Other Health Conditions Associated With Irritable Bowel Syndrome

As with most syndromes, the irritable bowel syndrome is built up of different signs and symptoms. Fortunately however, there has been no definite link found between IBS and other serious illnesses such as cancer. Through the years, IBS has been called by many names, among them colitis, mucous colitis, spastic colon, or spastic bowel. However, no link has been established between IBS and inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.

Patients who are suffering the most extreme symptoms of IBS have found that the quality of their life has been severely affected as well. You can find many of them saying that while they did not have depression or mood swings before; their decreased functionality has made them feel helpless.

Irritable bowel syndrome can also be complicated by non-gastrointestinal symptoms, taking place simultaneously or accelerated due to IBS. Fatigue is one of the usual manifestations of irritable bowel syndrome. Difficulty in sleeping is another. There are patients who do not sleep well, and if you do not sleep well, which is a time for the body to restore itself, it can lead to worse bowel symptoms the next day, and that actually has been shown in studies.

The additional element of irritable bowel syndrome is that it coexists with some other problems, where you might have symptoms which might be outside of the gastro-intestinal tract. Like fibromyalgia, which is a chronic pain condition of the muscles. With most patients, the chronic muscle pain, which is obviously external of the GI tract, is actually developed due to IBS. Those suffering from IBS have a tendency to develop other symptoms related to it, and the more serious the condition of the patient, the higher the chances that he will acquire other non gastro-intestinal symptoms, including fibromyalgia, and other treatable medical conditions as migraine headaches.

Irritable bowel syndrome is also highly connected to leaky gut syndrome and gut dysbiosis, in the form of small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). Other than that, IBS may also be linked to various environmental illnesses. Other medical findings show that those diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), Gulf war syndrome (GWS), and autism mal also experience IBS. Recent studies have investigated this connection and started to find attainable reasons why IBS so frequently goes hand in hand with these other chronic illnesses.

Much of the research made has been focused on the connection of SIBO in most of these conditions, particularly in CFS and fibromyalgia. While it is known that SIBO is common among IBS patients, recent studies have also shown that the same holds true for those with CFS and fibromyalgia. Research indicates that SIBO I present in those suffering from either IBS or fibromyalgia.

Interestingly, they found that SIBO appears to be more severe in fibromyalgia patients and the severity of the SIBO in individual patients correlated strongly with the severity of the pain they suffered. To speculate on this research, could it be possible that if the SIBO of those with only IBS were to get worse, they too would experience fibromyalgic pain? Only further research can answer that question.