First Steps to living with Digestive Problems , livre ebook

Lion Hudson - Simon Atkins

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52 pages

English

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Digestive problems can come in many guises, from difficulties in swallowing, through the stomach, to constipation, wind, IBS and beyond. In this handy introductory guide, GP and author Simon Atkins explains the issues in layman's language. He covers both what we can do for ourselves, and when we need to call on professional help. As digestive problems become more widespread and more acute - often fuelled by stress, obesity, lack of exercise and poor health - we all need to know what to do and when. This book covers food intolerance, medical treatments, what to be concerned about, dietary treatments, therapy and more.

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Publié par	Lion Hudson
Date de parution	17 juin 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780745970424
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Why this book? Do you or does a loved one suffer from indigestion, abdominal pain, or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)? Have you been recently diagnosed with gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD) or any other digestion-related condition? Are you wondering whether you have a food allergy or intolerance?
This book covers the entire digestive system, from one end to the other. It provides clear, concise, and accurate information, and explains how the digestive system works what goes wrong and why the simple steps you can take to help yourself the symptoms that you must ask your GP to look at.
Checking out any troubling symptoms with your own GP is very important, and this book is not intended to be a substitute for doing so.

All advice given is for information only and should not be treated as a substitute for qualified medical advice.
Text copyright © 2016 Simon Atkins This edition copyright © 2016 Lion Hudson
The right of Simon Atkins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Lion Books an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England www.lionhudson.com/lion
ISBN 978 0 7459 7041 7 e-ISBN 978 0 7459 7042 4
First edition 2016
Acknowledgments Drawings pp. 27, 35, 64 © Sam Atkins
Cover image copyright © Mark Sykes/Alamy
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This book is dedicated to the memory of my dad, Tom, whose love of good food almost singlehandedly kept antacid manufacturers in business.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication

Introduction
1 The mechanics of digestion
2 Checking out the bowels
3 Indigestion
4 Gallstones
5 Food intolerances
6 Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) 1: What is it?
7 Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) 2: How is it treated?
8 Diverticular disease
9 Inflammatory bowel disease
10 Cancers of the digestive system
11 A sore bottom
Appendix: Useful resources
Introduction
Everywhere you look in the media it seems that someone is cooking something. Television schedules are stuffed full of programmes in which celebrity chefs whip up delicious meals in their bespoke kitchens, and game shows where contestants compete to see who’s baked the most mouth-watering cake or pastry.
And if that’s not enough, we’re also served up a growing variety of books, magazines, Sunday supplements, and websites solely devoted to food and how to turn it into the tastiest dishes possible. In fact, you can’t move in a bookshop or supermarket these days without bumping into shelves jam-packed with the latest volumes of recipes by well-known cooks and resting actors.
On Amazon’s UK website there are currently, in March 2016, 11,651 books on baking, 2,652 about barbecues and an incredible 28,219 books about national and international cookery. So whether you want to create the perfect pavlova, dish up roast potatoes to die for, or make a bowl of spaghetti alla puttanesca just like Mamma makes, there’s a book to tell you how.
But despite our obsession with all things culinary, there are incredibly few books devoted to what happens next, when that delicious mouthful of food, having been savoured and chewed, is finally swallowed into the digestive system. And there are just as few devoted to those diseases of our bowels that can plague so many of us and turn the loveliest of meals into our next episode of belly ache, wind, indigestion, or diarrhoea.
This book aims to help to redress that balance.
Of course, while what goes into our mouths is not only the stuff of, but also an appropriate topic of conversation for, the dinner table, what comes out the other end is most probably not. And most of us are very grateful that the processes that churn tonight’s dinner into tomorrow’s trip to the toilet go on unnoticed, deep inside us.
But all of us, even the Queen and David Beckham, have to take a poo. And whether we like to talk about it or not, it’s important to be aware of how our food gets from table to toilet, and what can go wrong in between.
There are quite a few conditions affecting our digestive systems that are worth knowing about, either because they are common and debilitating or because they are potentially life-threatening. And because many are treatable and may even be preventable.
As we work our way through the gut from top to bottom, we will look at some of the problems I see most often in my consulting room, including: indigestion, reflux, and stomach ulcers gallstones coeliac disease irritable bowel syndrome inflammatory bowel disease diverticular disease cancers piles.
We will look at their symptoms, what causes them, the treatments available, and ways in which to either minimize their effects or fend them off altogether.
It will come as no surprise that the foods we eat and the drinks we consume play a big part in not only triggering but also exacerbating digestive problems, so there’s a fair amount of dietary advice included in these pages too. And while there are no actual recipes in the book, I hope there’s plenty of food for thought.
We begin in Chapter 1 by following the journey taken by our food as it negotiates its way through our digestive system and we absorb its nourishment.
1
The mechanics of digestion
Digestion is, according to the dictionary, the process by which food is broken down in the alimentary canal (one of the fancier aliases of the digestive system) into substances that can be absorbed and used by the body. In other words, it’s the term that describes how we turn our food into its constituent chemicals so that they can refuel, build, and repair our body’s tissues.
In order to understand this process – and also what can go wrong – it will probably help to take a quick trip along the alimentary canal itself to see what goes on where.

Basic bowel anatomy
The alimentary canal is actually more of a tunnel than a canal, and a dark, damp, and smelly tunnel at that. In an adult it is around eight and a half metres long and it runs from the lips at the top to the anus at the bottom.
A mouthful of food travelling along its length passes through the following sections: mouth, oesophagus (gullet), stomach, small intestine, duodenum, jejunum, ileum, large intestine, caecum, colon, rectum, and anus.
The small intestine is, paradoxically, the largest section. It is around 5 metres long and has to be coiled up in the centre of the abdomen to allow it all to fit in. The large intestine, on the other hand, is much shorter – about 1.5 metres long – but gets its name because it has a much wider diameter. It fits neatly around the edges of our insides, forming a three-sided frame for the small intestine.
Other organs involved in digestion, such as the liver and pancreas, lie alongside the bowel, with ducts that feed into it like tributaries into a much larger river. And the whole thing is wrapped in a meshwork of blood vessels which keep the bowels oxygenated and take away the absorbed nutrients so they can feed the rest of the body.
The digestive process
As it travels through the bowels, food is broken up both physically and chemically, and then absorbed in these different regions. The leftover waste is then expelled from the bottom.
Mouth
The process of digestion starts here as food is bitten and chewed into smaller pieces by the teeth, and squeezed and softened by saliva and the tongue. Saliva also contains a chemical enzyme called amylase, which begins breaking up larger carbohydrate molecules such as starch into smaller sugar molecules such as glucose.
Oesophagus
Not a lot happens in this very muscular tube, which is around 35 centimetres long and 2 centimetres wide. It is simply responsible for transporting the mushed-up food from the mouth to the stomach once it’s been swallowed. The food is propelled downwards by rhythmical contractions of the wall of the oesophagus, in a process known as peristalsis.
At its bottom end is a region called the gastro-oesophageal junction (try saying that after a glass of Prosecco). This is where the digestive tract leaves the chest and enters the abdomen, and where food enters the stomach.
Stomach
Food from the oesophagus enters the stomach through a muscular valve called a sphincter, which keeps the food inside while it is digested further. A second sphincter at its exit lets out what’s left after it’s been sloshed around by further waves of peristalsis and had all the protein molecules in it broken up by the enzyme pepsin, with the help of industrial-strength hydrochloric acid.
Other enzymes also help to start breaking down fats, and the acid plays a role in killing off any infectious germs that have managed to make their way in. This acid is also potentially damaging to the cells lining the stomach itself, so they secrete a mucus coating which forms a protective layer.
Duodenum
Some four to six hours after being eaten, the digested food is squirted out of the stomach into the first part of the small intestine called the duodenum, a C-shaped tube around 30 centimetres long. Ducts from both the gallbladder and pancreas enter the duodenum, secreting bile (from the gallbladder) and a cocktail of digestive enzymes (from the pancreas) onto its contents.
Bile is produced in the liver and stored in the gallbladder, from where it is released at mealtimes via the bile duct into the duodenum. Here it breaks down fats into smaller fatty acids which can be absorbed. Fluid from the pancreas is also added at this point. It contains enzymes that help to break down carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
By this stage the partly digested food i