Does gravity have anything to do with IBS?
The Hindu
Irritable Bowel Syndrome is one of the most common disorders, affecting at least 10% of the world’s population.
An invisible force has played a very important role in the evolution of life on Earth. This force has determined the size animals can grow up to, the shapes of body tissues and a sense of direction in plants. The invisible force in question is the the universal force of attraction: gravity.
Now, according to a hypothesis, researchers think that our body’s response to gravity may be the reason for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
IBS is one of the most common disorders that affects at least 10% of the world’s population. It affects the stomach and intestines with symptoms that vary from cramping, abdominal pain, bloating gas, diarrhoea or constipation or both.
However, medical professionals and scientists still don’t know what exactly causes IBS. Some theories suggest that it is caused due to abnormalities in the gastrointestinal tract, hypersensitivity in the gut or a disorder in the gut-brain interaction. Some theories also suggest abnormality in serotonin levels or the autonomic nervous system.
“There’s such a variety of explanations that I wondered if they could all be simultaneously true,” said Brennan Spiegel, the director of Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles, in a press release.
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“As I thought about each theory, from those involving motility, to bacteria, to the neuropsychology of IBS, I realised they might all point back to gravity as a unifying factor. It seemed pretty strange at first, no doubt, but as I developed the idea and ran it by colleagues, it started to make sense,” he said.