Bowel Cancer Research Charity
We’re just beginning to understand how important our guts are to our overall wellbeing as individuals. Our intestines contain more nerve endings than our spinal cord and if you ever thought your brain signalled that you were hungry, you’d be mistaken: appetite is controlled by hormones in our gut.
Perhaps a reason that it’s taken so long to start to understand the wonder of our deepest most being is because it’s frankly not got very positive associations; it certainly performs a function that most of us don’t dwell on the wonder of!
Yet bowel problems are so very common. Bowel cancer is the 3rd most prevalent cancer, with more than 40,000 people being diagnosed each year. Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, most commonly colitis and Crohn’s disease affect more than 250,000 and thousands more suffer complaints that can’t even be diagnosed, such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and the numbers of individuals with a stoma is over 100,000.
Bowel cancer takes more lives than any other cancer, with the exception of lung cancer. Living with a chronic inflammatory disease takes a considerable toll on people because the disease is so unpredictable. “Flare ups” as they are called can put people in hospital where only morphine-like drugs can dull the pain. A stoma is often a life saving procedure, but can have a physical as well as emotional and psychological impact on a person. Commonly people with IBS are just labelled “faddy or difficult eaters” by others when actually that glass of wine or cream bun, for example, would cause major problems with bloating and pain and is just not worth the trouble.
It’s a little known fact that a major reason that older relatives are placed into care is because of problems with constipation, and often the resulting faecal incontinence. As many as 8 in 10 of us will have significant problems with toileting as we age. Problems can be made worse by other diseases of ageing, such as dementia. We are investigating ways that we can harness new technologies to support individuals with bowel problems, at home and in nursing or residential care. If you would like the chance to be involved in this, you can register to join our Patient and Public Involvement programme HERE
Bowel & Cancer Research aims to make life better for anyone with bowel problems. Firstly the charity funds medical research with the aim of delivering new and better treatments for people. It also recognises the singular distress that can be felt by people living with bowel conditions, and runs a project to enable people to become involved in research into bowel conditions. It also works on public campaigns to increase awareness and reduce stigma.
Bowel & Cancer Research has made a major investment of more that £2.5million in a new National Centre for Bowel Research and Surgical Innovation . The centre enables researchers to work on tissue which has been donated by patients, giving an unmatched opportunity to look at how disease alters our cells and tissues. Bowel & Cancer Research is funding researchers to look at what causes the pain associated with colitis and Crohn’s disease so that in future new therapies can be found . The centre coordinates nationwide clinical trials; just completed is the trial of a non- surgical intervention for people with faecal incontinence – you can read more about this in Patsy’s account . A new major UK wide project which will look at how best to support the increasing numbers of people who are surviving bowel cancer but who are left coping with the inevitable emotional, psychological and physical effects.
There is so much to do. Because bowel problems are kept quiet, funding into research does not measure up to the toll that these problems take on people and their families; in the recent past it has been pretty woeful. But times are changing, and progress is being made.
If you would like to be part of this change, find out more about Bowel & Cancer Research, our work involving the public, or how to support us, please contact [email protected] or on 020 7882 8749
Together we can make things happen.
