IBS: Uncomfortable Times

There are certain topics we are more comfortable talking about than others. In this post we’re talking about an uncomfortable one mentally and certainly physically if you have it: IBS, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

It’s estimated that 10-20% of the population of the world has irritable bowel syndrome. Theoretically that’s one of every five people listening in on this call today have problems with irritable bowel. It may be the most common syndrome that affects more people than anything else out there.

Some of us have different ideas and constructs about just what irritable bowel is so let me go over some of the ideas on that. First there’s abdominal pain even though there are a lot of things that cause abdominal pain. Discomfort and pain are the harbingers of IBS. Sometimes there is constipation and interestingly enough sometimes there is diarrhea. Even more interesting is that it alternates between constipation and diarrhea, sometimes in the same stool. Difficult to pass and infrequent bowel movements are common. People frequently have urgency with those which can be a significant problem if you at WalMart or out on a date or having a nice dinner. It can be very inconvenient. That is the major issue. It’s not only uncomfortable but it is inconvenient.

Like many things, as you’ve discovered while we’ve covered a number of different topics, we in the medical establishment don’t know what causes it and a lot of times we don’t know how to definitively treat it. Frequently treatments consist of mere symptom management and that is certainly true for irritable bowel syndrome. We don’t have a clue what causes it. We know some things that affect it. We know that dairy products bother some people, among other different foods, and there may be some allergy situations as well. Whole grains are indicated as a possible irritant. There are a lot of different ideas there but it doesn’t affect everybody the same so there is no definitive answer as to what to avoid. It’s mostly trial and error with each individual that has the syndrome.

There is good news too. It doesn’t really seem to change the structure or the function of the normal parts of the bowel. They don’t get changed like with Celiac Sprue or Crohn’s colitis or things like that. It’s not known to lead to other diseases. That’s also good news. While it is uncomfortable and inconvenient it is not known to lead to other serious problems.

So why does IBS happen? We’ll talk about the possibilities next post, so stay tuned.

Sunlight: The Good (Or, How To Make It Good)

I interviewed a local nutritional specialist (who is a brilliant person, by the way) in preparation for this series on sunlight. He only had one recommendation. I usually don’t like to mention name brands or anything, but he said Life Extension had currently the only sunscreen that he would personally use out of a bottle. Otherwise, there are some other good things that can help protect you. Shea butter is one of those that is known to help block UVA and UVB. If I’m going out in the sun for any period of time I’ll take some Vitamin E supplements, at least 400 IU’s if not 800. I’ll take a couple of grams, that’s 2000 milligrams or more, of Vitamin C. You should probably take 800 IU’s of Vitamin D (what you get from sunlight, as we talked about previously) or more. Ironically, that actually is a good damage preventer for sunlight itself. Certainly you want to be taking Vitamin D all winter because that’s what you are not getting when you’re not out in the sunlight during the winter.

When I was in China a couple of summers ago there were Chinese out sun bathing. They were putting something on them. They were out there all day with it and didn’t get sunburned. It turned out that it was green tea extract. Because of the anti-oxidant properties, they would put green tea extract on them and they did just great. I was very impressed with the anti-oxidant properties of that. Now I don’t think any scientific, double-blind studies have been done on that for UVA and UVB so I don’t know that I could scientifically recommend it, but they were real happy with the results.

Maybe the most unheralded product for sunblock and sunscreen out there is probably MSM which is what it goes by in the nutrition shop. MSM is maybe one of the best things you can possibly take as an oxidizing prevention agent for sun damage as you are going out in the sun. I would take at least 1000 milligrams (one gram) of that, if not two, if I were going to be out in the sun for any period of time.

The amount of sun exposure varies according to your altitude. If you’re in Colorado and you are out there 10 minutes you can get burned on a sunny day because there is no atmosphere between you and sun. If you’re down at sea level and a little bit of tan, it might take you 30 minutes to get enough sun. I should also mention that the color of your skin affects how quickly you get enough healthy sun radiation.

There are a lot of different things that affect the amount of sun that you get. I mentioned the time of day: you might want to stay out of direct sun between 11 and say 3 o’clock when it is directly overhead. Also, don’t forget good old clothing. They even rate sports clothing and its sunblock ability. Get out there and get 15-30 minutes of sun and then put on your sunscreen that has UVA and UVB in it. Take your Vitamins E, C and D , and your MSM. Maybe you even want to drink a little green tea and spread a little shea butter on yourself. Then put your clothes on after a little while or just get out of the sun. Enjoy it more in the mornings or in the evenings. Your skin will be happier for it. You’ll live longer and everything will be well with your skin.

Sunlight: The Ugly and the FDA

Last time I started talking about UV radiation and ended with a note about melanoma and how sunlight can actually help prevent melanoma, in moderation. It’s currently the recommendation that you get 15 – 30 minutes of direct sunlight a day on as much of your skin as you would care to bare to whoever is around. This is a moderate amount that is very beneficial for manufacturing vitamins, preventing melanoma and things like that.

Beyond that you get into some trouble with damaging the skin. The way UVA damages the skin is through DNA mutation, and as we’ve all heard at some point in our life that can lead to cancer. There were a number of types of skin cancer, whether it is basal cell or melanoma or different types of skin cancer, that can arise from too much exposure. It also wrinkles the skin, damages the skin in other ways. Too much sun is not a good thing.

What about sun screens? We’ve all heard, yes, lather it on. Now we’re hearing it may not be effective and some are saying that it, in itself, is damaging. There is a huge conundrum, a huge mental problem going on. Do or don’t I? Let’s talk about those for just a minute.

Part of that problem has been caused by the government standard, the FDA nomenclature, if you will, the wording that they use. The SPF (sun protection factor) only takes into account the UVB part of the spectrum. Well, that’s the part that causes basal cell carcinomas and weathering of skin and some of the tanning. We thought as long as we were protecting the skin with UVB protectants, PABA and those type of compounds, we were doing a good thing. The problem is there is that other part of the spectrum, the UVA part that most of the common things in sunblock and sunscreen don’t block. That’s a part of the ultraviolet area that causes melanoma and other problems. So we haven’t been protecting ourselves for some time against a very, very harmful part of the light spectrum.

Now what do you do? They are trying to come out with some new sunscreens which protect against both A and B UV rays. Some people in the state of California (which is always on the forefront of what causes cancer it seems) are actually suing most of the major manufacturers of these sunscreens because they say they mislead the public into believing they were protected. They say it lasts 6 hours when it usually only lasts an hour or two. There is a whole lot of controversy in the area of sunscreens and sunblocks right now.

Next time I’ll tell you what I do when I go out into the sun, and what I think works best to protect your skin.

Sunlight: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

We’ve all had that experience where we’ve gotten too much sun. That night you’re laying in bed but you can’t sleep. All the sheets come off and you can’t make the air conditioner run quite fast enough to be cool, because you are on fire.

All of that because of a little sunshine. Soon it will be the season of sunshine and we all have a tendency to get a little too much at times. It happened at my house with some friends visiting over the weekend a while back. There was a young lady who was just white as a sheet but she was pinker than my wife’s roses when she left.

Sunlight – is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Well, yes. Like many other things it is good in small quantities but bad in large quantities. There’s been this huge debate for so long about sunlight and sun protection. At one point in time the standard medical dogma was “avoid all sunlight”. Well, that made cancer rates go up. We’ve specifically learned now that not getting enough sunshine (because of Vitamin D production) is a cause of cancer. Let’s go back to the concept of moderation; everything in moderation.

What type of sunlight do we get? There are two major types that are of concern; UVA and UVB. These are part of the sunlight spectrum, way down on the ultraviolet end of the wavelength, that tend to be damaging and yet also can be very helpful. For instance, Vitamin D is manufactured when that particular wavelength of sun hits us. Vitamin D is a wonderful thing. It gives us strong bones. It’s essential for incorporating calcium into the bones. It prevents rickets, osteoporosis later in life. So there are a lot of good things that Vitamin D does.

The scare with sunlight has been melanoma. Melanoma rates have been dramatically rising. There was this “stay out of sunlight because you’ll get melanoma” mantra that doctors would repeat. But now you have to scratch your head and say, “Did melanoma rates rise after people went indoors under fluorescent lighting for most of their life, or when they were out in the sunshine most of their life?” That makes you beg the question: is not some sunlight good for you? Again, standard medicine has come full circle to say yes, you need some sunlight every day, even to prevent melanoma.

Sunlight is a particularly interesting topic to me, so I'll continue to talk more on this subject soon.

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