Understanding Your Irritable Bowel

The best book yet on IBS published by the IBS Research Appeal.

"Understanding Your Irritable Bowel" has been written for the many sufferers who tell IBS researchers at the Central Middlesex Hospital that they cannot find clear information or guidance about the condition.

Their letters, often very tragic, tell how even their GPs sometimes brush their questions aside or imply that they are malingerers. Others are frightened that their condition might be more sinister than it really is. Others tell how IBS has ruined their lives, their working relationships, their marriages and sex lives. Others want to learn how they can cope so that they can go on holiday - or even simply get out of the house and go to the shops without fear. Many clearly believe they are alone in their suffering and have given up hope of ever finding relief from the painful, debilitating and often embarrassing symptoms of IBS.

Professor David Silk's response has been to write this book. It is without doubt the most comprehensive, and easiest to understand, book yet written on this subject. It is based on the author's clinical experience. As Consultant Gastroenterologist and Director of IBS Research at the Central Middlesex Hospital and Consultant Gastroenterologist at the Princess Grace Hospital, David Silk is recognised as one of the country's leading specialists in this subject.

"Understanding Your Irritable Bowel" answers the most frequently raised questions put to the Research Team by patients and does so in clear and straightforward language. Chapters include: What is Irritable Bowel?; Understanding the Gastrointestinal Tract; Understanding Causes and Treatments of Irritable Bowel; Variants of Irritable Bowel; Understanding the symptoms; Understanding the Investigations; and Understanding the Treatments. There is a chapter on Irritable Bowel and Women; and twenty four case histories are included, selected by the Research Team's Mr. Simon Cole MB,BS,FRCS, from more that 400 letters generously submitted by subscribers to IBS Bulletin. Each case history carries a detailed response from Professor Silk. The contents are illustrated throughout with diagrams, x-rays and charts.

In "Understanding Your Irritable Bowel", Professor Silk gives a detailed and easy to follow explanation of this complex condition that affects at least one person in five throughout the world. The text is illustrated with a number of explanatory diagrams. In this revised and updated edition, he discusses current medical thinking on the treatment and management of IBS and has added a chapter reviewing research paths being followed by some of the leading pharmaceutical companies. He concludes the book with a series of case histories of factual situations presented at his clinics, including the Central Middlesex Hospital where the IBS Research Appeal is based and of which, Professor Silk is Director of IBS Research.

Everyone who suffers from Irritable Bowel should keep a copy of this book handy - for its guidance, its comfort and the sound, practical advice it gives.

Understanding Your Irritable Bowel - Revised Edition published 2001.  The book is printed in A5 paperback format (15cm (5¾ inches) x 21cm (8¼ inches)) and in its 160 pages includes 11 drawings, over 20 tables and graphs and 11 photographs (including 5 'thumbnails').

As with all our publications, proceeds from sales go to fund further research into IBS at the Central Middlesex Hospital.

 

List of Chapters from "Understanding your Irritable Bowel

1.  What is Irritable Bowel (IBS)?

2.  Understanding the gastrointestinal tract.

3.  Understanding the causes of Irritable Bowel.

4.  Variants of Irritable Bowel.

5.  Understanding the symptoms.

6.  Understanding the investigations.

7.  Understanding the treatments.

8.  Irritable Bowel and women.

9.  Understanding new treatments for IBS.

10. Case histories.

Samples of Pictures from "Understanding Your Irritable Bowel

 

Figure 6.6

Barium enema x-ray. Note the presence of the pouches or diverticula in the lower left region of the colon (sigmoid region).  The diagnosis here is diverticular disease of the colon.

 

Figure 6.7

Photographs taken during colonoscopy from different regions of the colon.

Sample Text from "Understanding your Irritable Bowel"

Diet in IBS

There is probably nothing more contentious in IBS than the role of diet as a cause of the disorder. The situation is not helped by the fact that researchers continue to disagree about the importance of intolerances reported by patients to different types of foods and their role in causing IBS.  It was Dr. Hunter and his colleagues at Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge (UK), who reported that specific foods provoked IBS symptoms in two thirds of their other patients.  Subsequently other researches could not confirm this.  However, when Dr. Jewel and his colleagues at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, showed that nearly half of 189 IBS patients had improvement in their symptoms when treated with an exclusion diet for three weeks, and that the majority of their patients continued to remain well on a modified diet for over a year, the interest in the role of diet in IBS was rekindled.  Most recently, Italian researchers have reported very good results in the management of a large group of diarrhoea-predominant IBS patients treated either with an exclusion diet or with a compound called sodium cromoglycate that is usually used in patients with true food allergy.  

It is certainly our experience that many IBS patients do implicate diet as an important factor in the management of their symptoms.  We have recently undertaken a survey of IBS patients in the community to investigate dietary aspects of the disorder.  We were interested to find out that the majority of patients who had been given dietary advice were advised to stick to a high fibre diet.  Like other researchers recently we found that only 16% of patients had actually improved:  in one third of patients a high fibre diet did not seem to make any difference and in nearly half it actually made symptoms worse.  Many patients perceive that milk, dairy products, wheat, alcohol and caffeine maybe the cause of their IBS symptoms and exclude them from the diet.  In fact. in our survey, only a third of patients reported a worsening of their symptoms when ingesting these foodstuffs.  One of the problems is that only about 2% of people who perceive they are intolerant of certain foods, actually are on formal scientific testing.  It is this that makes it so difficult to accept many of the claims about diet as a cause in IBS.  There is no doubt, however, that there is a small group of IBS patients who are truly sensitive to certain foods and in whom symptoms do improve if they are excluded or if the deleterious effects of that foodstuff are overcome by treatment with sodium cromoglycate.    

 

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