LIVING NATURALLY with Olwen Anderson

HOW irritating it is when your life has been controlled by the toilet for quite some time. Frequency and urgency are often the most problematic aspects of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and yet they're often the last symptoms to disappear as treatment progresses. Blame a particular type of nerve cell embedded in your bowel wall. They're the "interstitial cells of Cajal”, pacemaker cells of your intestines. Discovered in 1893 by the pathologist Santiago Ramon y Cajal, their job is to send slow-wave electrical impulses to the smooth muscle that pushes food along the digestive tube leading from your mouth to your anus. The development of electron microscopy some 30 years later enabled scientists to confirm that despite being nerve cells, the interstitial cells of Cajal do their own thing regardless of what the main nervous system is doing.

Embedded in the bowel wall as they are, these cells are vulnerable to damage when sensitive bowel tissue around them becomes inflamed, infected or irritated. They become inflamed too, and can't do their job to keep your bowel timing under tidy control. The result can be frequency, urgency, or constipation. Perhaps this is why IBS sufferers meet with such debilitating bowel symptoms as urgency and incompleteness that calls them back to the toilet three times in an hour. And why constipation can be so difficult to shift.

Knowing the cells of Cajal can be restored means normal bowel timing may be restored; but to enable this any chronic low level inflammation within the bowel has to heal. This can be important for people with recurrent diverticulitis, whose bowels may not recover completely before the next flare-up. When you're recovering from a diverticular flare-up, feeling better than you did is good, but you need to persist with treatment until you're completely recovered. It's too easy to get used to feeling not-quite-right.

When it comes to healing tissue the original irritant or infection that's driving the inflammation needs to be addressed; whether it's from recurrent diverticulitis, bowel infections, or reactions to certain foods.

Natural therapies for healing the digestive tract include herbs, nutrients and homoeopathic remedies; and understandably, avoiding foods that irritate a sensitive gut. Better stress management is essential too, enabling the protective mucous layer to regenerate.

Your gut has amazing abilities to restore itself, but you need to provide the right conditions to help it heal.

Olwen Anderson is a naturopath and counsellor and a regular columnist with the Tweed Daily News. Visit www.olwenanderson.com.au