Medical Questions » Gut (Intestines) Questions » Question No. 429
| Question: | Doctors have diagnosed my wife' s condition as a bowel syndrome, and she has to watch her diet as eggs and meat cause diarrhoea. Her bowel X-ray shows diverticulae. Can you help us please? |
| Answer: | It appears that you may be confused by two different bowel conditions, although it is possible that your wife has both of them.
The irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) causes painful spasms of the gut that result in irregular bowel activity, and is caused by anxiety, stress or depression. The treatment involves a high-fibre diet, bulking agents (eg. Normacol, Meta-mucil) and drugs to stop the gut spasm.
Diverticulitis is the inflammation or infection of multiple small out-pocketings (diverticulae) of the large gut wall. When inflamed, these diverticulae cause diarrhoea and abdominal pain. The diverticulae are the result of a low-fibre diet over many years, and the condition is also treated with bulking agents, a high-fibre diet and antispasmodics. Antibiotics are also used sometimes to remove any infection in the diverticulae.
The symptoms of the two conditions are very similar, and only by performing an X-ray of the bowel (a barium enema) or examining the bowel with a flexible microscope tube (colonoscopy) can the diagnosis be made.
It is certainly possible for the two conditions to be present in the one patient, and one may worsen the other, but as the treatments are almost identical, the differentiation between them is not of critical importance.
Both conditions can be well controlled in most patients. The irritable bowel syndrome often comes and goes depending on stress levels, while diverticulitis will persist for the rest of the patient' s life, causing occasional periods of diarrhoea and discomfort.
|
|
|
