The Informed Patient

The offending food was loosely related to poison ivy, and I was eating large quantities of it for the few days before the itching started as we just bought a big container of these delicious little things…can you guess what I’m referring to?

Gas, bloating, belching- YIKES! Although these are normal parts of our digestion and bodily processes, too much can be uncomfortable and embarrassing! Read along as Clinical Dietician Nutritionist Stefani Pappas shares some tips on eliminating gas and bloating through diet.

So how do we prevent our colon from acting like a cesspool? Keep things moving by eating plenty of non-gaseous fiber, drinking lots of water, getting regular exercise, and pooping regularly. But what if you're doing all of those things and still suffering from constipation and foul gas?

What is the point of treating one member of the family for H. pylori if he or she is just going to get reinfected by other people living in the house that also have the infection? Just how contagious is H. pylori?

H. pylori lives in the stomach lining and causes chronic inflammation called gastritis, acting as a strong risk factor for both ulcer formation and stomach cancer. But how does someone get infected with H. pylori? Can people spread H. pylori by kissing?

The question of cost is a valid one, especially at the current time where health care costs seem to be spiraling out of control. Many times it seems that the outcomes gained from large health care expenditures do not justify the massive costs, or are not feasible to implement for society as a whole.

I read with interest your blog today, and then some of your other offerings. I am a rural general surgeon who has done 12,000 colonoscopies in 35 years. My question is how do we know that screening is effective at reducing mortality?

The low FODMAP diet...It’s the new dietary approach for the bloating and belly cramps seen with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

What is immediately apparent from these numbers is that Cologuard rarely misses cancer. However, if we count polyps as a significant finding, there are plenty of false-positive results (45%) and plenty of false-negatives too (34%). So is Cologuard a good test overall?

When someone has a real disease and tells me they're not a pill person, I can't help but wonder what exactly does that mean? Someone with dangerously high blood pressure, who is not a pill person will soon become a stroke person.

Dear Retroflexions, As a victim of anal rape by my domestic married partner, I never recovered...

I thought it would be a good time to show a real-life example of colorectal cancer prevention in action. Let's pretend that you are a friendly neighborhood gastroenterologist, just minding your own business and doing a screening colonoscopy on a patient.

What is the deal with anal sex and fecal incontinence?

Here in Long Island, NY where I practice, it seems to be the norm to have a precolonoscopy visit. This visit serves several important purposes in my mind: I can meet the patient, take a history, and make sure they actually need a screening colonoscopy. I can answer all of the above questions in more detail than the primary doctor can. I also get to give them my basic talk about the purpose of a colonoscopy, how and why we remove polyps, the importance of good bowel prep and how to do it, and the small associated risks of a colonoscopy. We can talk about what to do with medications, and where to arrive on the day of the test, and parking, and all those seemingly small details that can make a patient stressed-out about the test for no good reason.

Most people know that they cannot eat anything after midnight if they have a procedure scheduled the next day. However, what about when a procedure is not actually scheduled? Sometimes a little bit of common sense and a little foresight needs to be applied to avoid having a procedure delayed an entire day because of the NPO rules. Here are two common situations that I encounter (without exaggeration) several times per week: