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What Is a Digestive Disease? The digestive tract is a series of joined and coiled hollow tubes that stretch from the mouth to the anus. Digestive diseases range from the occasional upset stomach to the more life-threatening colon cancer and encompass disorders of the gastrointestinal tract, the liver, the gallbladder, and the pancreas. A digestive disease may be acute and self-limiting, chronic and debilitating, or sudden and devastating. Each year 62 million Americans are diagnosed with a digestive disorder. The incidence and prevalence of most digestive diseases increase with age. Notable exceptions are intestinal infections such as gastroenteritis, and appendicitis, which peak among infants and children. Other exceptions include hemorrhoids, inflammatory bowel disease, and chronic liver disease, which occur more commonly among young and middle-aged adults. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) refers to two chronic intestinal disorders: Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. IBD affects between 2 to 6 percent of Americans or an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people. The causes of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are not known, but a leading theory suggests that some agent, perhaps a virus or bacterium, alters the body's immune response, triggering an inflammatory reaction in the intestinal wall. The onset for both diseases peaks during young adulthood. An individual with either disease may suffer persistent abdominal pain, bowel sores, diarrhea, fever, intestinal bleeding, or weight loss. Most people have in their colons small pouches that bulge outward through weak spots, like an inner tube that pokes through weak places in a tire. Each pouch is called a diverticulum. Pouches are diverticula. The condition of having diverticula is called divertuculosis. About half of all Americans age 60 to 80, and almost everyone over age 80, have diverticulosis. When the pouches become infected or inflamed, the condition is called diverticulitis. This happens in 10 to 25 percent of people with diverticulosis. Diverticulosis and diverticulitis are also called diverticular disease. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common functional disorder of the intestines estimated to affect 5 million Americans. Doctors refer to IBS as a functional disorder because there is no sign of disease when the colon is examined. However, doctors believe that people with IBS experience abnormal patterns of colonic movement. The IBS colon is highly sensitive, overreacting to any stimuli such as gas, stress, or eating high-fat or fiber-rich foods. Peptic ulcer disease, estimated to affect 4.5 million people in the United States, is a chronic inflammation of the stomach and duodenum. Peptic ulcer disease is responsible for substantial human suffering and a large economic burden. Every year 4 million people report missing approximately 6 days from work because of their ulcers. Peptic ulcers result from the breakdown of the lining of the stomach and duodenum. One type of ulcer occurs in the stomach, the other in the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine. Duodenal ulcers are much more common than stomach ulcers, which have a greater risk of malignancy. In 1982, a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, as isolated from gastric biopsies of patients with chronic gastritis, which is now believed to be the major cause of peptic ulcer disease. H. pylori is found in almost 100 percent of patients with duodenal ulcers and in 80 percent of patients with gastric ulcers. Digestive diseases cost nearly $107 billion in direct health care expenditures in 1992. Digestive diseases result in nearly 200 million sick days, 59 million visits to physicians. 16.9 million days lost from school, 10 million hospitalizations, and nearly 200,000 deaths per year. Source: The National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC)
Some doctors are more knowledgeable than others in certain areas such as digestion. If you or someone you care for
suffers from any type of digestive system disease or disorder,
Dr. Pitmann has written extensively about how Aloe mucilaginous polysaccharides (A.M.P.) affect the immune system via digestion as inseparable components of health. Many researchers are now in agreement with his findings. He says that all people suffering from immunodepressive conditions have a high incident of digestive dysfunction and maldigestion. Dr Pitmann has stated the following: Poor digestion results in two primary problems: 1.Food is not broken down into the elemental building blocks necessary for the body to rebuild itself and generate energy for metabolism. At a cellular level, toxins are not removed from the cells, sufficient nutrients are not moved in to the cell, and not enough energy is produced for cell functioning. This effects all cells including the immune system cells such as white blood cells, which then lack the fuel and the oxygen to carry out their normal function. 2.Even more significant is that maldigestion results in food remnants in the gut causing several pathological reactions. First, there is irritation of the intestines, causing increased permeability of the cells in the intestinal wall. Undigested protein can then leak across into the lymph system and then into the general circulation, with the immune system reacting to contain the foreign invaders. The immune system becomes overtaxed and runs down. Oxygen and fuel get used up; the immune cells wear out faster and do not reproduce in sufficient numbers. Undigested food remnants can also become a breeding ground for candida (a fungus) and several types of parasites. Candidiasis (a fungous infection) produces toxins that cause increased digestion dysfunction, food allergies, fatigue and a host of other problems. Ultimately, this causes the immune system to become even further depressed. The inflammation in the intestines causes further damage by causing reactions that produce oxidative free radicals as waste by-products. Then, negatively charged oxygen molecules begin to chop holes in cell membranes in an attempt to grab a positive charge. This results in further damage to the intestinal walls and ever increasing permeability. The "leaky gut syndrome" increases with more food particles going into the blood. Research has shown that Aloe Mucilaginous Polysaccharides have a remarkable ability to normalize all of these damaging processes, which has the effect of enhancing the immune system function through improved digestion. Aloe mucilaginous polysaccharides act as a potent anti-inflammatory agent, stopping the damage and leakage of the intestinal wall, thereby taking the stress off the immune system. Aloe Mucilaginous Polysaccharides have direct anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-yeast and anti-parasite effects. Chronic yeast growth can be controlled so the normal, healthy flora can then thrive more easily. Furthermore, the macrophages, monocytes, antibodies and T-cells are stimulated. Phagocytosis (when large white blood cells engulf particles) is dramatically increased to ingest foreign proteins. Aloe mucilaginous polysaccharides increases the number and intensity of all immune cells in the body.
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