“Intestinal health” was once a term used only by naturopaths and others in the fields of pseudoscience.
But it has become a commonplace in conventional medicine, largely due to the growing number of patients with abdominal problems and pain.
Mater Hospital’s director of gastroenterology, Jakob Begun, said Australia had some of the highest rates of bowel disease in the world, especially for chronic conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer and allergic diseases. related.
With the rise in chronic conditions has also come a wave of people suffering from general upset stomach, discomfort and related daily symptoms.
General practitioner Sue Raju said she had experienced a noticeable increase in patients with bowel problems at her Gold Coast clinic.
“In general, people in their 20s and 30s have a lot of irritable bowel symptoms,” said Dr. Raju.
“And of course, everyone wants a quick fix and I often find that people have been taking a lot of vitamins and supplements to help.”
But he said a healthy gut biome was the most important step toward recovery.
Dr. Begun agreed.
He said the key to gut health was a diverse microbiome, or having many different species of bacteria in the gut.
Prebiotics over probiotics
Dr. Begun said modern Western diets and health tricks prevented the diversity of intestinal bacteria.
She said probiotics did not work to restore a healthy gut, despite patients spending hundreds a year on the “$ 5 billion industry, with very little scientific evidence to support her claims.”
Jakob Begun says Australia has some of the highest rates of bowel disease in the world. (Supplied by: Mater Hospital)
“There has been research in the field of microbiome manipulation and unfortunately probiotics had a really negative experience,” Dr. Begun said.
He said they did not treat the inflamed intestine very well.
“In some studies, for example, even after taking antibiotics, if probiotics are taken, it delays the return of a normal microbiome,” Dr. Begun said.
“So in any case, it could sometimes be harmful to take probiotics.”
Dr. Begun said a healthy person could have more than 300 different species of bacteria in the gut, and probiotics did little to replicate that scenario.
“Probiotics are one species or a handful of spices,” he said.
“You can see that this would not restore a wide variety of bacteria, and this is not necessarily a healthy state.
“So my current advice when patients ask me is that, according to the current data we have available, probiotics don’t seem to be helpful in restoring gut health.”
He said prebiotics were the way to go.
He said soluble and insoluble fiber and acid-resistant starches could be obtained from foods such as bananas, sweet potatoes and potatoes or also from store-bought powders.
“Prebiotics are changing the foods that bacteria use to grow and replicate, so this will have a big, big change in the microbiome when you change your diet,” he said.
“They’ve been shown in scientific studies to help restore your microbiome better than probiotics … and they have a benefit on symptoms.”
Diets wreak havoc
Begun and Raju said that people who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome symptoms such as constipation, diarrhea, bloating, allergies and pain should also look at their diet.
“Our Western diet is something that causes a lot of damage … or a combination of stress, work environment, everything starts to manifest,” Dr. Raju said.
Sue Raju is encouraging other doctors to take an integrative approach to treating intestinal problems. (Provided by: Sue Raju)
Dr. Begun, who has been researching and treating patients in space for more than a decade, said diets that included highly processed foods “were doing a lot in our gut.”
“This probably triggers our susceptibility to this type of disease,” he said.
“It wouldn’t be weird to see someone at my clinic say they have a McDonald’s and a sausage for breakfast.”
Research suggested that genetics, environmental pressures, and immune systems also played an important role.
Dr. Raju, who has been a general practitioner for more than 20 years, said she had an inflammatory bowel disease.
He encouraged other physicians to take a more inclusive approach when treating patients with intestinal problems and believed that many modern methods were not short.
“To be honest, in medical school we never studied much about the intestinal biome,” Dr. Raju said.
“Only in recent years, I think, is there more medical attention and awareness about gut health.”
Intestinal health for the future
Dr Begun said that although the industry had come a long way, there was still room for improvement.
He encouraged general practitioners to improve the skills of the space and make it a treatment priority.
“Medicine is a constantly evolving field and fortunately for us, we are constantly progressing and learning new things and applying new techniques,” he said.
“But it often takes many years for new studies to be validated and then accepted by the medical community.”
He said it was important to train doctors to understand some of the data so that they could understand why the interventions might work and address some of the beliefs of the medical community.
Posted 2 h 2 hours agoDmec. May 25, 2022 at 2:14 am, last updated 2 hours 2 hours agoWednesday, May 25, 2022 at 2:25 AM