Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about Irritable Bow Syndrome.

If you want to follow along with written notes on this topic, you can follow along at

zero tofinals.com slash IBS or in the gastroenterology section of the zero definals medicine book.

Let's get straight into it.

Irritable bowel syndrome is a functional bowel disorder.

This means that there's no identifiable organic disease underlying the symptoms.

The symptoms are a result of abnormal functioning of an otherwise

normal bowel. It's often described as a diagnosis of exclusion, which means that it's a diagnosis

that can only be made when we know that there's no other pathology there. So other pathology that

might be causing the symptoms has been excluded.

It's a very common condition and it occurs in up to 20% of the population

and it affects women more than men and it's more common in younger adults.

So typical symptoms are things like diarrhea fluctuating with constipation

and there's a characteristic fluctuation of the bowel habit so one

moment they might be struggling with constipation and at another time they might be struggling with

diarrhea they tend to also complain of abdominal pain bloating and the symptoms are characteristically

worse after eating and improved by opening

the bowels. So how can we make a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome? So going by the nice

guidelines, other pathology needs to be excluded. So you need to check a full blood count,

ESR and CRP. And this is to check that the patient's not

become anemic from a lot of blood loss and there's no inflammation in the bowel. And if these

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