What causes IBS?
The cause of Irritable Bowel Syndrome is actually not completely understood. There is a lot of information we have obtained recently so that we understand it slightly better, but it's not completely known. The key mechanism underlying Irritable Bowel Syndrome is that the brain and the gut don't communicate normally. There's some deregulation or alteration between the brain and gut. And that communication, if it gets deregulated, leads to deregulations or alterations in the way the bowel functions. And that can effect how fast or slow the bowel moves so you can get diarrhoea if it's moving too fast, and constipation if it's moving too slow. If the bowel becomes more sensitive than it should be or what we term "hypersensitive," the patients usually present with pain, bloating, permeability to the bowel or secretion and it can lead to mucus in the stool or change in stool form. But there's a lot of factors that play a role in the deregulate brain-gut communication. So there are more emotional, psychological factors and physical factor to consider. For example, there is a subgroup of patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome who actually developed the condition after they suffered a gastroenteritis or a bowel infection. Now, we all have bowel infections and not everybody gets Irritable Bowel Syndrome but about ten percent of IBS patients actually had a previous documented gastrointestinal infection. And then even though the infection clears, they develop abnormalities in their bowel that lead them to have IBS symptoms. And it also looks like there's a genetic predisposition to getting Irritable Bowel Syndrome. There's some studies that have shown that they can cluster in families or in twin cities have spread. So that's actually an exciting area of research for IBS.
