IBS and Point of Focus

A study by researchers in the field of gastroenterology found that IBS patients (i.e. those under a doctor’s care for IBS) had a statistically significantly elevated incidence of psycho-emotional disorders of one kind or another than people who HAVE IBS (or IBS symptoms) but who are NOT being treated by their doctors for IBS.

Isn’t THAT interesting?

Combining this study with the fact that IBS is a disease purely of the industrialized world raises a lot of questions about what exactly causes so many people to suffer from this often debilitating syndrome.

The medical community has long been telling us that IBS is a “stress-related illness” but unfortunately that’s about all they will say when it comes to stress-related illnesses.

The truth is, “stress” is a fairly ambiquous term, and it may be time to start identifying some more specific concepts that currently just fall beneath the umbrella of “stress.”

Going on a vacation is a source of stress! Does vacationing cause IBS??? (Well, some people DO notice gastrointestinal distress the first few days of a vacation, so…)

Let me clarify what I mean by a vacation being a stress… “Stress” most literally means any set of conditions perceived in which the mind/body complex determines some degree of possible or imminent threat that requires a response. And since we humans are “creatures of habit” actually anything that is outside our normal or expected experience is (as far as the subconscious is concerned) a stress. Even if we’re enjoying it!

So to say that “stress” is a cause or contributing factor in IBS is simply not therapeutically useful. Rather, I propose that we begin to examine what sorts of things an individual is focusing on, both consciously and subconsciously, as contributing factors to IBS. After all, this sort of internalization of “stress” is quite directly metaphorical, being all about what we hold and what we release and when.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 9:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.