# Article on IBS in The Times (27/03)



## Fay (Jan 11, 2001)

Hi all,Saw this article in The Times yesterday: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,72-105016,00.htm Good to know all we need is some assurance and recognition!Anyway, the article next to it: "My taboo condition" is couragious and sounds familiar.Fay


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## eric (Jul 8, 1999)

This is a really good article. Thanks Fay.------------------I work with Mike and the IBS Audio Program. www.ibshealth.com www.ibsaudioprogram.com


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## moms777 (Jan 29, 2000)

Yes, this is a good article, thanks! P.S. I wonder what the vacuum-boot therapy is??


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## eric (Jul 8, 1999)

Moms, I have heard just about everything with IBS and that is a new one on me. Maybe it sucks and keeps all the blood in your feet and not in the digestive tract. You got me.------------------I work with Mike and the IBS Audio Program. www.ibshealth.com www.ibsaudioprogram.com


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## Mike NoLomotil (Jun 6, 2000)

The title of the Times Article is a rhetorical question which is then answered by the authors in the following manner (from the article), with some very key concepts concerning how IBS should be approached as a syndrome, or clinical presentation: __________________________"According to experts who gathered in Glasgow last week for the annual meeting of the British Society of Gastroenterology, researchers should follow a different tack. Rather than seeking new drugs, resources should be concentrated on investigating the mechanisms that cause IBS." ___________________________[Res Ispa Loquitur] ___________________________Unfortunately, he adds, the picture of the best clinical course is often blurred by patient pressure for a cure and the commercial priorities of drug companies. Farthing wants everyone to take a more considered approach. ï¿½I think we have got to know more about how the condition affects the way the body works, and to find out other potential drug targets. There are 20 other neurotransmitters apart from 5HT that may have a role.ï¿½ ______________________[20 or so active in the gastro-neuro-immuno-endocrine direct "axis"...additional influential mediators systemically which affect the system from the circulation not just the humoral response may be many of up to 100 different mediators] ________________________Robin Spiller, Professor of Gastroenterology at University Hospital, Nottingham, agrees. ï¿½Weï¿½ve got to find better ways of targeting the right drug at the right patient. What would really take us forward is to have a blood test or biopsy that indicates why a person has the condition.ï¿½ ________________________[This is actually much closer than people may realize, utlizing the right combination of in vitro and in vivo tests currently available. But there is no universal protocol...each group or person has a proprietary viewpoint or opinion.] ___________________________Doctors often prescribe such conventional drugs as laxatives or antidepressants to try to control the symptoms. Sometimes these provide a long-term solution, sometimes short-term relief. But often they donï¿½t work at all. __________________________[Even if they do relieve symptoms, they are merely attenuating the effects of a dysfunction or group of dysfunctions where the root cause was not isolated...only suppressing the effects. Over time the supression often becomes less effective as the underlying process continues unchecked.] _________________________"Approaches aimed specifically at reducing anxiety, such as hypnotherapy, have proved successful in treating IBS. One study indicated that it helped half the people who tried it. " ________________________[50/50 effectiveness at providing symptomatic relief by attenuation is typical of single-mode therapies for IBS. Same goes for even the best contrived dietary modification if administered as a sole modality. The poorly contrived general diets may only work 30% of the time, the best contrived and implemented diets using manual-isolation methods may assist up to 70%, and diets developed by in vitro (and some in vivo) integrated assessments of multipathway reactions to ingested substances do better...but Any modality ALONE only addresses that one aspect of the syndrome. The best outcomes [which is what we want is it not?] are produced by integrating the available modalities, focusing them to the patients individual needs, to provide maximum prophylaxis and maximum effectiveness of interventional therapies. Few centers if any at present actually do this to the "100th percentile" of the currently available diagnostic and therapeutic methods. Achieving that 100th percentile should be the goal.] _____________________ _____________________If nothing else is accomplished, the article should, if read in context, reinforce the need to look beyond manifestations and into causation. Even such examinations as direct visualization or studying neural activity with tomography do not show why anything is happeneing...they indirectly or directly show Activity, not what is CAUSING the activity. But if these tools are all viewed in the context of one more piece of the puzzle ILLUSTRATING WHAT is going on and combined with ALL the other pictures of WHAT IS HAPPENING (such as jejunal isolation studies, in vitro and in vivo assays of everything from possible bacterial involvement to immunologic involvement) the various subsets that make of the syndrome can be isolated and eradicated. It took 50+ years to do it with the disease entities that originally were simply called "COPD", and not so long ago were collectively and solely characterized symtpomatically and empirically. Until in the last several decades the etiology of each different specific disease and their comorbidities that created the "COPD SYNDROME" have been throughly elucidated. Technology, and its use, "caught up" with the patients disease presentations.Ultimately "IBS" will end up looking like that diagram on page 569 of the MERCK MANUAL (17th edition...may be different in others) which pictorializes what "COPD" actually is, and why it presents the way it does....a very good parallel to what we face with IBS and what will likely eveolve from continued objective study.Eat Well. Think Well. Be Well.MNL_________________ www.leapallergy.com


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