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Irritable Bowel Syndrome

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  • alyssa_mae wrote:
    Is it a good idea to try colonic irrigation if you suffer from Ibd/ibs ?
    As I have already pointed out all the treatments for IBS are only marginally (if that) more effective than placebo treatments. A good placebo treatment, one which involves a significant degree of committment on behalf of the user, either in terms of money expenditure or physical/mental involvement, is therefore bound to produce some results although, like Aloe Vera, there is no good scientific reason to support it's use.

    In my view you will get the best advice about the potential for good results from Colonic Irrigation from those who specialise in the condition and who have years of experience. May I suggest IBS Network Helpline 0114 272 3253 Monday to Friday evening 6pm to 8pm
    Saturday morning 10 to 12 noon


    The IBS Network > Home ( DNN 3.0.12 )
    My weight loss following Doktor Dahlqvist' Dietary Program
    Start 23rd Jan 2008 14st 9lbs Current 10st 12lbs
  • Hi,

    I have suffered from IBS for about 6 years. I find that my IBS is triggered mainly by stress and eggs. It is encouraging to read from other people who have it and their methods of coping.

    I hate having to go somewhere and the first thing I do is suss out the nearest toliet!!!

    At the moment I am using buscopan, as I found colofac stopped working for me and colpermin (peppermint tablets). I also drink the probiotic drinks and yogurts. I also drink peppermint tea when as a last resort as I hate the stuff, but somehow it works.

    The cheapest way of getting medication is buying the NHS perscription 3 months thing and getting my perscription this way, as buying buscopan and colpermin over the counter costs a fortune when I run out.
  • i suffer from this too, i find that prescription generic immodium and avoiding eating wheat keeps it largely at bay.
    :T The best things in life are FREE! :T
  • dbs
    dbs Posts: 492 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 100 Posts Combo Breaker
    [QUOTE=kawilson00
    At the moment I am using buscopan, as I found colofac stopped working for me and colpermin (peppermint tablets). I also drink the probiotic drinks and yogurts. I also drink peppermint tea when as a last resort as I hate the stuff, but somehow it works..[/QUOTE]

    Warm pepprmint tea has a soothing effect on the gut combine this with its anti-spasmodic effect and essential oils that stimulate the gall bladder to secrete its store of bile it is great for IBS.

    Unfortunately it can be too powerfull it can trigger GERD and heartburn thats why I only drink the tea and dont take the tablets or capsules,if dont you suffer from upper GI problems all forms should ok to take.
  • suzukibabe
    suzukibabe Posts: 1,649 Forumite
    Iv'e just got back from my first appointment with my consultant, and he's diagnosed IBS. Reading through this thread has been so helpful, and i'm going to try some alternative remedies to see if they work for me.
    Iv'e got to have a flexi sigmoidoscopy on monday afternoon( a small tube with a camera that looks around the lower part or the bowel) and i'm starting to get a bit nervous, but i'll be alright, i actually work in the endoscopy unit where i will be having my test so know i will be in good hands. Iv'e still got to go into work on monday morning??!! but they've put me first on the afternoon list and i'll be going home after it's done so i can't complain.
    Like frebbie_junkie, i myself find that anti diarrhoea treatments keep mine mostly at bay, but then i get days where i go to the loo and can't stop once iv'e started.
    I'm also going to start a food diary to see if there are any 'trigger foods' that set my gut off.
    If everyone cared and nobody cried, if everyone loved and nobody lied, if everyone shared and swallowed their pride then we'd see the day when nobody died.
    ROCK IT DON'T STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    BE GOOD OR BE GOOD AT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
    What's worth the prize is always worth the fight
  • In my search for remedies to IBS, and related diseases, I found this site to be the most beneficial:
    http://www.helpforibs.com

    I started taking the Heather's Tummy Fiber (Organic Acacia) which also encourages the formation of healthy probiotics in the intestines. She is developing quite a following in the U.S. and the tummy fiber is very reasonably priced. It didn't take very long to get my symptoms under control. I have not tried any of the other products she sells as the acacia fiber was all I needed. It has a lot to do with soluable vs. insoluable fibers that we get in our diets that cause most of the problems. For what its worth, I wanted to let you know about her site so you can be informed and see all the research for yourself on her site. Good luck to all in dealing with this inconvenient disease. I am glad that at least for now, mine is under control.
  • mr_rush
    mr_rush Posts: 597 Forumite
    Ted:
    You give a lot of PubMed quotes in your answers. Don't you think this is a bit dangerous? Primary research is difficult enough for medically trained professionals to understand. What is shown one week in a trial maybe completely disproven the next week. Furthermore, there is a big step between what's shown to work in small trials to actual patient treatments.
    Also, the majority of links you provide are to abstracts not the full research paper. Therefore no one is able to throughly read the methods and details of statistical analysis to review the credibility. Just because you can find some papers that back up your point, does not mean that it is correct (or incorrect). I feel that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and using pubmed to back up your points is wrong and misleading. None of the links that you have provided are to large-scale double blind RCTs or to any meta-analysis. As you said yourself, you are not a medically trained professional - then hou do you know the validity of the research that you are providing links to?
  • mr_rush wrote:
    Ted:
    You give a lot of PubMed quotes in your answers. Don't you think this is a bit dangerous? Primary research is difficult enough for medically trained professionals to understand. What is shown one week in a trial maybe completely disproven the next week. Furthermore, there is a big step between what's shown to work in small trials to actual patient treatments.
    Also, the majority of links you provide are to abstracts not the full research paper. Therefore no one is able to throughly read the methods and details of statistical analysis to review the credibility. Just because you can find some papers that back up your point, does not mean that it is correct (or incorrect). I feel that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and using pubmed to back up your points is wrong and misleading. None of the links that you have provided are to large-scale double blind RCTs or to any meta-analysis. As you said yourself, you are not a medically trained professional - then hou do you know the validity of the research that you are providing links to?
    That may of course be true but the trend of the research enables the more intelligent reader to suss out the most likely effective treatments and disgard those that are unpromising. If you have a particular concern that the abstracts I've provided are misleading or potentially dangerous then by all means post corrections or samples of research that casts doubt on those papers I've selected.
    On the whole I think the selections I make are a reasonable summary of the most promising lines or research. If you wait till all the research is done then you'll be dead anyway, so in the meantime, if it's cheap, if it's safe, if it fits in with what your doctor is suggesting, then you've nothing to lose by following the BEST BET scenarios I offer.

    What you have to consider is the cost of the supplements which may be helpful compared to those which are shown not to be at all helpful. Surely pointing up those papers is useful?

    Then you should consider the other benefits which are likely to accrue from following the research papers I link to. (if you follow those links you will see that I try to select those which lead to free full publications where possible, not all are abstracts) It may be boring but the Google/Pubmed alerts I subscribe to are for vitamin D, omega 3, selenium, vitamin c, vitamin e, green tea, and transfat. So I tend to be reading the new stuff on these every day, and this tends to influence what comes up on the forum. The point is that these supplements have beneficial impacts on health generally as well as specifically. So if generally speaking they have a good impact on overall wellbeing, what have you got to lose if they only "may" have a beneficial impact on the condition under consideration?
    If you follow the best bet research suggestions and it is most likely not only that they are cheap, and very very safe and generally helpful, what have you got to lose? Perhaps maybe they won't be effective totally for your particular condition but if they improve your immune system, if they reduce your inflammatory status they are not doing any harm.

    It would be more helpful if rather than this generalised smear campaign you pointed to a particular post of mine that's got up your nose and we thrashed that out so I can see what your beef is really about.

    I think by posting links to pubmed folks can generally see where I'm coming from. I know as well as you do that most research is biased and generally speaking influenced by the pharmaceutical companies but as there isn't anything else much it's the best we've got to go on.

    If your concerned about the vitamin d info then really I think it's time you woke up to reality, read the full papers which are online and sussed out that the current RDA and TUL are absurd and that anyone defending them is wearing the Emperor's New Clothes and is asking to be pilloried. It's certainly NOT a case of a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. IT'S THE REVERSE. The current OFFICIAL advice is DANGEROUSLY MISGUIDED and that is leading to a lot of unnecessary deaths.

    EDIT. I didn't say anything last night about the points relating to "double blind" and "meta-analysis" trials, I think these can be used by the Pharmaceutical industry to cast doubt on the effectiveness of particular supplements.

    I think a study such as this one is worth linking to because it is well argued. It fits in with what is already known about vitamin d3, and anyone reading it and following the conclusions will generally improve their health. Because of the cheapness of unpatentable things like cholecalciferol, you will never get the pharmaceutical industry to fund double blind placebo controlled trials because there is no money in it for them.

    If you look at meta-analyses for vitamin d what would they be comparing?
    Trials where less than an effective amount was used...... Almost universally
    Trials where the least effective form (vitamin d2) were used........ Almost exclusively.
    Trials where the period over which the research was conducted is too short to prove anything...Very common.

    If you want to know if something really works you need to measure the status before the research starts. Use an effective amount of the most efficient form available, test to see that the vitamin status actually is raised to the level that is most beneficial, and then record the short/long term effects. This kind of trial is repeatable so the results can be compared when other researchers use the same substance over the same length of time with the same type of patient. Though when looking at these papers you also need to look at the LATITUDE of the research institute. With vitamin d, what may be effective at latitude 33 where strong sunlight is available 365 days of the year may not prove an effective amount at latitude 53, where from October to March vitamin d cannot be made by sunlight exposure.

    To update this information there is The case against ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) as a vitamin supplement a full online paper that anyone with a reading age above 15 should be able to understand.
    My weight loss following Doktor Dahlqvist' Dietary Program
    Start 23rd Jan 2008 14st 9lbs Current 10st 12lbs
  • mr_rush
    mr_rush Posts: 597 Forumite
    "enables the more intelligent reader to suss out the most likely effective treatments and disgard those that are unpromising"

    No I don't think that it does. The majority of people do not have a good enough background knowledge of medicine and specifically cell pathology, immunology, pharmacology together with knowledge regarding trial methodology and statistics to be able to analyse any of the abstracts you have quoted.

    "On the whole I think the selections I make are a reasonable summary of the most promising lines or research. If you wait till all the research is done then you'll be dead anyway"

    Research by its very nature is an ongoing process. However, there are several stages when the scientific community analyses the available evidence and makes a judgement regarding effective treatments. You cannot do this by reading pubmed snippets. How can anyone without enough background knowledge (e.g. a medical degree or immunology degree +/- PhD) make an informed judgement from random abstracts.

    "I didn't say anything last night about the points relating to "double blind" and "meta-analysis" trials, I think these can be used by the Pharmaceutical industry to cast doubt on the effectiveness of particular supplements."

    Wrong again I'm afraid. A well-conducted double blind RCT or meta-analysis is the gold standard of medical research. It is used for medical research funded by the govenment, charities and the pharmacutical industry. It was through double blind RCTs that all treatments for myocardial infarcts were formulated, especially the recent move towards PCI.

    "if you follow those links you will see that I try to select those which lead to free full publications where possible, not all are abstracts"

    The New England Journal of Medicine is considered the premier medical research journal in the world. Unfortunately the website is password protected and only open to subscribers (like me). A similar case exists with many top journals. Therefore even when your links open full papers, they are in the whole not to the top quality journals. The lower the quality of journal, the poorer the quality of submissions and research (in general).

    Your post on the first page to 'common features' of IBS compared to Crohns/UC illustrates many points very well.

    1) - only abstract.
    2) - very obscure journal.
    3) - How many members of the general public reading this are actually going to know what MMC are. Acutally most doctors who have not read an immunology textbook for a while are going to have to think about what MMCs are.
    4) - no statistical analysis is shown at all in the abstract. Nor any methods.
    5) - the abstract talks about about mast cells - who actually knows what a mast cell is and its role in thew wider immune system in a normal individual compared to someone with a disease like Crohns.
    I could go on and on....
    Just for fun I dug out that paper from the archives of the university hospital I work at and and a Consultant in Immunology look at it. I'm afraid he just laughed.

    Your pubmed quotes might make some people think you know what you are going on about. This is simply not the case.
  • she_grinch
    she_grinch Posts: 1,469 Forumite
    The problem with IBS is that each sufferer seems to have their own triggers. Stress is the most common but food intolerances and changes of routine and dietary habit also can affect you. Sadly our busy lifestyles mean that stress levels are kept high and changes to routine are daily events.
    Pucker up and kiss it Whoville! - The Grinch:kiss:
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