IBS – Symptoms

Transcript

There are a whole bunch of symptoms that can come with IBS. You may feel pain in your stomach, especially whenever you feel like you have to go to the bathroom. Often that pain is relieved by going to the bathroom. And so if you find that you get a bad tummy ache that you feel better with every time you poop, you may have IBS, and it’s worth discussing that with your doctor. You also might have bloating. You might have the feeling that you still have to go, even though you’re finished pooping. And you may see some mucus in your stool. Of course, these things can also be linked with other issues, so it’s important to go get evaluated by a physician and not just decide that you have IBS, because we can’t always tell, and we do want to do some tests to be sure about that.

If you see specific worrying signs, you should see a doctor. So if you’re having symptoms where the pain is extraordinarily bad, you’re losing weight or having other issues in that regard, you see blood in your stool, you start to notice other issues like rashes, joint pains, ulcers in your mouth, or changes to your vision. These are all things that we really want to go have you see a doctor for so we can exclude certain inflammatory conditions and be sure that IBS is actually what’s happening. However, if you have pain that feels better when you stool, no weight loss, fevers, or other significant symptoms, and when doing things that you enjoy distracts you from the pain, it probably is IBS.