Testing your digestive health

The benefits and drawbacks of endoscopy and colonoscopy testing

Summary

  • Endoscopies are where the doc inserts into your digestive system a tube with a camera on the end.
  • The tube can go down your esophagus and rummage round your stomach and small intestine, or up your rectum and explore your colon.
  • The tests are used to find inflamed tissue, growths, polyps, ulcers, blockages, and tumours.
  • Sometimes, a biopsy is taken from the tissues in your stomach, intestine and colon.
  • The tissue samples are checked for things like H. pylori, coeliac disease and malignancy (cancer).
  • These tests are great because they enable doctors to provide a medical diagnosis (e.g. GERD, Barrett’s esophagus, ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease, etc.)
  • BUT they don’t typically provide much help if you have a functional digestive disorder such as irritable bowel syndrome.
  • Also, if you are diagnosed with a medical issue, it’s important to uncover WHY that issue has developed.
  • Functional lab tests, unlike medical tests, seek to identify the deeper underlying causes.

Watch the other videos in this series

Video 1 – Medical digestive testing – Endoscopy and colonoscopy (you are here)

Video 2 – Medical digestive testing – Ultrasound

Video 3 – Medical digestive testing – Scans and imaging (MRI, CT, X-ray, etc.)

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Dave.