Anytime someone starts out with ,"Regardless of what science says ...", I mostly stop reading.
Some intake (some foods, but generally drugs that enter the bloodstream in the stomach) can rapidly change the movement of material through various parts of the GI track. This will generally need to be accompanied by diarrhea.
When someone with mostly formed stool, and even some trouble with constipation, begins reporting effects that would require transit time to drop from 12-24 hours down to 3-4 hours, you know some major piece of the puzzle is missing. Looking for that piece can only benefit everyone. Insisting on magic and disparaging science (and logic/reason) can only hurt everyone - especially oneself.
While there is a growing literature on the gut-brain connection, and it is clearly established that many IBS symptoms rise and fall with mental state and stress, it amazes me that someone can flatly declare that any palliative effect of apples seen in just hours has
nothing to do with the mind. Amazing.
When I ask
how something works, I am not saying it does not work. For example, I advance the mind-gut possibility, I advance the yesterday's apple possibility. Heck, I could even offer that it might be the effect of fructose and pectin absorbed in the stomach and beginning of the small intestine - and not the science-defying speedy arrival of soluble fiber in the colon.
stereo said...
people with UC eat something and it can be passed through the digestive system rather quickly, without going through a proper digestive process what you just explained. Lack of digestive enzymes to break down food, bile and/or an inflamed colon or intestines will just push food through ASAP to get it out.
... but he is not reporting the apple works when there is a lot of diarrhea and evidence that food is running through the system in just a few hours. Even loose stool or pain does not mean transit times normally only seen with food poisoning or the flu. .... and while food does mix along the digestive track, especially when well digested and liquified, the less digested bits do not leapfrog over each other as much. .... and while inflammation can cause diarrhea, it can also slow down transit and even cause constipation.
There is a lot of magical thinking here.
It also does no good to mix true facts with magical assertions unless you connect them. Otherwise, you are just trying to hide the magic by mentioning something that is true, but not directly relevant.
stereo also said...
Aloe did do the trick within 20 minutes. I never got this Aloe routine down from a doctor, it was from my sister who suggested taking it daily in the morning. When I awoke in the middle of the night with severe pain and bleeding, 1oz of aloe would comfort me and stop spasms, so I could go back to sleep. There are alot of studies on how effect aloe is in treating digestive disorders.
Again, I never said it didn't. I only said that it would have to be working in some other way than it does externally, because, once again, it cannot magically get to the colon in 20 minutes to exert its usual topical effect.
Also, spasms, are much more associated with IBS and not so much directly with IBD. IBD is a disease of inflammation, IBS is a disease of motility. IBD is not technically a "digestive" disease, although it is located in the digestive track. IBD does not rapidly respond to fluctuations of mental state. IBS has a documented connection to fluctuations of mental state. IBS is more of a digestive disease than IBD.
I also never suggested that aloe did not help digestive disorders, so it is a bit of a red herring to use the existence of any literature on aloe and digestive disorders to bolster irrational thinking. Doing so implies that I said aloe is not helpful for digestive disorders, which again and again,
and again I did not say. Seems to me it could help the stomach immediately through the usual topical effect. Seems to me that the stomach could signal changes in motility along the GI track, but especially to upper small intestine, which is just south of the stomach. Seems to me it could help after some hours further down the GI track. I could even believe something gets absorbed into the blood that works like a drug on the colon (but that would be just unsupported speculation.)
It does seem more reasonable that some IBS is involved here, and that some of the effect was from psychological "comfort".
An
open inquisitive mind is generally a good thing, and rigid magical thinking while disparaging science is generally a bad thing.
Post Edited (DBwithUC) : 11/16/2012 9:39:01 AM (GMT-7)