Irritable bowel syndrome is a functional bowel disease characterized by bowel-related abdominal discomfort or pain, often accompanied by altered bowel habits and abnormal stool characteristics, with persistent or recurrent symptoms and a lack of explainable morphological and biochemical abnormalities. It is the most common functional bowel disease, with a prevalence of 10-20% in Western countries and 8.7% reported by a group in Beijing, China. Patients are mostly young and middle-aged, and the first onset after the age of 50 is rare.
What are the signs and symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome or what is the discomfort?
The most important clinical manifestations of irritable bowel syndrome are abdominal pain and changes in bowel habits and stool characteristics.
1, abdominal pain: most patients with irritable bowel syndrome have varying degrees of abdominal pain. The location is variable, mostly in the lower abdomen and left lower abdomen. Most of them are relieved after defecation or exhaustion. Very few people wake up with pain during sleep.
2, diarrhea: generally about 3-5 times a day, a few severe episodes up to a dozen times. The stool is mostly thin paste, but can also be formed soft stool or thin watery. Mostly with mucus, some patients with little stool quality and a lot of mucus, but never pus and blood. Defecation does not disturb sleep. Some patients have alternating diarrhea and constipation.
3, constipation: difficult to defecate, dry stool, small amount, sheep feces or fine rod-shaped, the surface can be attached to mucus.
4, other gastrointestinal symptoms: most of them are accompanied by flatulence or abdominal distension, and there may be a sense of incomplete defecation and defecation embarrassment. Some patients also have indigestion symptoms.
5, systemic symptoms: a considerable number of patients may have insomnia, anxiety, depression, dizziness, headache and other mental symptoms.
4.What factors can cause irritable bowel syndrome?
The pathogenesis of irritable bowel syndrome is not well understood, but it is thought to be related to the following factors: 1. abnormal gastrointestinal tract dynamics: some diarrhea-type irritable bowel syndrome shows short passage time of the gastrointestinal tract, enhanced colonic contraction and other intestinal hyperdynamics, while some constipation-type irritable bowel syndrome has intestinal underdynamic performance.
2, increased visceral sensitivity: rectal balloon inflation test shows that the pain threshold of inflation in patients with irritable bowel syndrome is significantly lower than that of the control group.
3, abnormal sensation of the central nervous system: functional magnetic resonance studies have shown that the brain response areas induced by rectal balloon expansion stimulation in patients with irritable bowel syndrome are different from those in normal subjects.
4, infection factors: clinical research found that about 1/3 of patients with irritable bowel syndrome had a history of acute gastrointestinal infection before their illness, intestinal infection is one of the risk factors of irritable bowel syndrome, patients infected by intestinal viruses, bacteria or parasites, after the pathogen has been cleared and private membrane inflammation subsided, irritable bowel syndrome-like symptoms can occur, called post-infection irritable bowel syndrome.
5, psycho-psychological factors: psychological stress has a significant impact on gastrointestinal motility. A large number of surveys have shown that IBS patients have personality abnormalities, anxiety and depression scores are significantly higher than normal, and the frequency of stressful events is also higher than normal.
6, other factors: irritable bowel syndrome patients may be intolerant to one or more kinds of food, after eating can trigger or aggravate their symptoms, about 63% of patients will notice the onset of their irritable bowel syndrome symptoms with the type of food eaten, including high-fat food, dairy products, carbohydrates, coffee, alcohol and high protein, currently more research is the relationship between lactose diet and irritable bowel syndrome.