Inflamed Bowels and Crohn’s Disease

Imagine now that instead of attacking a person’s airways, allergic inflammation targeted the other end of the tube that runs down the middle of our bodies, namely the bowels. After a while, thickening of the walls of the intestine and colon would begin to restrict the flow of digested food, leading perhaps to diarrhea and almost certainly to abdominal pain. These digestive organs are full of bacteria, so it is inevitable that some microbes would get into the wounds and provoke ulcers and sores that might manifest as rectal bleeding, with anemia developing as the inflammation became more severe. It is a gruesome thought.

It is also daily life for about 1 in every 200 Americans and Europeans. Inflammatory bowel ...

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