The Real Cause of Bowel Problems

Inflammatory bowel problems such as chronic diarrhea, colitis, and irritable bowel syndrome are becoming more and more common. So, what’s going on?

The official answer is that “nobody knows.” But there has to be a cause.

Recently, some scientists have discovered that the cause may be something that is usually considered harmless – small, mild cases of food poisoning that may go unnoticed and which the body easily clears without treatment.

These scientists have discovered some information that indicates that these “harmless” infections can start a chain of events that leads to chronic inflammation and potentially life-threatening colitis.

For the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that the genetic makeup of an individual plays a role in the cause of common inflammatory diseases, including colitis and irritable bowel syndrome. Studies of identical twins show that if one of them develops irritable bowel syndrome, there’s a greater than normal chance that the other one will, too. But genetics isn’t the only factor.

That’s because there are still many cases of identical twins in which one of them develops an inflammatory disease, and the other doesn’t. And that points to the fact that there must be some additional environmental factors. Finally, other studies have reported that seasonal bacterial infections in humans are much more common in people with irritable bowel syndrome. So, working from these and other hints, researchers hypothesized that recurrent low-grade bacterial infections may be a trigger for inflammatory bowel conditions. To find out if there’s a connection, the researchers engineered a very creative experiment.

They took a group of mice and gave them a very low dose of a common bacterial pathogen called Salmonella Typhimurium. A pathogen refers to a germ that can cause infections. They picked Salmonella Typhimurium because it is widespread throughout the environment and remains a leading cause of food poisoning. And here’s the thing. Because the symptoms of a Salmonella Typhimurium infection, such as abdominal cramps and loose stools, are usually mild and short-lived, the majority of these infections go untreated. And that means that any of us could have had multiple infections over the course of our lives and not really known it. The scientists were wondering if it was possible that these mild and repeated infections could be the cause of many of the bowel disorders we see.

The team experimented with a dose of Salmonella Typhimurium that was so low that there were only minor symptoms. In fact, the dose was so low that in every case, the infection was successfully eliminated by the mice’s immune systems. But then they noticed that by the fourth infection, which had been months after the first, the mice started to develop chronic inflammation in their bowels. And eventually, every one of them developed colitis. And even when they stopped giving the mice any more infections, the colitis did not improve – indicating that the damage was already done.

Here’s what lead author Won Ho Yang, PhD, had to say about the results of the experiment: “This type of study had never been done before, and the results were shocking. We observed the onset of a progressive and irreversible inflammatory disease caused by previous infections. That was quite surprising because the pathogen had been easily cleared by the host.” Co-author Jamey Marth, PhD, added, “We have discovered an environmental and pathogenic origin of chronic intestinal inflammation in the course of modeling human food poisoning as it occurs repeatedly over the adult lifespan. Remarkably, Salmonella has figured out a way to disrupt a previously unknown protective mechanism in the gut that normally prevents intestinal inflammation.” What mechanism are they talking about?

It turns out that the repeated infections, even though they were so mild as to go unnoticed, caused a deficiency of an enzyme called intestinal alkaline phosphatase, which is produced in the small intestine. This enzyme removes phosphates from potentially inflammatory molecules which are produced by intestinal bacteria commonly found in everyone’s colon. As long as the enzyme removes the phosphates, the inflammatory molecules are non-toxic. But when repeated infections cause a deficiency of the enzyme, the inflammatory molecules transform into a toxic state and can cause chronic bowel conditions. This theory was confirmed because when the researchers added the enzyme to the water of the mice, they did not get colitis. And you can see why this may be a much bigger problem than anyone ever imagined.

“These findings are of potential great concern to the human population,” states Marth. “Food contamination at these low bacterial levels is likely to be more common than we recognize, while symptoms could be nonexistent or mild and disappear in a day or two without treatment. Repeated over time, we find that such minor infections are sufficient to trigger disease months and perhaps years later, depending upon the number and timing of infections an individual has experienced over his or her lifetime.” So, what does this mean for us?

I think it means a lot. Not a day goes by that I don’t see a patient with a chronic bowel condition that seemingly came out of nowhere. Now, it appears it didn’t come out of nowhere. It probably arose from repeated exposures to various bacterial pathogens over the previous years. So, what can you do?

I think it is a good idea to do two things. First, be sure to either take a supplement of the herbs curcumin and turmeric or get in the habit of regularly using them in your foods. One study entitled “Curcumin and chronic kidney disease: major mode of action through stimulating endogenous [your natural production] intestinal alkaline phosphatase” showed that taking curcumin (which is in turmeric) raises the levels of intestinal alkaline phosphatase. The other thing is to get in the habit of taking a tsp of diatomaceous earth in some water every night after supper.

Diatomaceous earth is a natural product made up of fossilized remains of tiny aquatic organisms called diatoms. It has the remarkable property of absorbing intestinal toxins like the ones mentioned above. So, regularly taking it would probably completely prevent all these chronic bowel conditions that are so common. And if you already have one of these bowel conditions, let me suggest that you start taking some curcumin or turmeric supplements, along with diatomaceous earth. The likelihood is good that after a few weeks, you will get over the problem.

Yours for better health,

Frank Shallenberger, MD