irritable bowel syndrome symptoms
Please note: Irritable bowel syndrome cannot under any circumstances be self-diagnosed. See a doctor or you are putting your health at risk.
Irritable bowel syndrome symptoms vary between patients, and can be anything from a mild inconvenience to an agonising experience. Typical IBS symptoms include:
- diarrhea
- constipation
- alternating diarrhea and constipation
- excess gas or wind
- abdominal pain
- bloating
- nausea
- back pain.
You do not need to have all these symptoms to be diagnosed with IBS, but most people will have some form of stomach problem and at least one or two accompanying symptoms.
Some IBS sufferers find that they have more diarrhea than constipation, while others have more constipation than diarrhea. These two types of IBS are called diarrhea-predominant IBS (or IBS-D) and constipation-predominant IBS (or IBS-C). Other sufferers may alternate between diarrhea and constipation and find it hard to strike a balance between the two.
Your symptoms may have come on gradually over a period of time, or may have been set off after a specific event. It is quite common for people to notice IBS symptoms after a bout of food poisoning, for example, and also after surgery - classic cases include symptoms appearing after a hysterectomy or removal of your gallbladder.
IBS can affect people of all ages, including young children and elderly people. It tends to affect more women than men in Western countries, although in Eastern countries such as India more men than women seem to suffer - or at least, more men than women tend to seek treatment. These gender differences may be due to hormonal effects, or they may just be the result of different attitudes to health in different cultures, such as a 'macho' attitude to health problems in the West creating a reluctance to talk about bowel symptoms.
In countries such as the UK and US, as many as 10 to 15% of the population are diagnosed with IBS at some point in their lives, and doctors suspect that more people suffer in silence. IBS has been cited as the second leading cause of absenteeism, second only to the common cold.