Gastrointestinal

Dietary Advice Based on the Bacteria in Your Gut

Companies say the microbiome varies from person to person—and so should the most effective diet.

How Stress Wreaks Havoc on Your Gut – and What to Do about It

The gut is especially vulnerable to the presence of chronic (and even acute) stress, demonstrating stress-induced changes in gastric secretion, gut motility, mucosal permeability and barrier function, visceral sensitivity and mucosal blood flow.

Just Eat More Fiber

Diets can be overwhelming, but one small change can do a lot. The best part about this health advice is that it doesn’t involve eating something you don’t like. Fiber is in almost every fruit, vegetable, and whole grain. You could eat more apples and celery, sure, but there’s also fiber in things like corn tortillas, beans, grainy bread, and some types of breakfast cereal.

Stomach and mood disorders: how your gut may be playing with your mind

Our gastrointestinal tract, or gut, is sometimes described as our “second brain”. This is because it is controlled by its own complex nervous system comprising hundreds of millions of neurons – more than all the nerves in your spinal cord. The gut and brain talk to each other through nerve signals, the release of gut or stress hormones, and other pathways. We have long known that emotions can directly alter gut function.

The brain and the gut talk to each other: how fixing one could help the other

It’s widely recognised that emotions can directly affect stomach function. As early as 1915, influential physiologist Walter Cannon noted that stomach functions are changed in animals when frightened. The same is true for humans. Those who stress a lot often report diarrhoea or stomach pain.

Are Gut Bacteria Driving Your Cravings?

Think about what you ate for lunch today. Did it feel like something you wanted, something you chose? Or was it something that the Lactobacilli in your digestive tract was actually jonesing for? A new study in fruit flies suggests that the latter idea might not be so outlandish.

Digestive Enzymes: Help or Hype?

In considering whether taking supplemental digestive enzymes may be beneficial, one should recognize that the term "digestive enzymes" is a catchall that includes a variety of compounds with different purposes–similar to "vitamins" or "probiotics." Just as we can't draw sweeping generalizations about whether taking vitamins is beneficial (it would depend on which vitamin in which individual), so too with digestive enzymes: It depends on which enzyme and in what population.

Do Probiotics Work? Marketing Mania Tramples Science

Several times a week, I am queried on my view of probiotics, which are bacteria that confer health benefits on the human who ingests them. If you were to survey the public, I suspect that a majority would express that probiotics promote health and are effective in treating or preventing various maladies.

Do You Have Leaky Gut Syndrome?

Because it is something of a mystery disease that can show itself as a bewildering array of other conditions, you could have Leaky Gut Syndrome and not even realize it. The reason is that Leaky Gut Syndrome is one of the many concepts in medicine that cuts across the boundary lines of specific diseases. It is a major example of an important medical phenomenon: distress in one organ causes disease in another. That is why it is vital to look beyond the symptoms and discover the root cause of illness.

Findings from the Gut—New Insights into the Human Microbiome

A preference for dark versus milk chocolate, among other things, shows up in the kinds of healthy germs found in the gut.

Gut feelings: the future of psychiatry may be inside your stomach

The right combination of stomach microbes could be crucial for a healthy mind.

How Disrupting Your Gut’s Rhythm Affects Your Health

New research sheds light on how eating and sleeping habits can contribute to disease by disrupting the bacteria in the digestive tract.

Is your gut microbiome the key to health and happiness?

Research suggests the vast ecosystem of organisms that lives in our digestive systems might be as complex and influential as our genes in everything from mental health to athleticism and obesity. But is ‘poop doping’ really the way ahead?

Mental Health May Depend on Creatures in the Gut

The microbiome may yield a new class of psychobiotics for the treatment of anxiety, depression and other mood disorders.

Norovirus Is Coming

And you can’t stave it off by guzzling grape juice.

Probiotics: What They Are and What They Can Do for You

Although probiotics have been around for generations - think of the "live active cultures" in several brands of yogurt - the sheer number of products with probiotics now available may overwhelm even the most conscientious of shoppers. In some respects, the industry has grown faster than the research and scientists and doctors are calling for more studies to help determine which probiotics are beneficial and which might be a waste of money.

Seeking a ‘Happy Gut’ for Better Health

A happy gut is a gut that is able to do all of the work of digestion. It has a healthy microbiome, it’s able to extract all the nutrients you need from your food without causing any pain, discomfort, bloating or distress, and it creates a bowel movement at least once a day.

Taking Antibiotics Can Change the Gut Microbiome for Up to a Year

A new study illuminates the problems antibiotic overuse could cause for individual patients.

What's Living in Your Digestive System

If you think intestinal parasites only lead to gut disturbances such as upset stomach and diarrhea, think again. Because problems that happen in your stomach don't stay in your stomach.

Gut Feeling: To Stay Healthy, Keep Your Body’s Microbes in Line

If ratio gets out of whack, the same organisms that ensure our well-being can make us sick.

8 Common Digestive Problems and How to End Them

Dealing with stomach pain, ulcers, reflux, constipation, Crohn’s disease, and more

Here's 6 Things Your Poop Can Tell You About Your Gut Health, According To Experts

It’s the thing everyone does, but that no one wants to talk about: Poop. Most people (understandably) prefer not to talk about what happens in the bathroom, but there’s a reason why most physicians ask you about your bowel movements when you go to the doctor’s office. It may not be the most comfy conversation to have, but your poop can actually tell you a whole lot about your gut health — which, in turn, can tell you a lot about your overall health.

What 7 Shades Of Poo Say About Your Health

Just as shape, consistency and timing of our bowel movements are important indicators as to the health of our digestive system, so too is the colour of our poo. Brown, red, white or green, these colours tell us much about not only the foods that we eat, but whether you're absorbing important nutrients or have a bowel condition.

About Motility

IFFGD is your resource for reliable digestive health knowledge, support, and assistance about functional gastrointestinal (GI) and motility disorders (FGIMDs). We are a nonprofit that started in 1991. Discover information you need on digestive disorders in adults and children.

Bowel Disease Research Foundation

Advancing the cure and treatment of bowel disease.

G.I. Janet

After now working with thousands of clients over so many years, I can assure you that you can overcome your digestive health issues – without drugs.

Gut

Gut is a leading international journal in gastroenterology and hepatology and has an established reputation for publishing first class clinical research of the alimentary tract, the liver, biliary tree and pancreas.

International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders

Welcome to your complete resource for trustworthy digestive health information, support, and assistance about functional gastrointestinal and motility disorders (FGIMDs). Started in 1991 by one person struggling with the challenges of a chronic GI disorder, IFFGD has been joined by many others from all walks of life in the fight to improve the daily lives of persons affected by long-term digestive troubles.

Jillian Teta

Welcome, I’m so glad you’re here to learn more about digestive health and its connection to everything from what you eat to how you move and even how you think. I teach men and women to be better thinkers about their bodies.

Let's Talk About IBS

Campaigning for IBS sufferers to receive a better standard of care from health professionals and making it okay to talk about IBS.

Trust Your Gut

In this highly anticipated book, Dr Greg Plotnikoff and Dr Mark Weisberg show how to listen to your gut and to interpret symptoms as important messages that can help correct imbalances.

Your Guide to Digestive Health

Your digestive tract–a.k.a. “the second brain”–is a smart system that is acutely sensitive to your feelings. Here’s how to keep it healthy (and happy).

Diet.com

Increasingly, researchers and physicians are realizing that one of the most common causes of digestive diseases is that people do not have healthy eating habits, and are also not aware of the many sources of food contamination. Besides bacterial or parasite infections, it is now understood that the digestive system can also be damaged by poor diets, prescription drugs, and food additives, especially antibiotics.

Gastroenterology Consultants

At Gastroenterology Consultants we are dedicated to providing each patient with the individualized attention that you deserve. We provide each patient with state-of-the-art treatment methods that will help relieve the ailments and symptoms that you are experiencing. There are many different diseases and conditions that affect the overall health of the digestive system.