Digestive Disorders

Digestive disorders affect your gastrointestinal system — the organs that transform food into energy and nutrients. Digestion begins when you chew your food. When you swallow, the roughly broken down food passes into your stomach, where highly corrosive stomach acid breaks the food down even further, into a soupy consistency.

The food then travels slowly through your small intestine, where your body extracts nutrients and digests fats with the help of bile from your liver. Further down in your large intestine, billions of beneficial bacteria break down fiber and help you get even more value from the food.

Finally, stools form in your rectum, and you pass them through the anus. Digestive disorders can occur anywhere along your gastrointestinal tract.

Digestive disorders cause some painful and unpleasant symptoms, such as:

• Abdominal pain
• Chronic constipation
• Vomiting and diarrhea
• Recurring nausea
• Bloating
• Excessive gas
• Heartburn (acid indigestion)
• Pale or abnormal stools
• Rectal bleeding
• Fecal incontinence
• Pus or mucus in the stools
• Unintended weight loss
• Jaundice (yellowing skin and whites of the eyes)

Sometimes you can suffer from nausea and vomiting or diarrhea because of overindulgence — eating too much rich food, or having too much alcohol. Or you might get sharp, severe abdominal pain because you have gas trapped in your intestines.

If you experience symptoms like these that pass fairly quickly and don’t happen very often, there’s probably nothing to worry about. However, if your symptoms don’t go away, occur frequently, or get worse, there could be an underlying digestive disorder that needs identifying and treating.

Some common digestive disorders the clinicians at Integrative Family Medicine and Urgent Care see most often include:

• Gastritis
• Dysbiosis (imbalance in gut bacteria)
• Maldigestion
• Leaky gut
• Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)
• Peptic ulcers
• Celiac disease
• Ulcerative colitis
• Crohn’s disease
• Diverticulitis
• Gallbladder and biliary tract diseases
• Hemorrhoids
• Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
• Pancreatitis
• Hepatitis
• Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO)
• Colorectal cancer
• Fatty liver disease

Your provider at Integrative Family Medicine and Urgent Care performs a physical exam and runs appropriate tests to find out what’s causing your symptoms. They can test for and treat challenging conditions from leaky gut and SIBO to dysbiosis and maldigestion.

Integrative Family Medicine and Urgent Care also offers food sensitivity testing.

Treatments for digestive disorders vary depending on their cause. You might need medicines like proton pump inhibitors for acid reflux or antibiotics to kill the bacteria that cause stomach ulcers.

Your provider takes a functional medicine approach to treating digestive disorders to ensure you receive the most complete, effective care.