Inflammatory bowel disease – causes, symptoms, treatment

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Inflammatory bowel diseases are a group of inflammatory bowel diseases whose symptoms are changes and ulceration of the gastrointestinal walls and recurrent, chronic diarrhea. These diseases include ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and unspecified colitis. So how to treat and how to deal with this disease?

Inflammatory bowel disease: causes

There are many research methods in modern medicine, but none of them indicates a clear cause of inflammatory bowel disease. This makes it difficult to find an appropriate method for a complete cure.

It is believed that IBD is caused by genetics, weakened immune system and environmental factors (such as poor diet, stress, smoking, drinking alcohol, environmental pollution, high content of artificial preservatives in food, etc.). Most often, young people between 20 and 40 suffer from IBD.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Types and Symptoms

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is one of the two diseases of inflammatory bowel disease. It causes inflammation of the lining of the colon, leading to extensive, shallow ulcers.

UC manifests itself:

  1. diarrhea (with pieces of mucus and blood)
  2. stomach pain (cramps)
  3. a sudden feeling of urgency on your stool
  4. lack of appetite,
  5. weight loss.

UC often causes parenteral symptoms: uveitis and sclera, joint pain, erythema nodosum, alopecia, liver disease, thrombosis and anemia.

Calprotectin, a marker of intestinal inflammation, is helpful in recognizing inflammatory processes. Go to Medonet Market now and order a calprotectin mail-order test.

Check it out: Ulcerative colitis – a lifelong disease

Inflammatory bowel disease: Crohn’s disease

Another disease of inflammatory bowel disease is Crohn’s disease. It is chronic and slowly progressing. Lesions can show up in any part of the digestive tract. Inflammation affects the intestinal mucosa partially or completely. Inflammation leads to the formation of fistulas, abscesses and ulcerations. The symptoms that appear are similar to those of UC. These include abdominal pain of varying intensity, vomiting, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, flatulence, and extraintestinal symptoms.

What these conditions have in common is the presence of long and exhausting diarrhea that makes it difficult to function normally. According to patients’ reports, they sometimes use the toilet even 20 times a day.

IBD leads to serious and serious complications, ranging from intestinal perforation, diseases of the joints, skin, eyes, liver to colon cancer.

Inflammation of the intestine – genetic testing of the NOD2 gene for Crohn’s disease will be performed in a mail-order manner, by sending a blood sample to the laboratory. Results are available after 4-5 weeks.

Inflammatory bowel disease: diagnosis

Based on chronic symptoms, your primary care physician will recommend an appointment with a gastroenterologist. The latter, in turn, will order tests to rule out infectious intestinal diseases. For the correct diagnosis of IBD, endoscopic examination (gastroscopy, colonoscopy) should be performed. Often, the doctor decides to take a specimen for histopathological examination and additionally sends the patient to an X-ray or magnetic resonance imaging of the intestines.

To determine whether our intestines are inflamed, it is worth performing a Dispatch test for fecal calprotectin concentration. Its too high concentration may indicate the presence of inflammation.

Inflammatory bowel disease: treatment

A common feature of IBD is that exacerbation of symptoms alternates with periods of remission in which symptoms resolve completely or partially. Thus, the treatment is always adjusted to the stage of the disease, symptoms, the patient’s state of health and their age. A complete cure is not possible, therefore treatment is pharmacological maintenance of remission and symptom relief. For this purpose, probiotics may prove useful. At Medonet Market, you can now buy a probiotic for intestinal inflammation and digestive support.

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