What are IBS symptoms?
The primary purpose of the gastrointestinal tract is to digest (break down) and absorb (take into the blood stream) food. In order to fulfill this purpose, food must be ground, mixed, and transported through the intestines, where it is digested and absorbed. In addition, undigested and unabsorbed portions of the food must be eliminated from the body. In functional diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, the grinding, mixing, digestion, and absorption functions are disturbed to only a minor degree. These functions are essentially maintained, perhaps because of a built-in over-capacity of the gastrointestinal tract to perform these functions. The most commonly affected function in these diseases is transportation. In the stomach and small intestine, the symptoms of slowed transportation are nausea, vomiting, abdominal bloating (the sensation of abdominal fullness), and abdominal distention (enlargement). The symptom of rapid transportation usually is diarrhea. The interpretation of sympt
