Global (Gut) Warming

After retiring from an active career in gastroenterology several years ago, I've had the time to think through my own training and what I really knew about the gut. I knew oceans about diseases, endoscopy and the complex drugs and treatments we used. However, there just wasn't much time to think through the fine points of basic intestinal health and nutrition. 

These topics were always on our course agendas but, frankly, they were not very sexy, compared to highly technical treatments and procedures with which we dealt every day. Further, there just was not enough time to think through the very basics of the gut. It seemed pretty simple. You put decent food in one end and waste came out the other. Patients always implored me to tell them more about what they should eat and how to manage their nutrition. Aside from the obvious of recommending lots of fiber, lesser animal, saturated fats and weight control, there did not seem much more to say.

Now I am away from caring for individual patients, away from the endoscopes, away from the frantic hospital work, and, yes, away from the burden of the unending paper burden of insurance and regulators. I have remained deeply interested in quality care in medicine. I have become a medical literature mole, ferreting out  some startling new areas in our field of gastroenterology. What I have discovered and what is still not fully appreciated by my disease and procedure oriented colleagues ( I was one myself, I confess) is that the gut is a thing of beauty. The colon itself is a true health organ, providing myriad health benefits if it is just treated right. (See my article: A Wonderful Colon for more on this).

If I can borrow an analogy, I view our gut very much as we, the media and the government view the environment, climate warming and our very precious earth. We know we must clean it up and, hopefully, this is slowly happening. For too long we have treated our gut the same way, not considering the foods we put into it. If it tasted good, that was the only criteria for good nutrition for many of us. Now we know so much more about intestinal function within us in much the same way that we know about CO2 and pollutants in the air we breath. 

The colon in particular, always in the past viewed as nothing but a waste receptacle, is now known to be a health producing organ that is filled with huge numbers of healthy and some not so healthy bacteria. Feeding it correctly tilts the bacteria balance in many healthy ways. Plant prebiotics are the center piece of this new knowledge. Probiotics are likely of some benefit as well.

So, this will begin a series of blog talks and interchanges with you the public. I will speak to many gastrointestinal disorders such as diverticulosis, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, colon and other cancers. osteoporosis (yes, there is a colon component here), Crohns Disease, Ulcerative Colitis and others. Do you have a GI topic you would like me to discuss?

I have really not retired from practice. I have simply moved away from private patient care to public gastrointestinal care. I wish to provide the best dietary advise by a trained gastroenterologist who spends time almost every day searching the medical literature and conversing with my colleagues for that which is helpful to you.

Keep tuned

Frank W Jackson MD