Colon Health

Col­orec­tal Can­cer rates have been going up in adults under the age of 50, but know­ing your risk and talk­ing to your doc­tor can sup­port your health.

Screen­ing and diag­nos­tic colono­scopies have sim­i­lar­i­ties, but there are also dif­fer­ences. Here’s what they are and how they pre­vent col­orec­tal cancer.

A colonoscopy is a diag­nos­tic test that allows your gas­troen­terol­o­gist to exam­ine your large intes­tine for any abnor­mal­i­ties and pre-can­cer­ous growths called polyps. Dur­ing your colonoscopy, your doc­tor can obtain tis­sue sam­ples for fur­ther test­ing and remove any polyps found before they devel­op into can­cer­ous tumors. In addi­tion to screen­ing for col­orec­tal can­cer, colono­scopies may be used to diag­nose a num­ber of gas­troin­testi­nal issues and may be rec­om­mend­ed if you are expe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms including:

Colon Can­cer
Colon Can­cer is the third most com­mon­ly diag­nosed can­cer in men and women. Last year approx­i­mate­ly 140,000 Amer­i­cans were diag­nosed with col­orec­tal can­cer and over 50,000 of those indi­vid­u­als died from their colon can­cer. Colon Can­cer does not dis­crim­i­nate; rather it affects men and women of all races. It is a silent killer…it often has no symp­toms until it is in a late in an incur­able stage.

Learn the dif­fer­ence between a pre­bi­ot­ic and pro­bi­ot­ic and why you need both to main­tain a healthy diges­tive tract.

In com­bi­na­tion with reg­u­lar screen­ings, eat­ing a healthy diet is a great way to keep your colon healthy, help­ing to pre­vent colon can­cer and oth­er dis­or­ders. Here are the top tips on what to eat to sup­port a healthy colon.

Polyps are often dis­cussed when talk­ing about col­orec­tal can­cer or its screen­ing tests includ­ing a colonoscopy. While you may be famil­iar with the term, you may not know what a polyp is, how it forms and what you can do to pre­vent them. Gas­troen­terol­o­gist, Kaitlin Wan­ta, DO, shares what you should know about polyps and some tips to pre­vent them.

It’s no secret that com­plet­ing pre­ven­tive screen­ings, like a colonoscopy, sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­ers your risk of devel­op­ing (or dying from) col­orec­tal can­cer. Even though it has been proven to be an extreme­ly effec­tive way to pre­vent col­orec­tal can­cer, near­ly a third of eli­gi­ble adults have not com­plet­ed their colonoscopy. To encour­age you to com­plete your screen­ing, our board-cer­ti­fied Gas­troen­terol­o­gists offer their reBUT­Tals to some of the most com­mon excus­es used to delay get­ting a colonoscopy.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

This intro­duc­tion to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dick­ens, writ­ten in 1859, could just as eas­i­ly been writ­ten to intro­duce col­orec­tal can­cer. In the best of times, greater under­stand­ing and tools to man­age col­orec­tal can­cer have been devel­oped. In the worst of times, these tools are not being used to their fullest poten­tial. Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety, col­orec­tal can­cer is the third most com­mon­ly diag­nosed can­cer in the US. It is believed that a major­i­ty of these can­cers and deaths could be pre­vent­ed by a stronger adher­ence to screen­ing rec­om­men­da­tions and ensur­ing time­ly, stan­dard treat­ment. Progress has been made in screen­ing rates; how­ev­er in 2010 only 59 per­cent of peo­ple eli­gi­ble for screen­ing report­ed hav­ing received col­orec­tal can­cer testing.

Did you know that women are six times more like­ly to expe­ri­ence irri­ta­ble bow­el syn­drome (IBS), a dis­or­der char­ac­ter­ized by symp­toms includ­ing stom­ach pain, gas, bloat­ing and diar­rhea or con­sti­pa­tion, than men? Learn about the dif­fer­ent fac­tors that put women at a high­er risk for cer­tain gut conditions.