Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a chronic disorder which means that once you have it, you will continue to suffer with the symptoms. IBS causes abdominal pain that recurs. You may experience constipation, diarrhea, or alternate between them. Women are diagnosed with IBS twice as often as men and it is more common in those twenty to thirty years old. Sometimes referred to as spastic colon, spastic colitis, mucous colitis, or nervous diarrhea, colon, or bowel, these are all still the same condition.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a motility disorder of the gastrointestinal tract which has been shown to have no organic or structural cause. Symptoms mimic other disorders, making it difficult to diagnose since the symptoms are the only thing that can usually guide doctors to the cause. Diagnosis usually consists of the elimination of other possible conditions have been eliminated as the cause.

Symptoms that are used for diagnosis include the abdominal pain that comes and goes. Often, this pain disappears after a bowel movement but there is often diarrhea or constipation, or a combination of both symptoms. Abdominal distention that peaks in the evening and then disappears by morning, along with bloating also occur.

People who are diagnosed with IBS may also experience symptoms such as headache, low back pain, difficulty urinating, and fibromyalgia. Since these symptoms don't have any connection with the gastrointestinal tract, they aren't always associated as being a part of the same condition.

Alternative medicine and diagnosis are used by some sufferers of IBS. Herbs, special diets, and other natural remedies are used to alleviate symptoms.