Digestive/Gastrointestinal Disorders

The gastrointestinal tract (GIT) is a long muscular tube that functions as the food processor for the human body. The digestive system includes the following organs: mouth and salivary glands, stomach, small and large intestines, colon, liver and pancreas, and the gallbladder.

Irritations or inflammation of the various sections of the GIT are identified as gastritis (stomach), colitis (colon), ileitis (ileum or small intestines), hepatitis (liver), and cholecystitis (gallbladder).

The GIT is not a passive system. Rather, it has the capability to sense and react to the materials that are passed through it. For a healthy digestive system, every person requires different food selections that match their GIT capacity.
The GIT have very imortant functiuons, such as:

• The GIT breaks down foods ntrolled manner and by filtering out toxins that may have passed through the GIT wall
• The GIT is as a sensory organ. By rejecting foods with a strong allergic or toxic component through objectionable taste, vomiting, and diarrhea, or any combination of these symptoms, the sensing capacity of the GIT can protect the body
• The GIT is a muscular tube that contracts in a controlled rhythm to move food through the different sections (peristalsis).

Food allergy is sometimes the primary cause of GIT problems. Chronic diseases can have their origin in food allergies.

Elimination diets are a good method of determining what foods cause an allergic reaction in the GIT lining in a patient.

Aging causes many people to experience problems with digestion. It is estimated that after age 40 there is an approximate decrease in the body's ability to produce enzymes by 20-30%.

Some symptoms, such as diarrhea, constipation, bleeding from the digestive tract, regurgitation, and difficulty swallowing, usually suggest a digestive disorder.

There are several gastrointestinal disorders, such as:

• Esophagus: halitosis, nausea, vomiting, heartburn, GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), achalasia, esophageal cancer, esophageal varices
• Stomach: peptic ulcer, abdominal pain, stomach cancer, non-ulcer dyspepsia, gastroparesis, abdominal angina, malabsorption (e.g. celiac disease, giardiasis), pyloric stenosis
• Small intestine: peptic ulcer, intussusception, malabsorption (e.g. coeliac, lactose intolerance, fructose malabsorption, Whipple's), lymphoma
• Colon: diarrea, appendicitis, diverticulitis, diverticulosis, IBD (Crohn's, Ulcerative colitis), IBS, constipation , colorectal cancer, Hirschsprung's, pseudomembranous colitis
• Liver: alcoholic liver disease, cholestasis, hepatitis, liver failure, cirrhosis, NASH (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease), PBC (primary biliary cirrhosis), Budd-Chiari, hepatocellular carcinoma
• Accessory digestive: gallbladder/biliary tree (gallstones, cholecystitis, primary sclerosing cholangitis, ascending cholangitis), pancreas (acute pancreatitis, chronic pancreatitis, pancreatic pseudocyst, hereditary pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer).

Articles from Health Square, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and Wikipedia







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