Originally published July 30 2005
Microbes thought to cause IBS
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Irritable Bowel Syndrome ,or IBS, was always thought to be caused by stress, but now it is thought to be caused by microbes that have soured in a person's stomach, reports Kentucky.com.
For every human cell in the body, 10 microbes inhabit the intestinal tract, said Gordon, the director of the Center for Genome Sciences at Washington University.
And when our intimate relationship with our inner bacteria goes wrong, it's enough to make people sick, according to a controversial new theory about the cause of irritable bowel syndrome.
About 15 percent of people suffer from the intestinal disorder known as IBS, also called spastic colon, mucous colitis, spastic colitis, nervous stomach or irritable colon.
The disease is characterized by abdominal pain, diarrhea or constipation or both with bloating and gas and a host of other problems that make its sufferers miserable and can interfere with normal life.
"It pretty much disables your life," said Jennifer Freese, 37, a dental assistant from Waterloo, Ill.
Lacking physical evidence, doctors often assumed the problem was in the patient's head, said Dr. Mark Pimentel, co-director of the GI motility program at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Bacteria from the colon might invade the normally microbe-free small intestine and set up shop.
Each meal a person eats is like "dining in with 10 trillion friends," Gordon says.
And that's fine as long as the guests are invited to dinner and sit in their designated spots, said Lin, now an associate professor of medicine at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine.
Lin and Pimentel developed a simple breath test that doctors can use to diagnose possible bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine.
Weinstock's assistant, Leslie Hilliard, tore open a package of lactalose, an indigestible (for humans) sugar, and stirred the powder into water in a plastic foam cup.
About 70 percent of his patients with irritable bowel syndrome have abnormal breath tests, Weinstock said.
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