'Healthy gut' vital for general wellbeing

Maintaining a healthy gut is essential to maintaining a healthy body and avoiding illness, the president of the World Gastroenterology Society, Prof Eamonn Quigley, will tell a public forum in Cork today.

"We shouldn't look at the gut as an isolated organ. It's central to how the body functions, what illnesses we become susceptible to and how we respond to stress," he said.

Prof Quigley, from the department of medicine, UCC and consultant gastroenterologist, Cork, will be chairing today's forum, Focus on Health - Straight from the gut, which is being held by the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) to mark World Digestive Health Day.

Prof Quigley said the link between the gut and the brain, known as the brain-gut axis, was now becoming an important focus of the development of new therapies, particularly in gastrointestinal (GI) disease.

The interaction between the bacteria in the lining of the gut and the rest of the body was another important issue, he said.

He also highlighted the growing excitement around the use of probiotics to treat GI disease. "In the past, there was a lot of hype and hullabaloo about probiotics, but really no data to support any of it. The whole new scientific potential of probiotics is really becoming of great interest internationally," he said.

Peter Cartwright, the UK author of several books including Coping with Diverticulitis, will tell today's forum about this common condition where the colon or large intestine becomes inflamed or infected. "I estimate that 30,000 people in the Republic will suffer from diverticular disease at any one time based on UK figures and that about 4,000 people develop symptoms each year. About 1,000 of these people are hospitalised as a result of the disease and there are 250 deaths a year," he said.

Mr Cartwright, who is assistant director of the National Association for Colitis and Crohn's Disease in the UK, said diverticulitis was a 20th century condition connected with an increase in the consumption of refined wheat and food and a decrease in fibre consumption.

At least a quarter of all Europeans aged over 40 years and half of those aged over 70 years will have diverticular disease which causes little protrusions to form through the wall of the large intestine or colon. Symptoms include abdominal pain, diarrhoeaand constipation. However, Mr Cartwright said this increasingly common problem was totally avoidable simply by eating a high fibre diet from childhood.

"The core element in terms of increasing fibre is to take lots more fruit, vegetables and cereals, particularly wholemeal cereals.

"Any kind of vegetables are good and apple and pears are the fruits highest in fibre," he said.

Mary Rea of Teagasc Moorepark Food Research Centre and APC will tell the forum about how her research will help control the bacterium Clostridium difficile, an emerging hospital bug.