Fact+Sheet

When you eat food travels through your mouth, esophagus, stomach, small bowel, ileocecal valve, and then large bowel.

The main functions of the colon are to extact water and salt from stool, and stor it until it can be expelled. When stool first enters the colon from the small bowel, it is ver watery. As it traverses the large bowel, water is reabsorbed and the stool gradually becomes firmer.

In a healthy individual, it is usually composed of water, dead and living bacteria, fiber (undigested food), intestinal mucous and sloughed-off lining of the gut. It is not normal to have blood in feces, nor large amounts of mucous. Feces from an individual without any gut disease is soft enough to pass comfortably from the rectum and anus, and (depending on the person) is typically expelled one or two times a day. Bowel movements are an entirely different matter for someone with IBD. If you have IBD, there are some very real challenges related to feelings of urgency, diarrhea and bloody stool.

The symptoms for both CD and UC can be similar. People with the disease may experience: The cause of IBD is unknown. Researchers and the medical community are working hard to uncover the answers, but to date, we still do not know the actual cause of these diseases that afflict over 200,000 Canadians.
 * Abdominal pain, cramping
 * Diarrhea (bloody stools with UC)
 * Nausea and vomiting
 * Diminished appetite and weight loss
 * Fever
 * Anemia
 * Fatigue

That is not to say there are no answers. In fact, there is strong evidence that IBD develops in genetically predisposed individuals who are exposed to environmental factors that trigger the illness.

In fact, the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada (CCFC) is funding the Genetics, Environmental and Microbial (GEM) Project. This $5.5 million project will span six years and 5,000 subjects. It is recruiting the healthy children and siblings of people with Crohn’s disease to find clues to the genetic, environmental and microbial factors that may play a part in causing the disease.