Digestion is a vital phase of your body. It breaks the nutrients from the food and water you take and release it in the form of energy and waste, thus making your body healthy. The nutrients included are vitamins, proteins, water, minerals. It also helps in cell repair. It breaks the nutrients like proteins, fats, carbohydrates into amino acids, fatty acids and sugars respectively.
Your digestive system
The solid organs included in digestive system are liver, gall bladder, pancreas, and GI tract. The GI tract includes organs like mouth, tube-like twisted structures called small and large intestines, esophagus, stomach, and anus. Microbiome- a bacteria present in the GI tract aids digestion. With all the organs, bacteria, nerves, and hormones help in digesting your food and release energy for proper cell functioning.
The food moves along the GI tract through chewing, squeezing, and digestive juices, stomach acids, bile, and enzymes helps with the whole digestion process.
Digestive issues
Digestive issues are common and are mostly left untreated. But this can cause serious chronic illness. So it is important to keep track of your digestion issues and consult a doctor. The common digestive issues are
- Chronic constipation
- Food intolerance
- GERD
- Inflammatory bowel disease
- Stomach ulcer
Chronic constipation
In a digestive process, it is important to release the waste from your body. Chronic constipation is where your stools are not moved in your digestive tract. You will be having abdominal cramps, bloating, and pain when you have bowel movement. Fiber-rich foods, water, and exercise will cure it. In some severe cases, medications would help.
Food intolerance
When some food is too heavy or can’t be easily digested you will have a food intolerance. The symptoms include,
- Bloating
- Abdominal cramps
- Diarrhea
- Heartburn
- Vomiting
- Gas
For food tolerance, it is important to keep track on what you eat. By having a diary of it we can identify the food which causes issues. Celiac disease is a disorder where you are intolerant to gluten present in wheat, barley. So those persons must have a gluten-free diet.
Heart burn
When you have more spicy food or a heavy meal, your stomach acid will go back to the esophagus and gives a burning sensation with chest pain. This will be occasional but frequent symptoms will give you GERT( gastroesophageal reflexive disease). The symptoms include,
- Swallowing troubles
- Chest discomfort
- Sour taste
- Heartburn
Medications are suggested to control it based on the severity.
Inflammatory bowels disease
It is a chronic swelling, that affects one or more parts of the digestive system. There are two types of it
Chrons disease: It mostly affects the colon and small intestine, in some cases the whole GI tract.
Ulcerative colitis: It affects only the colon
The more common symptoms are
- Abdominal cramps
- Diarrhea
- Fatigue
- Rectal bleeds
- Night sweats
It is needed to diagnose the IBD sooner the symptoms occur. Delaying may lead to whole damage to the GI tract.
Peptic ulcers
It is most common disease caused by the bacteria or erosion of stomach acids. Sores are formed in the small intestines, stomach lining, or lower esophagus as a result of inflammation. The causes of peptic ulcer are by helicobacter pylori ( a type of bacteria), Excessive drinking and smoking, more intake of medicines like aspirin. Symptoms include
- Bloody or dark stools
- Abdominal cramps
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Change in appetite
With certain lifestyle changes, we can easily get recover from most of the digestive issues. But when you have serious symptoms like blood in stools, sudden weight loss, severe cramps it is necessary to consult your doctor and follow proper medication.