Everyone has an upset stomach from time to time.
You probably know the sort of thing I mean – sometimes you've got gas and at other times you feel queasy or nauseous. There may be times when you can't seem to go to the toilet for days, constipated as can be, but there are other days when diarrhea strikes and you can't stop going!
Although we all know that there are some foods or drinks that might prompt our digestive system to react in a certain way – a big meal of very spicy food sends many people scurrying to the bathroom for example – the only really predictable thing about our digestive system is its unpredictability.
However, because for most of us our digestive system acts the way we expect it to most of the time, we don't really give a great deal of thought to what our colon and gastrointestinal system is doing unless it is ‘misbehaving'.
This is not the case for everyone however. A surprisingly high number – some reports suggest that it could be as many as one in five US citizens – suffers from a chronic condition called Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and for these people, what their digestive system is doing can often dictate what they do too.
As with the majority of non-life threatening medical conditions, there are essentially two ways that you can deal with IBS.
Option one is to visit your doctor or other medical care professional, get a prescribed pharmaceutical medicine and take it. This option might be an effective way of managing your condition but as with many pharmaceutical situations and the drugs related to them, you have to consider the side effects before deciding whether this approach to IBS is the right one for you or your kids.
The second alternative is to do things the natural way. Irritable bowel syndrome is a chronic disorder (a long-term problem that could potentially last for life) that affects your gastrointestinal tract and intestines. Guess what? Women who are moms are twice as likely to suffer from this problem as other people. In the next blog I will discuss what you might be able to do to prevent this disorder from taking over your life. It's not fatal but It can feel like it!