Weird Question: Has anyone else noticed the rising number of people with stomach ailments?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

almost everyone in my office seems to have either acid reflux, IBS, gastritis, crohn's, GERD, or some other stomach related illness.

have you guys noticed an increase in this? or is it just people i know?

(fyi: almost everyone in office is under 30 years of age)

[Blue Diadem]

1. Yes I have.

Makes me wonder what's in our food. You know..I'd expect it to happen to me as I've gotten older(51)and it has, but like you I've also noticed many people 30's and below experiencing it.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

2. thank you

i feel less of a tin foil hatter now! :hi:

[skygazer]

3. I've noticed it and wondered about it, too

And not all those people have lousy diets. Makes you wonder...

[La Lioness Priyanka]

5. i have a pretty good diet.

[KitchenWitch]

4. I think these ailments got a name when there were big expensive drugs to treat them.

No such thing as plain old heartburn anymore.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. maybe, but i also think people are getting sicker

my hearburn is quite something

[anarch]

8. it's probably mostly from stress

brought on by worrying about all the awful diseases you can get now, and aggravated by the constant tv commercials for various nostrums to treat them.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

11. that an fulltime work and grad school

its a killer.

[anarch]

15. in all seriousness, stress will totally mess with your digestive system

I wonder if people in general are under more stress these days than people used to be....

[skygazer]

7. I think you're absolutely on to something

Drug companies sort of make up diseases to sell their drugs for. The latest one seems to be the one they advertise with the person's feet on a cactus or covered with thumbtacks - "Do your feet feel like this? It could be such-and-such a dreaded disease. Ask your doctor about ________"

[Tyrone Slothrop]

9. I have

And I'm one of them.

About a year ago or so, it started happening to me. I figured it was my gallbladder (runs in the fam) but my doc told me it was fine and probably one of the above ailments. I'm really making a huge effort to monitor my diet.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

10. me too. i have to eat 2-3 hours before bed. not eat coffee/mints after food

etc

[Tyrone Slothrop]

14. Bananas really seem to help

Also (and this seems to point towards a stress-related cause) -- I started doing Pilates a couple weeks ago and that really seems to have helped.

[skygazer]

12. Well, another thing about these types of ailments

is they often accompany depression or bipolar illness. I think a lot of the reason for them, and for depression/bipolar, is the level of stress we have and the fast pace of our lives. And things do tend to cluster - if you have depression, you're more likely to have some of these stomach ailments as well as migraine.

Me, I've hit the trifecta, so to speak. I'm bipolar, suffer migraines and have gut issues. :eyes:

[leftofthedial]

13. when you put capitalists in charge of the food supply

people get worse nutrition and get poisoned

[hedgehog]

16. Going back to World War II, we have increasingly raised all our

food "scientifically". That means fields are fertilized with chemicals and treated with herbicides. Chickens, pigs and cows don't graze but are confined to pens and fed a special diet calibrated to maximize weight gain. It's not tin hat territory to note that vegetables today don't contain as much of the known nutrients (Vitamins A, B, C etc.) as vegetables that were tested 50 years ago. Who knows what trace nutrients are also missing? I am absolutely convinced that a lot of chronic illnesses are actually a result of malnutrition.

What if it turns out that the obesity epidemic is actually a result of people desperately trying to get the nutrients they are missing?