Is Your Colon Spastic?

If you suffer from diarrhea or alternating with constipation, lower abdominal stomach cramps and frequent gas and bloating that you may have a spastic colon!

Spastic colon, otherwise known as Irritable Bowel Syndrome or IBS is a condition that can range from being terribly inconvenient to being debilitating and is considered to be the most common chronic health issue in America today.

Some of the symptoms of era bull bowel syndrome or spastic colon are the same symptoms of other diseases so you want to make sure to get a complete diagnosis before you decide that this Is what you have. Symptoms can include cramping of the lower abdomen, constipation, diarrhea or alternating constipation and diarrhea as well as polluting and gas in mucus in the stools. These attacks can happen at any time during the day or night and sometimes even when you are sleeping, waking you up and causing you to run to the bathroom. This is a real physical problem where your bowels simply just do not work properly.

As you can imagine, people who suffer from a spastic colon may want to hide themselves In the house never knowing when the next attack will come. Although there is no "cure" for spastic colon, there are many things you can do to alleviate and sometimes even eliminate the symptoms.

if you suspect that you have IBS or spastic colon you must see your doctor who will probably send you to a specialist to determine if this Is truly your problem. Symptoms associated with this problem can also mean more serious diseases that need to be treated right away. Says there is no test that can tell you that you specifically have spastic colon, what the doctor will do is run a series of tests to eliminate other problems. These other problems include Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, colon cancer, ovarian cancer, diverticulosis and food allergies.

Once you have been properly diagnosed, you can go about trying to control your symptoms. Although there are some medicines out there for spastic colon (IBS), your best bet is to change your diet. What you want to do is avoid insoluble fiber and high-fat foods. Narrow your diet down to include mostly foods that are full of soluble fiber until your symptoms ease up and then adding different foods and monitor your symptoms to try to pinpoint trigger foods. Once you know what your true foods are you can avoid eating those altogether.

It's important to eat a lot of foods with soluble fiber such as rice, oatmeal, soy, carrots, squash, many in his, potatoes, applesauce and pasta in addition to taking a soluble fiber supplement to help ease the digestive process.

You will have to experiment with different foods to find out which ones make your bowels irritable but some foods that seem to consistently do this for most people are high-fat foods, coffee, and alcohol.

While you want to be careful with foods that are high in the insoluble fibers such as fruits and vegetables you also need to include them in your diet as they contain vitamins and minerals that are important to your overall health. The key is to make sure that you cook them, remove the skins and eat them with other foods that are high in soluble fiber. For example, you might try combining rice with cooked carrots or have oatmeal with your morning fruit

Your spastic colon does not have to turn you into a shut in, afraid to go out shopping or even out to eat for fear that an attack will come. With a little bit of time and experimentation you can identify your trigger foods and get yourself on the eating plan that will soothe the digestive process and help alleviate your symptoms and attacks.