  Bowel disease - the conventinal diagnosis The medical profession is again guilty of sloppy thinking when it comes to the diagnosis of bowel problems. What it has done is classify disease according to what treatments are available rather than according to the cause of the problem. The result is that the most common bowel disorder namely irritable bowel syndrome is relegated to the psychiatric dustbin. In pharmaceutical medicine no single treatment strategy is available therefore the cause must be psychological. Furthermore some nasty bowel conditions such as Crohnís disease are treated with symptom suppressing drugs instead of a proper attempt being made to get at the root cause. Avoidance of provoking foods (98% of Crohnís have grain allergy) prevents unnecessary surgery and steroids. Indigestion is also badly treated with a range of symptom suppressing medication. Many indigestion remedies contain aluminium - a known cause of Alzheimers disease Symptom suppression is a risky business. Symptoms are a sign of something going wrong. If your diagnosis is wrong when a prescription is made the doctor will not know it because the patient no longer has any symptoms. I still see patients diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome given symptom suppressing drugs or a psychiatric diagnosis, who turn out to have cancer. 
