UNIVERSITY student Harriet Dunning tends to keep quiet about her illness – mainly because so few people understand what it means.

Now 19, she began suffering symptoms in November 2006. “I felt like I was full up all the time and couldn’t really eat. It got worse. It started hurting when I ate,” she recalled.

Harriet, of Barton on Sea, lost two stone in weight. “People thought I might be anorexic. I went down to just under seven stone. I was very pale and quite weak.

“I went to the doctors loads of times, but they had no idea what it was. One thought it was indigestion and gave me Gaviscon, which didn’t help.”

In February 2007, Harriet was sent for a blood test. By the time the results came back, she was already in hospital.

“I was very ill; in constant pain, and I couldn’t even stand up. One evening I had to share mum’s bed. I was just complaining all the time. In the end, she just got up and said: ‘I can’t have you like this any more, you’re in so much pain.’”

She was taken to the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, then to Poole Hospital.

She was there for three days before she was sent to Southampton General, where she had a colonoscopy and was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.

Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are the two main types of chronic inflammatory bowel disease (not to be confused with irritable bowel syndrome) that together affect about one person in 250 in the UK – just under 21,000 people in the south-west.

The cause is unknown but ulcerative colitis causes inflammation and ulcers on the inside lining of the colon (large intestine), resulting in pain, urgent and bloody diarrhoea and constant tiredness.

Most patients can be treated with drugs, including steroids, but there is no cure. If people do not respond to treatment, they may have to have their colon removed.

Harriet was put on steroids and was able to leave hospital in 10 days. She went on to pass her GCSEs and a BTec qualification and is now studying for a degree in fashion design at the University of the West of England in Bristol.

“Usually flare-ups come when I’m tired or run down. If I calm down and take my tablets, it will also calm down,” she said.

“Sometimes it hurts and I think: ‘I can’t do this’. At the end of the day, you’ve got to push it to the back of your mind.

“There are people who are far worse than me. Colitis has never stopped me from doing what I want to do.”

Others are not so lucky. The charity Crohn’s and Colitis UK recently published research showing that two-thirds of employers have little or no awareness of the needs of employees with inflammatory bowel disease, such as access to a toilet when required and time off for hospital treatments.

A third of people with IBD say they receive little or no support from employers; 68 per cent feel they have little or no control over their working conditions and a third feel at risk of losing their jobs due to their illness.

TV presenter Carrie Grant – a Crohn’s sufferer – said: “The qualities that employers most value are loyalty, a strong work ethic, creativity and the ability to think strategically. These are the very qualities that many people with IBD develop in order to manage their condition.”