Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Ted_Hutchinson

mr_rush wrote:

No I don't think that it does.

Well that's your opinion I believe most people who read these forums are adults who can make their own minds up. The amount of work that is published means NO ONE can keep up with everything and to a large extent consultants and doctors themselves will rely on abstracts and executive summaries. In the same way do you really believe our politians have time to read in detail all the background information relating to the issues they decide on. They'd never decide anything if they did.

mr_rush wrote:

Wrong again I'm afraid. A well-conducted double blind RCT or meta-analysis is the gold standard of medical research.

That is your opinion and reflection of the way the medical profession is organised. It plays into the hands of big business as no one without major finance behind them can disprove the effect. But it has it's flaws as the more junk you put into a computer the less reliable the results. Small carefully controlled trials are able to be repeated. Large multi centre trials are more prone to error.

mr_rush wrote:

The New England Journal of Medicine is considered the premier medical research journal in the world..

No doubt about that but that doesn't mean they are immune from bias. See The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It (Hardcover) written by one of their staff. Perhaps as a subscriber you will be able to locate the supplement on salt they included a while back, entirely written by members of the salt industry but with no attribution at all to that fact.

mr_rush wrote:

a Consultant in Immunology look at it. I'm afraid he just laughed.

Shame isn't it that there are so many members of the medical profession who instant reaction to anything that might make them think is this. Try reading Bad Medicine for a realistic assessment of how long it takes the medical profession to grasp new ideas.

The purpose for the link provide which concerns you, was simply to point up the fact that some doctors think their may be an overlap between IBS<>IBD.
This may explain why some with IBS also have IBD and some with treated IBD continue to have IBS. The fact that I only usually point to one abstract is because this is not a scientific forum and it is inappropriate to put every possible relevant source, I simply haven't the time and it's totally unnecessary. But if in fact you had clicked both the links in that post you would have had two references showing supporting the same point.But if you want another fine try this. Irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease: interrelated diseases?
It doesn't matter a toss how obscure the journal is if there are several researchers exploring the same idea in different countries. The point is simply that the two conditions MAY have things in common.
Point 3 again isn't relevant. You don't have to understand a word of those abstracts to grasp the point that some, not all, but SOME doctors can see overlaps between them that are of interest and worth investigating further.

Point 4 again a totally irrelevant observation. I don't care at all about statistical analysis. It isn't relevant to the point I was making. Which was that some people think there might be common demominators. The other link you chose to ignore did have some statistics in it which may have interested you but again my point wasn't to prove there was or wasn't a connection, it was simply to show that other people in the field think it's a possibility.
Point 5. 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 clearly you don't but the fact that there are around 28 papers discussing mast cells in relation to IBS and a similar number discussing mast cells involvement in IBD should tell you something, irrespective of what those particular papers say, where they were published, how much statistical jiggery pokery was involved, or how comprehensible they are to the average reader here. I could go on an on but there are none so blind.....

Believability of relative risks and odds ratios in abstracts

cheapskate101

After 8 years of having to know where every loo was in every town I visited, I finally found an almost-cure for my IBS... and yes, I'd had the full complement of Immodium, Buscopan etc etc and lots of advice and diagrams from varoius doctors, including the internal 'colon discovery trip', with accompanying video,at hospital.

My daughter suggested cutting out dairy foods. I did - and now I can go almost anywhere and live on Soya milk, which I've got used to. Incidentally French milk gives me IBS but Portuguese milk doesn't. It isn't lactose as I've tried milk without lactose - and it's back to the bowl.

I do sometimes get twinges but find Codeine Phosphate helps. I thought this was going to be another ineffective tablet, like all the rest, but it was prescribed by a female doctor who said: 'A lot of my ladies find this useful'. Amazingly she was right. Can't think why as the ordinary codeine doesn't seem to have any effect and the CP tablts are only 15mg but def worth a try if you Mum is a middle aged lady.

dbs

In addition to avoiding dairy foods avoid redmeat,alcohol,fried food ,egg,yolks,coffee,fizzy drinks,caffeine,reduce fat intake much as possilble.

Reduce stress,anxiety problems.

Drink herbal teas, take a soluble fiber supplement.

This worked for me but it is a very strict diet.

Ted_Hutchinson

Report on the Vitamin D Status of Adult and Pediatric Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease and its Significance for Bone Health and Disease.
Bearing in mind that the main source of vitamin d is through the skin the question of malabsorption and gastrointestinal losses through an inflamed intestine shouldn't be a problem if people with Irritable Bowel conditions are getting regular safe exposure to sunlight or UVB producing suntan lamps.

As there are no guidelines for monitoring vitamin D status, treating hypovitaminosis D, and maintaining optimal vitamin D stores in those with IBD this remains something which they must take into their own hands if they wish to benefit from the role of vitamin D in the regulation of the immune system of the gut and the potential of vitamin D and its derivatives as therapeutic adjuncts.

Tom54

I came across this forum today and noted the comments made by Ted Hutchinson about Aloe Vera, as supplied by Forever Living Products. May I make clear that I am a distributor of FLP products, of four years standing, and offer the following observations.

FLP Aloe Vera drinking gel is 97% pure Aloe Vera. No other Aloe Vera drink currently marketed contains more than 50% Aloe Vera, and some contain as little as 10%. This would be reason enough for the price differential noted by Ted.

Aloe Vera is a plant and will decay naturally unless steps are taken to preserve it. Methods such as freezing, drying etc. tend to degrade the Aloe and may reduce its value as a complex of nutrients. FLP employs a unique stabilisation process employing a cocktail of naturally occurring plant extracts which prevents such decay and ensures that the product has a shelf life of five years while sealed and three months after opening. This process is patented by FLP. The US Food and Drug Administration has tested the finished product and declared it to be "essentially identical" to the freshly harvested plant.

Aloe Vera contains at least 77 separate nutrients, vitamins and minerals. The current belief is that it is numbers of these constituents operating together that contribute to the beneficial effects reported by users. It would appear to be superfluous for the Pharmaceutical industry to reinvent, inevitably at greater cost, what is available naturally.

Finally, the most important form of research is that undertaken by users of FLP Aloe Vera. FLP does not guarantee that everyone who uses its Aloe will experience benefits as the plant interacts uniquely with each individual user. For this reason all FLP products come with a 60 day money back guarantee. This means that a customer who does not feel that he or she has benefited may have 100% of their outlay refunded, without question, for all the product purchased over a period of 60 days. Does any other supplier do this?