Silence Puts Comfort For Digestive Syndrome

Irritable bowel syndrome, by which 15% of Americans were suffered, was caused by distinctly personal habits and when medication doesn't help, there's often little left to do but to suffer in silence.

Irritable bowel syndrome, by which 15% of Americans were suffered, was caused by distinctly personal habits and when medication doesn't help, there's often little left to do but to suffer in silence. Others like constipation, bloating, diarrhea and gas, flatulence make their lives miserable, limiting some of their day-to-day activities.

Researches believe that the most basic of treatments is lifestyle modification instead of taking variety of drugs.

The world's largest gathering of gastrointestinal health professionals, in Los Angeles for Digestive Disease Week, where experts reported that behavior changes and dietary alterations and restrictions can help considerably to ease off the symptoms.

Cognitive behavior therapy, a brief, self-help course, in which people identify their symptoms' triggers and learn techniques to tackle conditions, such as relaxation technique and thought process methods, that modify the disease response that helped some patients in a study. Another Hypnotherapy also proved to relieve symptoms in a 12 session study for a period of one year.

Dr. Emeran Mayer, director of the UCLA Center for Neurovisceral Sciences and Women's Health reports recent theories support that irritable bowel syndrome involves a communications gap between the mind and bowel and he says we need to understand the mind-body connection.

But experts disagree on whether drugs that act on the gastrointestinal tract or psychological therapies that alter thoughts and emotions will ultimately prove most beneficial.

Jeffrey M. Lackner, an assistant professor of medicine at University at Buffalo, State University of New York, IBS affects mostly women, characterized by chronic abdominal pain and discomfort bloating, gas, constipation and diarrhea with most of the nerve endings in gut becoming sensitive to reactions like eating, eating special foods, strong emotions and stress.

Serotonin, which transmits impulses between brain and gut, scientists now believe that hypersensitivity is caused by its abnormal.

A potential biological explanation for the disorder has made way to the discovery of two prescription drugs, Lotronex and Zelnorm, which works on serotonin receptors.

Johanson said, Lotronex was withdrawn from the market due to causation of life-threatening ischemic colitis. Both the drugs were relabeled in 2004 to warn of a rare, serious side effect involving low blood pressure.

IBS patients whose primary symptom is constipation, can take lubiprostone (Amitiza), which was approved in January for the treatment of chronic constipation in adults.

Dr. Robert Sandler, vice president of the American said it's hard to find therapists who offer it for IBS, which works better but it is expensive and time-consuming.

Lackner selected 59 patients randomly to receive a 10-week government-sponsored behavior study, a clinic-based behavioral treatment. Here people learn how to cope with behavior disabilities by adopting muscle relaxation exercises, avoid worrying in public.

In people, who undertook therapy 74% improved in the 10-week program but only 73% improved in the quicker and less costly, four-session program. A persisted beneficial state was confirmed after the follow-up examination conducted after three months.

The principle of hypnotherapy is difficult to explain, said the lead author of that study, Dr. Magnus Simrén of Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden.

IBS patients were randomized into two groups, one receiving hypnotherapy education and another no therapy at all. Nearly half and above of the patients in the hypnotherapy group improved whereas the patients who received no therapy didn’t improved.