Pain, cramping, bloating, diarrhea and/or constipation — it can be one or the other or both can alternate.

Sound familiar? If it does, you may have been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) by your doctor. Wile there are some pharmaceutical prescriptions for IBS, most patients that end up in my office have been told to eat bland foods and just live with it.

I am here to tell you that you don’t have to “just live with it”. IBS is definitely treatable with naturopathic medicine and most patients respond very well to treatment.

It is not one factor, but several factors combined that lead to IBS. Similarly, it takes a multi-faceted approach to heal IBS.

Food. Certain foods aggravate IBS quite a bit. Food is not the cause of IBS, but will definitely aggravate symptoms: this means increased pain and more unpredictable and/or difficult bowel movements.

Sleep. Again, not the cause, but if your system is already out of balance, a lack of sleep will make it worse.

So what is the root of IBS? Stress. Not in every case, but in the large majority of cases. Do you find that hard to believe? Some people do.

I just did a Google search for stress and IBS and each site that I looked at said that stress does not cause IBS but will make your symptoms worse.

After treating numerous cases of IBS, some of them severe, I can tell you that in most cases stress plays a very large role.

Also, I`ve had IBS myself during a particularly stressful time in my life. I don`t have it now and haven’t for a couple of years. No symptoms — nothing. I am not taking any special pills for IBS, but I do eat a very healthy diet, get lots of sleep and use the same focused relaxation techniques that I teach my patients.

The basic food plan and lifestyle changes I used (and continue to use) on myself are the same ones I use with patients, individualized to each patient of course.

So what`s the role of stress?

A high and sustained stress level does not allow the digestive system to function normally. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) explains it the best. (TCM is a very different way of looking at the body and at health, so be prepared to read some things about digestion that may sound strange to you.)

Gas, bloating and cramping  or stitching pains are due to the energy of the Liver (in terms of TCM) not flowing smoothly. The energy stagnates (like a stagnant pool of water) and this causes pain. The role of the stomach and small intestine are to process the food and extract vital nutrients and energy from the food. The stomach then sends this energy (remember this is according to TCM) to the other organs so they can do their job well. The main causes of this energy stagnation are eating when stressed, eating too fast and repeatedly eating foods that are difficult to digest. The first two factors go hand in hand: most people eat too fast when they are stressed.

Constipation is caused by a number of different imbalances, but in terms of IBS the main one is this: when the stomach does not process food properly, the large intestine receives it`s energy in either a disorganized way or does not recieve enough energy at all. This leads to constipation or to erratic and unpredicatable bowel movements.

Diarrhea is also caused by a number of imbalances but what quite often happens is that with repeated bouts of constipation and continuing stress, the digestive system becomes weakened and is not able to properly reabsorb water (reabsorption of water is the main function of the large intestine). If not enough water is absorbed the stool will be liquid and your bowels cannot hold on to this. Diarrhea is the result.

Once a cycle of gas, bloating, constipation and diarrhea start, the balance of good and bad bacteria in the intestines starts to change. There ends up being more of the bad bacteria and less of the good. A healthy bacterial balance is dependant on proper digestion and elimination. Once that bacterial balance is out of balance, this will produce more gas and bloating, and will lead to more constipation or more diarrhea.

At this point digestion is definitely weakened and many foods will aggravate all of the above symptoms. Sometimes it`s because the food is just too hard to digest (such as chips and fried foods) and other times it is because the digestive system does not have enough energy to process even healthy foods properly. Many people with IBS become very confused, and even scared, as to which foods do and don`t bother them. In some cases, when I see a patient with IBS for the first time, they are only eating three or four different foods because these are the ones that don`t seem to bother them.

And when someone has gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, food anxiety and seemingly random aggravations of all these things, the stress level increases even further.

And so the vicious cycle becomes worse.

Enough of the bad stuff.

This post is rather long, so I’ll end it here and write another for treatment of IBS. Go here for treatment.

TC