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.

That is 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. Here’s the story.

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 suggests there must be additional environmental factors. Finally, still 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 trigger 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 is a germ that can cause infection. They chose Salmonella Typhimurium because it is widespread in 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, most infections go untreated. And that means that any one of us could have had multiple infections over the course of our lives and not really known it.

The scientists wondered whether these mild, repeated infections could be the cause of many of the bowel disorders we see.

The team experimented with a dose of Salmonella Typhimurium so low that only minor symptoms were observed. 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 occurred months after the first, the mice began 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 that 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, inflammatory molecules become toxic and can cause chronic bowel conditions. This theory was confirmed when the researchers added the enzyme to the mice's water and the mice did not develop 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 containing curcumin and turmeric or get in the habit of regularly using them in your food. One study titled “Curcumin and chronic kidney disease: major mode of action through stimulating endogenous [your natural production] intestinal alkaline phosphatase” showed that taking curcumin (found in turmeric) increases intestinal alkaline phosphatase levels. 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 composed of the fossilized remains of tiny aquatic organisms called diatoms. It has the remarkable property of absorbing intestinal toxins, such as those 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, I suggest starting curcumin or turmeric supplements along with diatomaceous earth. It may help more than all the other treatments you’ve tried.

Yours for better health,

Frank Shallenberger, MD