Colon Health

Has the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic put a wrench in not only your plans but also your rou­tine health screen­ings? Find out how you can get your health back on track.

Learn the dif­fer­ence between a pre­bi­ot­ic and pro­bi­ot­ic and why you need both to main­tain a healthy diges­tive tract.

In com­bi­na­tion with reg­u­lar screen­ings, eat­ing a healthy diet is a great way to keep your colon healthy, help­ing to pre­vent colon can­cer and oth­er dis­or­ders. Here are the top tips on what to eat to sup­port a healthy colon.

Polyps are often dis­cussed when talk­ing about col­orec­tal can­cer or its screen­ing tests includ­ing a colonoscopy. While you may be famil­iar with the term, you may not know what a polyp is, how it forms and what you can do to pre­vent them. Gas­troen­terol­o­gist, Kaitlin Wan­ta, DO, shares what you should know about polyps and some tips to pre­vent them.

It’s no secret that com­plet­ing pre­ven­tive screen­ings, like a colonoscopy, sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­ers your risk of devel­op­ing (or dying from) col­orec­tal can­cer. Even though it has been proven to be an extreme­ly effec­tive way to pre­vent col­orec­tal can­cer, near­ly a third of eli­gi­ble adults have not com­plet­ed their colonoscopy. To encour­age you to com­plete your screen­ing, our board-cer­ti­fied Gas­troen­terol­o­gists offer their reBUT­Tals to some of the most com­mon excus­es used to delay get­ting a colonoscopy.

Every­one expe­ri­ences stom­ach pain at var­i­ous times through­out their life. Stom­ach pain can occur in a vari­ety of loca­tions – it may be felt in a spe­cif­ic, iso­lat­ed area or may affect your entire abdomen. Stom­ach pain doesn’t always feel the same either. Some­times it can feel like a dull ache, while oth­er times you may expe­ri­ence cramp­ing and/​or sharp gas-like pains. It can devel­op due to a vari­ety rea­sons, and depend­ing on the cause, may require dif­fer­ent treat­ment. All of these vari­ables can make it chal­leng­ing to deter­mine what’s caus­ing your stom­ach pain. To help, gas­troen­terol­o­gist, Nisha Shah, MD, dis­cuss­es sev­er­al com­mon cul­prits and tips to help you tell them apart.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

This intro­duc­tion to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dick­ens, writ­ten in 1859, could just as eas­i­ly been writ­ten to intro­duce col­orec­tal can­cer. In the best of times, greater under­stand­ing and tools to man­age col­orec­tal can­cer have been devel­oped. In the worst of times, these tools are not being used to their fullest poten­tial. Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety, col­orec­tal can­cer is the third most com­mon­ly diag­nosed can­cer in the US. It is believed that a major­i­ty of these can­cers and deaths could be pre­vent­ed by a stronger adher­ence to screen­ing rec­om­men­da­tions and ensur­ing time­ly, stan­dard treat­ment. Progress has been made in screen­ing rates; how­ev­er in 2010 only 59 per­cent of peo­ple eli­gi­ble for screen­ing report­ed hav­ing received col­orec­tal can­cer testing.

Colon Can­cer
Colon Can­cer is the third most com­mon­ly diag­nosed can­cer in men and women. Last year approx­i­mate­ly 140,000 Amer­i­cans were diag­nosed with col­orec­tal can­cer and over 50,000 of those indi­vid­u­als died from their colon can­cer. Colon Can­cer does not dis­crim­i­nate; rather it affects men and women of all races. It is a silent killer…it often has no symp­toms until it is in a late in an incur­able stage.

Did you know that women are six times more like­ly to expe­ri­ence irri­ta­ble bow­el syn­drome (IBS), a dis­or­der char­ac­ter­ized by symp­toms includ­ing stom­ach pain, gas, bloat­ing and diar­rhea or con­sti­pa­tion, than men? Learn about the dif­fer­ent fac­tors that put women at a high­er risk for cer­tain gut conditions.

Irri­ta­ble bow­el syn­drome (IBS) is a func­tion­al dis­or­der of the colon that caus­es a vari­ety of uncom­fort­able gas­troin­testi­nal symp­toms. In addi­tion to affect­ing between 25 – 55 mil­lion peo­ple in the Unit­ed States, IBS is the sec­ond high­est cause of ill­ness-relat­ed work absences. Dur­ing nor­mal diges­tion, your brain and gut work togeth­er to send sig­nals to your hor­mones, nerves and the good bac­te­ria found in your gut to acti­vate the mus­cles of your colon. When you are expe­ri­enc­ing an IBS episode, these sig­nals become jum­bled, caus­ing the mus­cles of your diges­tive tract to become tense. This leads to symp­toms such as con­sti­pa­tion or diar­rhea, gas and stom­ach cramp­ing. IBS symp­toms and their sever­i­ty vary by per­son, but often include: