Some years back, people tried to find what was wrong in the intestine in IBSers, but while they sometimes found abnormalities they also found abnormalities in healthy people and the abnormalities didn't always correlate to what's going on in the gut. So they then turned to pain perception and using a barostat, a balloon like device put in the rectum, found that IBSers were much more sensitive to distension than healthy people. But we don't really know why it is like that. Sometimes, it appears that having a gastroenteritis may alter the behavior of the sensory nerves, but that's not all cases.[This message has been edited by flux (edited 01-03-2001).]