How to Get a Colonoscopy in 14 Anxiety-Filled Steps

“Hilarious read!”

— Dr. Dale

How to Get a Colonoscopy in 14 Anxiety-Filled Steps

By Dawn Weber

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dawn-weber/how-to-get-a-colonoscopy-_b_10468020.html

It happens to almost everyone eventually. You’re going along living your life, dreaming your dreams and merrily walking around without ever having a tube inserted in your personal regions, when all of a sudden . . .

BAM!

It’s time for your first colonoscopy.

Yes, despite your best efforts to avoid such a situation, chances are you will one day find your brown eye staring down the business end of a colonoscope — a long flexible tube with a small camera — either due to your age or the fact that you’re having GI problems. Here at the Center for Too Much Information (CTMI), we’ve put together a handy guide for women in the latter situation, as we, um, have a woman “friend” who had this experience. Read on:

• Suffer painful symptoms for several weeks. Dread telling any doctors about it, because you think it will lead to medical staff poking around in your coal hole, although you will soon find out you’re wrong about this. Be sure to begin worrying incessantly and imagining the worst.

• Google your symptoms on WebMD, otherwise known as www.It’sProbablyFatal.com. Obtain lots of information, all of which basically boils down to “Could be nothing. Could be cancer.” Proceed to have nervous breakdown.

• A month later at your annual OB/GYN appointment, discuss problems with physician. Although he used to briefly examine your rear prison purse in addition to your front lady garden, he tells you insurance companies no longer allow him to open the back door until after age 45. “It’s probably nothing. You’ll be fine,” he says, recommending fiber and water (which you already consume) and sending you on your way.

• Two months later, head to family doctor and tell her about ongoing problems. “It’s probably nothing. You’ll be fine,” she says, also prescribing water and fiber (which again, you already consume). She doesn’t examine area either. You’re finding out that oddly, no one wants to look inside your butt, even when you’re paying them.

• Symptoms continue for several more months, so you make an appointment with a specialist, who is concerned enough to prescribe a colonoscopy. You are relieved that someone will finally be looking at your balloon knot. You are horrified that someone will finally be looking at your balloon knot. And snaking a hose all the way up your Hershey Highway.

• As colonoscopy approaches, begin dreaming of snakes — in doctor’s offices, in toilets, in your underpants. For good measure, make repeated visits to WebMD/It’sProbablyFatal.com and continue to scare yourself silly. Chant It’s probably nothing. You’ll be fine until you fall asleep.

• On day before procedure, limit diet to such satisfying items as water, tea and lemonade. Obtain can of chicken broth. This is your lunch. Later that afternoon, open giant prescription bottle of MoviPrep, a.k.a. Colon Blow. This is your dinner.

• Gather fully charged iPad, ten-pack of toilet paper and a change of underwear. Sprint to bathroom and strap yourself to toilet, for it will be your new home. Over the next eight hours, you will excrete digested food from as far back as the Carter administration exiting your rear at speeds approaching the sound barrier. At times you think you will be done with your terrifying mission.But lo — you will be wrong.

• Around midnight, attempt to sleep. Note the word “attempt” here, because thanks to the fact that you can’t eat, drink, or take any of your usual fun array of sleeping pills, you will be wide awake, starving and riddled with worry. Your partner’s snoring keeps you up, so you head to the couch, where your growling stomach keeps you up. Seriously contemplate eating throw pillows.

• Arrive at hospital the next morning and check in. Thanks to anxiety and eight hours of tossing and turning, you’re half asleep, yet still conscious enough to be scared, well, shit-less. (See what we did there?)

• Allow medical staff to prep you for procedure, and smile weakly at their attempts to cheer you up with poo-related humor. You’re desperately trying to forget the fact that they’ll soon be doing things to you that are almost illegal in several states, so you ask for anesthesia. The nurse obliges, but you feel nothing at first and tell her, “I don’t think you gave me enough. I’m-really-nervous-so-you’ll-probably-need-to-inject-more-‘cause-I-don’t-feel-a-thing-and . . .Zzzzz.”

• Wake up groggy and half-naked with faces all around you, as if you’ve slept through your first orgy. The doctor says everything looks fine, and you’re suddenly very happy because of the great news, not to mention the awesome anesthesia. Despite your liaison with the pooper python, you feel no pain in your ass. In fact, you feel no pain at all.

• Head into recovery area. A nurse checks your vitals and says that you have to pass a large amount of gas before she can let you go. You cheerfully oblige her request in front of God and everybody, because you know this is the quickest route to food. Also you are still high as a kite.

• Giggle as spouse helps you dress and ties your shoes. As you haven’t eaten since dinnertime two days ago, demand that he takes you to Taco Bell at once! and post-haste!He reminds you that you’ve recently drank 64 ounces of MoviPrep/Colon Blow. Hmm. Taco Bell . . . Colon Blow. Even in your purple haze, you realize this is not a wise combination, so he takes you to Bob Evans, where you consume everything on the breakfast menu. And the contents of the butter dish. With a spoon.

Well, there you have it, folks, a handy guide for your first trip down the old dirt road. You can see that a colonoscopy is a pain-free way to lose a little weight and freak way the hell out about nothing, as well as a chance to get naked, sleep and fart.

In front of total strangers.

___________________________________________________

We at the Center for Too Much Information do not advise doing what our, um, “friend” did. Between the start of the problem and and the symptoms being waved off by two doctors, it was eight months before, um, “she” found a specialist who took her concerns seriously. Remember, some insurance companies don’t even require referrals for specialists — hers did not. And as another dear friend once said, if something isn’t right, get checked. It’s probably nothing. You’ll be fine.

Butt (see what we did there?) . . .

. . . it’s better to know for sure.

Study advances understanding of colon cancer, colitis

“Great find.”

— Dr. Dale

Study advances understanding of colon cancer, colitis

Study explains how distribution of two forms of a transcription factor in the colon influence risk of disease

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160517191816.htm

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), of which Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are the main types, is on the increase in the United States, affecting more than 1.6 million people and explaining perhaps the increase in advertisements offering treatments and cures. Another intestinal disease is colon cancer, a leading cause of death, which is linked to diet and one's genetic predisposition to the disease.

What is already known in the field of cell biology is that a transcription factor, called hepatocyte nuclear factor 4-alpha (HNF4-alpha), plays a key role in both diseases, transcription factors being proteins that help transcribe DNA into its close cousin, RNA, which is then translated into proteins which do the work of the cell. HNF4-alpha comes in two major isoforms, P1-HNF4-alpha and P2-HNF4-alpha (hereafter P1 and P2, respectively), but just how these isoforms are distributed in the gut and how each isoform plays a role in colitis and colon cancer are not understood.

Now, working on mice, a team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside has determined the distribution of the P1 and P2 isoforms in the colon. They report in the journal eLife that maintaining a balance of P1 and P2 is crucial for reducing risk of contracting colon cancer and colitis.

"P1 and P2 have been conserved between mice and humans for 70 million years," said Frances M. Sladek, a professor of cell biology, who led the research project. "Both isoforms are important and we want to keep an appropriate balance between them in our gut by avoiding foods that would disrupt this balance and consuming foods that help preserve it. What these foods are is our next focus in the lab."

The intestine is the only adult tissue in the body that expresses both P1 and P2. Sladek and her team have shown for the first time that these isoforms perform non-redundant functions in the intestine and are relevant to colitis and colitis-associated colon cancer.

"Our study also suggests that finding a drug to stabilize one isoform should be more effective than targeting both isoforms for treating colitis and colon cancer," said Karthikeyani Chellappa, the first author of the research paper and a former postdoctoral researcher in Sladek's lab.

Sladek explained that the colonic epithelial surface has finger-like invaginations (into the colonic wall) called colonic crypts that house stem cells at their base. These stem cells help regenerate new epithelial cells that continuously migrate up towards the surface, thus ensuring complete renewal of the intestinal lining every three-five days.

The researchers observed that the P1-positive cells were found in the surface lining and the top portion of the crypt (green in the accompanying image) while P2-positive cells were mostly in the proliferative compartment in the lower half of the crypt (proliferation marker is red in the image.) Further, when transgenic mice -- genetically engineered to have only either P1 or P2 -- were subjected to a carcinogen and, subsequently, to an irritant to stress the epithelial lining of the colon, the researchers found that the P1 mice showed fewer tumors than wildtype control mice. When treated with irritant alone, these mice were resistant to colitis. In sharp contrast, mice with only P2 showed more tumors and were much more susceptible to colitis.

The researchers explain these findings by invoking the "barrier function" -- a mucosal barrier, generated by the colon's epithelial cells, that prevents bacteria in the gut from entering the body. In the case of P1 mice, this barrier function was enhanced. The P2 mice, on the other hand, showed a compromised barrier function, presumably allowing bacteria to pass through.

Next, the researchers examined genes expressed in the P1 and P2 mice. They found that RELM-beta, a cytokine (a signaling molecule of the immune system) expressed in the gastrointestinal tract and implicated in colitis, was expressed far more in the P2 mice than the P1 mice.

"This makes sense since a reduced barrier function means bacteria can go across the barrier, which activates RELM-beta," Sladek said. "We also found that the P2 protein transcribes RELM-beta more effectively than the P1 protein."

Next, Poonamjot Deol, an assistant project scientist in Sladek's lab and the second author of the eLife study, will lead a project aimed at understanding how diet affects the distribution of P1 and P2 in the gut. She and others in the lab also plan to investigate how obesity and colitis may be linked. (Diet studies performed in Sladek's lab in the past illustrated soybean oil's adverse effect on obesity.)

"In the case of colitis, could soybean oil be playing a part in allowing bacteria to get across the barrier function?" Deol said. "We do not know. We know its detrimental effect on obesity. But more research needs to be done where colitis is concerned."

Simple diet changes may reduce risk of colon cancer

“So true!”

— Dr. Dale

Simple diet changes may reduce risk of colon cancer

http://tucson.com/ap/lifestyles/simple-diet-changes-may-reduce-risk-of-colon-cancer/article_5aa631b3-2647-5f4a-9612-c2ef0aa8c4cb.html

Can changing your diet reduce your risk of colorectal cancer?

Dr. Scott Strong, surgical director of Northwestern Medicine’s Digestive Health Center, said it certainly can’t hurt.

Some simple changes such as increasing your fiber intake and reducing your consumption of red meat might reduce your risk factor.

“We know without question that obesity is a risk factor for colon cancer,” Strong said.

Eating more fruits and vegetables and limiting processed meat can also decrease risk, he said. As can increasing calcium, folic acid and vitamin D.

Colorectal cancer includes cancer of the colon and rectum, and is the second leading cancer killer in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And one in seven colorectal patients was younger than 50 years old, a January study in the journal Cancer showed.

“A large percent of the population still doesn’t undergo their screening colonoscopy, even though they’ve been told that they should have it done,” Strong said.

Early screening is encouraged. Early detection can greatly influence how effectively cancer can be treated or even prevented.

“What we’re trying to do is find the cancer at an early stage, where it’s more curable,” Strong said. “Not only are we looking for cancer, we’re preventing cancer.”