People are increasingly finding their way to an osteopath due to digestive complaints. These include diarrhea, constipation, undigested food, frequent urgency, and the need to use the restroom often. This is not only very inconvenient in daily life \u2014 for example, while driving on the highway or during a theater performance \u2014 but is also often accompanied by a loss of important substances, such as minerals, or poor absorption of essential nutrients such as vitamins and proteins. This can lead to chronic fatigue and a general feeling of not being fit. <\/p>\n
In such situations, many people turn to nutritional supplements to replenish deficiencies. However, it is often better to restore the body’s own absorption. Our diet normally contains sufficient essential nutrients, but when digestion does not function properly, these substances cannot be properly absorbed into the blood. <\/p>\n
On September 28, I saw a 32-year-old man who had been suffering from intestinal complaints for a year. Sometimes he had to go to the toilet up to eight times a day. Alcohol and fatty foods in particular provoked the bowels. During my first examination, the patient again experienced severe intestinal cramps and had to go to the toilet immediately. <\/p>\n
He had been extensively examined in the hospital. As is customary, the intestines themselves were looked at first. Stool was examined for bacteria, fungi, and parasites. In addition, an internal bowel examination was performed with a camera (colonoscopy), and sometimes a piece of the intestinal wall is removed for further investigation (biopsy). Despite all the tests, no clear cause was found. <\/p>\n
However, my examination revealed that a part of the pancreas may have been the cause of the complaints. The pancreas produces enzymes that are necessary for digestion, but this process did not seem to be proceeding correctly. <\/p>\n
According to my findings, the cause was likely due to a bacterial load on the pancreas. I was able to trace that this load must have originated around his eighth year of life. When I asked about this, the patient said that at that age, during a holiday in the Canary Islands, he had suffered from severe diarrhea for two weeks and had visited a doctor for it. <\/p>\n
It is suspected that an anti-diarrheal medication was used at the time. While understandable, this can disrupt the body’s natural clearing mechanism. Bacteria may then have the opportunity to move through small channels from the duodenum to, for example, the liver or the pancreas, with long-term consequences as a result. <\/p>\n
That this is not a unique case is evident from the story of another patient I first saw on June 5. He had been having similar complaints for five years. Examination in the hospital showed some fatty liver and a few spots on the liver, but otherwise gave no clear explanation for the intestinal problems. <\/p>\n
In this patient’s case as well, my examination pointed to a bacterial load that originated around his 25th year. He mentioned that he was working in Belarus at the time, in the capital city of Minsk. Shortly before Christmas, he contracted severe gastroenteritis (stomach flu) with violent diarrhea. <\/p>\n
Because he had a flight ticket to the Netherlands to spend the holidays with his family, the diarrhea had to be stopped at all costs. Through an acquaintance, he quickly ended up with a doctor who prescribed Imodium \u2014 a drug that stops diarrhea immediately. The diarrhea did indeed disappear quickly, but potentially with the same consequences as with the first patient. <\/p>\n
When the body’s natural mechanism \u2014 the removal of bacteria via diarrhea \u2014 is suppressed, it can have long-term consequences.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, when examinations of the intestines show no clear cause, this does not automatically mean that there is no explanation for the complaints. In both cases, the pancreas played an important role. For the second patient, the treatments could even be completed after just three sessions, followed by a check-up after three months. <\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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