Turmeric Improves the Symptoms and Quality of Life in Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

By Kyle J. Norton

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic condition that affects the large intestine.

Most common symptoms of IBS include abdominal cramping and pain, bloating, gas, and diarrhea or constipation.

In severe cases, patients may also experience symptoms of urinary or sexual problems.

If you have the aforementioned symptoms persistently without signs of healing, please check with your doctors to rule out the possibility.

As of today, researchers do not know the exact cause of IBS. However, they do know that being a woman, smoking, frequent alcohol consumption, younger age, psychological and physical stress, are most susceptible to the onset of the disease.

Believe it or not, most people with some of the risk factors have never had IBS.

Treatment of IBS is focusing on reduced symptoms and depending on the types of symptoms including change of diet with food that has a slow the movement of food through the digestive system, antibiotics for an infection.

According to statistics, in the US, approximately 25 and 45 million. Americans are affected by IBS. Most of them are women in the late teens and the early 40s.

Dr. Anamaria Cozma-Petruţ, the lead scientist in the evaluation of the dietary effect on IBS, wrote, "Despite the limited evidence for a beneficial role, general advice on healthy eating and lifestyle is recommended as the first-line approach in the dietary management of IBS".

And, "Standard recommendations include adhering to a regular meal pattern, reducing intake of insoluble fibers, alcohol, caffeine, spicy foods, and fat, as well as performing regular physical activity and ensuring good hydration. The second-line dietary approach should be considered where IBS symptoms persist and recommendations include following a low FODMAP diet".

The results clearly suggested that IBS can be managed by eating a recommended diet or diet delivered only by a healthcare professional with expertise in dietary management.

Turmeric is a perennial plant in the genus Curcuma, belonging to the family Zingiberaceae, native to tropical South Asia.

The herb has been used in traditional medicine as anti-oxidant, hypoglycemic, colorant, antiseptic, wound healing agent, and to treat flatulence, bloating, and appetite loss, ulcers, eczema, inflammations, etc.

On finding a potential compound for the treatment of irritable bowel disease, researchers examined the efficacy of bio-optimized extracts of turmeric and essential fennel oil (Enterofytol®) in IBS patients.

The study total included a total of 211 patients (14% diarrhea-predominant, IBS-D; 24% constipation-predominant, IBS-C; 62% mixed, IBS-M) enrolled by general practitioners and completed questionnaires measuring symptom severity and QoL before and after Enterofytol®, two capsules b.i.d. for one month, followed by two capsules q.d. for another month.

After taking other factors into account, researchers found that Enterofytol® not only improved the quality of life of the participants but also reduced the IBS severity index, particularly in IBS-D patients with the worst clinical picture at entry, with the highest IBS severity index and the lowest QoL score, compared with IBS-C and IBS-M subtypes. IBS-D patients.

Furthermore, also compared to other subgroups, IBS-D patients with the worst clinical picture at entry also showed the most pronounced response to therapy, considering both scores.

Moreover, Enterofytol® efficacy in the improvement in the IBS severity index was independent of age and sex.

Based on the findings, researchers wrote in the final report, "the combination of turmeric and essential fennel oil over two months improves both symptoms and QoL in IBS patients, irrespectively of age, sex, initial severity of symptoms and IBS-subtypes".

According to the joint experiment to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of a combination of curcumin and fennel essential oil (CU-FEO) in IBS symptoms relief in a total of 121 patients with mild-to-moderate symptoms of IBS defined by an Irritable Bowel Syndrome- symptom severity score (IBS-SSS) 100-300 and abdominal pain score 30-70 on a 100 mm Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), randomly assigned to CU-FEO or placebo (2 capsules b.d. for 30 days), conducted led by the University Medical School, 30 days of treatment of CU-FEO resulted in symptom relief in patients with IBS.

Moreover, CU-FEO showed a significant decrease in the mean relative IBS-SSS at the same time frame without inducing any adverse effects.

At the end of the study, 25.9 % treated with CU-FEO were symptoms free compared to only 6.8& in the placebo group. 

Additonally, all domains of IBS-QoL in the CU-FEO treatment group improved consistently.

In other words, CU-FEO only reduced abdominal pain but also all the other symptoms of IBS-SSS over 30 days.

Taken altogether, turmeric combined with other herbal remedies may be considered supplements for the prevention and treatment of irritable bowel disease, pending to the confirmation of the larger sample size and multicenter human study.

Intake of turmeric in the form of supplement should be taken with extreme care to prevent overdose acute liver toxicity.

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Author Biography
Kyle J. Norton (Scholar, Master of Nutrition, All right reserved)
Health article writer and researcher; Over 10.000 articles and research papers have been written and published online, including worldwide health, ezine articles, article base, health blogs, self-growth, best before it's news, the karate GB daily, etc.,.
Named TOP 50 MEDICAL ESSAYS FOR ARTISTS & AUTHORS TO READ by Disilgold.com Named 50 of the best health Tweeters Canada - Huffington Post
Nominated for shorty award over last 4 years
Some articles have been used as references in medical research, such as international journal Pharma and Bioscience, ISSN 0975-6299.

Sources
(1) Efficacy of bio-optimized extracts of turmeric and essential fennel oil on the quality of life in patients with irritable bowel syndrome by Di Ciaula A1, Portincasa P2, Maes N3, Albert A. (PubMed)
(2) Curcumin and Fennel Essential Oil Improve Symptoms and Quality of Life in Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome by Portincasa P1, Bonfrate L2, Scribano ML3, Kohn A3, Caporaso N4, Festi D5, Campanale MC6, Di Rienzo T6, Guarino M4, Taddia M5, Fogli MV7, Grimaldi M7, Gasbarrini A. (PubMed)
(3) Diet in irritable bowel syndrome: What to recommend, not what to forbid to patients! by Anamaria Cozma-Petruţ, Felicia Loghin, Doina Miere, and Dan Lucian Dumitraşcu. (PMC)