Symptoms like bloating, abdominal pain and constipation can all be signs of irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS. Fortunately, you can help manage it through medication, diet and lifestyle changes. Alex Sarkisian, MD, Avera gastroenterologist, explains more about IBS and other gut-related issues that might be causing you problems and how you can find relief.
What is IBS?
IBS stands for irritable bowel syndrome, which is a functional disorder of the gut and can cause some severe or debilitating symptoms such as abdominal pain, gas and bloating, and is usually accompanied by changes in bowel habits so things like diarrhea and constipation. It can sometimes be thought of as an invisible diagnosis, meaning that you may have had a colonoscopy, CT scan, or other types of tests and there hasn’t been any identifiable structural cause, but these symptoms are real and they are persistent.
Can certain foods trigger IBS?
Everybody is a little different when it comes to food, but there are some foods that have been known to trigger more symptoms in patients with irritable bowel syndrome, and also patients without irritable bowel syndrome. That can have a lot to do with the breakdown of food. Your body has certain enzymes which are proteins that help break down the nutrients in your food, and for some reason some people may lose those enzymes and lose their ability to digest certain foods, so that is part of the evaluation of irritable bowel syndrome that we work with on patients, going through a food diary and also a list of food that contain these certain sugars that are hard to break down in the body.
What are other stomach issues people might be dealing with?
Something called IBD is an important thing to distinguish from IBS. IBD is inflammatory bowel disease, and that includes things like ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Those are structural issues where there’s inflammation inside the colon wall and that shows up on endoscopy. When we do a colonoscopy and take biopsies or just by inspecting the colon we may see ulcers, blood or other changes that indicate one of those conditions is ongoing. The treatment for that is very different. We can start medications that get into the bloodstream and actually help calm down the process that is involved in inflammatory bowel diseases.
What should you do if you’re having symptoms?
If you’re having symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, I think it’s important to see a gastroenterologist at some point because some of the symptoms you have may actually indicate there’s a different problem like inflammatory bowel disease going on, which has a different treatment and follow up that is recommended because that can put you at risk for other conditions including scarring of areas of the intestinal tract, strictures, fistulas, or other complications of those diseases if they are not treated on time.
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