As is the case with most syndromes, the irritable bowel syndrome is made up of different signs and symptoms. Fortunately however, there has been no definite link found between IBS and other serious illnesses such as cancer. Over time, other terminologies have also been developed for IBS, for example colitis, mucous colitis, spastic colon, or spastic bowel. However, no link has been established between IBS and inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.
If a patient has really severe symptoms and it affects their way of life, you can just consider that they are likely to feel some distress about that, and a lot of patients will say, “Well, I don’t genuinely have depression, or my mood wasn’t genuinely bad before, it’s merely that I feel so impaired in my life.” Most IBS patients also suffer from low self esteem which further affects their day-to-day living.
Irritable bowel syndrome can also be associated with non-gastrointestinal symptoms, whether those occur at the same time or with just greater severity or acceleration due to IBS. One very common symptom is fatigue. Another common symptom is sleep disturbances. What makes it worse is that when patients do not sleep well, the body is unable to recharge and heal itself, thus leading to worse bowel symptoms the following day. There have been studies that attest to this.
Irritable bowel syndrome is also recognized to present itself with various other conditions, especially when the symptoms exist outside of the gastrointestinal tract. Like fibromyalgia, which is a chronic pain condition of the muscles. With most patients, the chronic muscle pain, which is obviously external of the GI tract, is actually developed due to IBS. Those suffering from IBS have a tendency to develop other symptoms related to it, and the more serious the condition of the patient, the higher the chances that he will acquire other non gastro-intestinal symptoms, including fibromyalgia, and other treatable medical conditions as migraine headaches.
IBS is also associated with two other conditions: the leaky gut syndrome and gut dysbiosis, where it can be manifested as a small intestine bacterial overgrowth or SIBO. Additionally , there are connections between IBS and other environmental illnesses. IBS can often be diagnosed in people who have also been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), Gulf war syndrome (GWS) and autism. The most recent studies are now starting to identify the link between IBS and other chronic illnesses, and are looking into the possible causes for this connection.
One of the most well studied links is the involvement of SIBO in all of these illnesses, especially CFS and fibromyalgia. Just as SIBO has been found to be common in IBS patients, recent research has also found this to be the case with fibromyalgia and CFS. It was found that SIBO is common in both IBS and fibromyalgia patients.
Interestingly, they found that SIBO seemed to be more severe in fibromyalgia patients and the severity of the SIBO in specific patients correlated strongly with the intensity of the pain they suffered. To speculate on this research, could it be possible that if the SIBO of those with only IBS were to get worse, they too would experience fibromyalgic pain? Only further research can answer that question.
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Filed under I.B.S by on May 17th, 2010. 
