What is a 'bowel'?

What is a 'bowel'?

Lin Chang (UCLA Division of Digestive Diseases) gives expert video advice on: What is 'irritable bowel syndrome' or IBS?; What does 'irritable' mean in terms of IBS?; What is a 'bowel'? and more...

Bowel refers to the gastrointestinal tract, which is part of the small intestine and a large intestine, so it's called small bowel or large bowel. And we usually term the large bowel, the colon. When we talk about a bowel disorder it's really referring to intestine, which is only part of the gastrointestinal tract.