a bit like two sides of the same coin: I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis when I was 14, and Luke has been living with Crohn’s Disease since he was a teenager. When I was told I had Colitis in the mid-90s, there wasn’t much help out there at all. I was handed a couple of leaflets in hospital and I remember I just read them over and over trying to find some answers about what was going on. It was a really tricky time.

Although Luke is a lot younger than me so his diagnosis came in the internet age at least, he told me he still felt really alone and like he couldn’t make sense of what was going on. It’s just really life-changing information: “Sorry, you’ve got something wrong with your bowel, and although we can try and get it under control, you’ll never be totally free of it.” It’s a lot to wrap your head around.

We both thought it would be great to channel our love of podcasts and broadcasting experience into something that could help other people with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, and that’s what Crohn’s & Colitis UK: The Podcast, is all about.

I know what you’re thinking: “Guys, couldn’t you have come up with a different name?” Well, no – not really. The beauty of this is that it does exactly what it says it does. This is all about the Crohn’s and Colitis community, and every single episode we put out will be checked by our experts in the charity so you know all the information is absolutely spot on. Just like it is on our website. You can trust us.

Everyone’s experience of Crohn’s or Colitis is different. There are over half a million of us with IBD here in the UK, and we are all living our own unique, wonderful lives – doing all sorts of fantastic things. But we have something really important and powerful in common and Luke and I wanted to reflect that experience.
We want to hear from people in the Crohn’s and Colitis community – from those who live with the conditions, and from those who care about them as well.

So why not give our new podcast a listen? You’ll find it on Apple, Acast, Spotify and wherever you usually get your podcasts. We hope it’ll put a smile on your face and make you feel seen and heard too. After all, there’s power in conversation.

Listen on Apple podcasts