[Rick (never give up)]

Hi,Anybody here knows what role does smoking plays in terms of IBS?I quit smoking 6 months before my IBS started because I got pneumonia. However (shame on me

) I started smoking again a year later.Although I'm still a social smoker, I smoke. So far I don't feel any difference in my IBS when I smoke. It doesn't make it worst or better.I've been trying to find some publications regarding this topic but so far there seems to be indiference about it, at least when it's related to IBS. Sounds funny? Doctors tell you about alcohol, fatty foods, fiber, etc, but I don't recall anything about smoking. None of my GIs has ever asked me if I smoke

Thanks.

 

[Kathleen M.]

Well since the smoke doesn't get to the GI tract I think mostly it is ignored.At most it may stimulate the gut a bit like caffiene can. After all a fair number of smokers seem to find the morning cigarette helps stimulate the morning BM, but I don't think the effect is nearly as much as you see with things that directly go into the GI tract.K.

 

[Screamer]

All my many doctors have claimed that cigarettes are a GI irritant (I quit just over a year ago now). For me when I first quit I swung from severe D most of the time to being a C. For a little while it was great, then I started alternating and now I'm pretty much the same as I was when I smoked. I think Mark (overitnow) found that for him smoking=a trip to the loo but for me it didn't seem to make a whole lot of difference with bm's.All that being said I find I'm in more pain now than I used to be! I wonder sometimes if maybe the smoking deadened the nerve ends in the stomach or something (lol, not being serious but I do wonder why I'm in more pain now!).

 

[16229]

I wasn't a smoker until a year or two after this started. The worse I feel, the more I crave nicotine. I think it helps my bm's sometimes, too.

 

[19462]

I read something about smoking and IBS recently. Have read so much hard to keep it all straight. Seems it was something about menthol in cigarettes helps to soothe and calm the guts. But all smokers don't smoke menthol cigarettes.I stopped smoking menthol(all) cigarettes 3 yrs ago and didn't have the major problems I've experienced within the last 1-2 years with IBS problems..I am not going to experiment and start back smoking, to try and prove or disprove how smoking affects my IBS problems.Maybe someone else has more information on this. Could be interestingDeborah

 

[overitnow]

For me, as Amy said, there is a direct relationship to both my bowels and my digestion. I am one of those people who used smoking to stimulate my bowels at one point, so there seems to be some pretty direct linkage between cigarettes and my colon. Since much of which I have discovered in my recovery indicates that my bowels and my cardio health/circulation are related--treating the circulation and blockages has eliminated the bowel problems--and since cigarette smoke is a primary contributor to creating the places in the arteries where blockages will occur, I can trace a pretty clear, if theoretical, path from one to the other.If I am right about this, once the damage is done, cessation of smoking will not reverse the blockages nor affect their rate of increase, as that is determined by blood platelette speed and oxidation rates. It will only lower the liklihood of creating new blockages.I have (shame, shame) had an occassional cigarette over the 12 years since I have stopped smoking. In virtually every case, I can feel the effects of something in my stomach and bowels almost immediately. (Once, it felt like a bundle of snakes all writhing in there.)For what it is worth...Mark

 

[Rick (never give up)]

It seems like everyone has its own experience on this.After some cyber surfing, I was finally able to find something on this regard.It seems like smoking may influence PI IBS onsethttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsumHowever, other studies may indicate that somehow smoking may have a protective role in the pathogenesis of ulcerative colitis.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsumI think I read about this last year in about.com.What I found more interesting, is that it looks that after you quit smoking you may be more prone to develop some types of bowel diseases, specially women.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...st_uids=3423738http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...t_uids=15017631Makes me wonder

, my IBS started couple of months after I quit smoking. Perhaps smoking plays a role in the onset of bowel diseases. Anyway, looks like we'll have to wait until more research is done.In the end, I think that for now it doesn't make any difference for us IBSers, but it will be wise to tell young kids about this, specially if their parents or relatives suffer from IBS.

 

[Screamer]

Great, so we give up smoking for the good of our health and instead end up giving ourselves a higher chance of developing bowel disease

 

[18438]

Well if it makes you feel any better...I started smoking several years after I devloped IBS. I know its bad for me but unfortunantly its one of the only things that calms me down when the anxiety takes control. I havent really noticed any difference in my bms when I smoke. If anything it makes them better but only due to the fact that it helps the anxiety.

 

[Screamer]

I had my first panic attack 6 months after I quit. I also noticed I felt a lot less anxious when I quit. Lol, I said to hubby a number of times I feel better when I smoke! Better than I do when I don't. I just don't want to get small cell lung cancer or something scary like that

If it wasn't for all the horrible things it could do to me I'd still be smoking me thinks.

 

[22633]

quote:The worse I feel, the more I crave nicotine.

Same for me. I know I should quit for so many reasons, but on the days I feel like I can't eat anything at all without repercussions, and I just wanna curl up in the corner, smoking helps a lot.

 

[Arnie W]

I'm so glad I gave up, but doing so didn't help my indigestion at all, even though my doctor had suggested that it would help to clear things up. Inhalation of smoke results in swallowing air, with the potential to increase gas. I had hoped that giving up smoking would diminish the gas, but, alas, it made no difference.

 

[16229]

I wonder if there is a middle ground there somewhere. The gum and the patch don't really work like the good old fashioned butts. When I'm all tied up for some reason I will chain smoke like no tomorrow. Other times I'll only have a couple during the day. Some days I won't have any.Part of me wants to quit because of the health concerns, but a bigger part of me is convinced they help my bm's when I have bad c.Does anyone know if those vaporizer things really work? I saw an article about that other stuff they smoke and that these vaporizers allow you to smoke without the bad effects of smoking. If they do work think I could put tobacco in one? Don't know how much they cost, but I'd shell it out quickly if I thought I could smoke that way and not affect my health so badly.

 

[Screamer]

Lol, the gum gave me the worst D from the artificial sweetener and the patch gave me a massive rash and made me near throw up from overdose, and neither of them ever worked like the smokes did! As for putting tobacco in a vaporiser, well that's a novel idea!! Never thought of that before!