Irritable Bowel Syndrome:
Causes, Symptoms, and Relief
Symptoms and Diagnosis
An uncomfortable and sometimes embarrassing disorder, Irritable Bowel Syndrome is one of the most common afflictions, particularly in the Western World. Due to the symptoms of IBS, people are wary of discussing their discomfort with just anyone. Many people suffer in silence for months or even years before seeking relief or realizing their condition is not normal.
Because Irritable Bowel Syndrome cannot be seen on an x-ray and no blood tests or simple diagnostics can be done to determine its presence, doctors must go off of patient descriptions and symptoms alone to determine if the disorder is present. However, the symptoms of IBS are often inconsistent which makes the diagnosis sometimes difficult. What one person experiences may not be the same as what other IBS sufferers experience.
Common symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome include abdominal cramps, gas and bloating, white mucus in the stool, as well as constipation and diarrhea. It is easy to see why some sufferers of IBS are embarrassed of their affliction and possibly even reluctant to speak with even their doctors about it.
The difficulty in diagnosing the disorder is multiplied by the fact that these symptoms are often symptoms of other diseases and disorders as well. It is necessary for someone who is experiencing these symptoms to get over the embarrassment and have a real and honest conversation with their physician about it. This will help rule out more serious disorders and also allow the patient to investigate routes of relief.
Causes
So what causes IBS? Science isn’t one-hundred percent sure. While they can attribute symptoms of IBS to a variety of things, they can’t say for certain that there is one cause for Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
The negative symptoms of IBS originate in the intestines. Your intestines are lined with muscles that move food through your body by continually contracting and relaxing. In a healthy intestine these contractions are regular and rhythmic. In the intestines of someone with IBS, the contractions can become much more intense and last longer. This change causes the passage of food to speed up and can lead to diarrhea, gas, and bloating. IBS can also cause the muscles of the intestines to stop or slow their contractions which encourages constipation and hard stools.
There are many schools of thought on why the contractions are different in someone with IBS. Changes in sensitivity of the nerves that control these contractions may play a part, as could hormones. Women, in fact, experience more aggravated symptoms during menstruation. While the “why” isn’t concrete, there are some factors that magnify the symptoms and make the patient’s suffering much worse.
Many people find that their Irritable Bowel Syndrome is aggravated by particular foods. Things like dairy, alcohol, artificial sweeteners, and carbonated beverages can all lead to more intense symptoms. While these symptoms may also be related to food allergies or intolerances, they can seriously aggravate the IBS symptoms in someone diagnosed with that condition. The foods that aggravate IBS can differ from person to person.
Another role your diet plays in the symptoms of IBS is the level of toxins present. In the modern Western diet there are a multitude of hormones, pesticides, man-made chemical ingredients, as well as artificial colors and flavors. There is some thought that ingesting these toxins day after day can wreak havoc on your digestive system and even worsen IBS.
Stress is another common risk factor for IBS. Elevated stress levels lead to elevated symptoms and discomfort. Whenever we are stressed, our bodies react. When Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a concern, the uncomfortable symptoms can be drastically increased when our bodies are under stress.
Treatments
It is somewhat easy to control your diet and stress levels. When you know that a certain type of food will aggravate your symptoms, you learn to avoid that food and products that contain it. With stress, we all have ways of coping. Meditation and exercise are a few of the more common methods of stress reduction. By keeping stress and diet in check, some IBS symptoms can be decreased.
Toxicity is a risk factor that is more difficult to eliminate. Because there are chemicals in nearly everything we eat, our digestive systems become bogged down by it. The human body was not designed with all of these modern toxins in mind. Pesticides, pollution, hormones, and chemicals enter our bodies through our food and even through the air we breathe. It’s really no wonder that Irritable Bowel Syndrome is most common in the country that is most modern or developed. There is a possibility that it is due to the large number of modern toxins in our bodies when compared with other countries around the world. When toxins enter your body, they find places to hang out and they don’t leave easily. The truth is your colon acts as a home to many of these toxins. The lining of your colon fills with toxins which no doubt can seriously aggravate the symptoms of IBS. Over the years, as this mucoid plaque builds up, your symptoms can get worse and worse.
Many sufferers of IBS have found that a colon cleanse does wonders for their symptoms. It does this by removing the toxins from the intestines and thereby ridding the body of that risk factor. When patients use a colon cleanse, they feel healthier overall and this is certainly true with their digestive health. More regular bowel movements, less gas, and less discomfort overall is experienced following a colon cleanse and the elimination of years of toxic buildup.
Conclusion
One of the reasons IBS treatments are so difficult to find is that IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) is so poorly understood by the medical community. If you suffer from IBS, though, you understand it very well: it involves cramps, bloating, constipation or diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain that can sometimes get intense enough to keep you from going about your day or even send you to the emergency room!
You’d be amazed what a complete internal cleanse can do for your symptoms. What do you have to lose, besides your suffering?
