[ddp89]

Hi everyone.I am 20 years old and i am growing a bit concerned. I often suffer from diarrhea and pain in my abdomen. The pain isn't all that frequent and ranges from mild to agonising, it allmost allways goes away after i have a BM (and sometimes goes away without a BM) and sometimes it is short attacks that last a couple og minnuites and pop up about every 20 minnuites for a couple of hours and the cease. although i don't have excessive gas, i often have a dull feeling of my stomach being a bit swolen. I don't know if it is related but i sometimes have short bursts of a mild dull pain in my joints (mostly elbows and knees), and a feeling like heartburn, only its a dull kind of pain in staid of a sharp burning pain. But the thing that has me worried the most is that a couple of weeks ago i started to have occasional anal leakage, not a lot but enough to know it's there. So could this be IBS?Thanks in advance.

 

[Kathleen M.]

Pain that goes away with a BM is a pretty classic IBS symptom.The anal leakage isn't a required part of IBS, but IBS can effect urgency, but that should be checked out even if you had the IBS symptoms checked in the past. Some IBSers get that, but most do not and that can be a problematic thing and if they can do something about it you want to know.Joint pain isn't a standard part of IBS either, so that may need to be checked out, and the heartburn may need some investigation if it is frequent. Acid reflux over time can damage the esophagus,