At specialist clinics within the Central Middlesex Hospital female patients are seen three times as commonly as men. The suggestion is that women are/could be more sensitive to some of the impacts of IBS - particularly wind and bloating, and that many women describe changes in bowel habit at different times during their menstrual cycle.
In fact some very good studies confirm that menstruation does have a deleterious effect on IBS symptoms and show that almost half of female IBS sufferers report a worsening of their symptoms in association with their periods.
At http://ibshealthcare.co.uk we wondered whether this was our customer’s experience too....please email us at info@ibshealthcare.co.uk to give us your thoughts. There may of course be another explanation.....It is known that women in the western world are generally more willing than men to seek medical attention for a whole variety of disorders. In the Indian sub-continent, IBS is more common in men that women, and in their society men are known to consult doctors more often that women; maybe it’s just an issue that our men suffer in silence or just won’t go to the Doctor!
