Essay Example on Impacts of IBS on Life: A Research Study

Research Questions

This research project will use the following research questions. It will have a broad question and two other minor queries that it will seek to answer.

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Broad question

The main research question of this research is:

• What are the impacts of irritable bowel syndrome on a person's life?
• Narrow questionThe narrow questions of this research are:
• Does IBS affect a person?
• What are the specific impacts on a person's lifestyle?

Justification of the Research

In recent times, many research projects have focused on this area of study. Researchers have sought to understand IBS by focusing on its causes, diagnosis, symptoms, and impacts on the lifestyle of a person. This study considers the literature that will provide more information about this condition. Specifically, it will focus on all these areas, and therefore, it will help provide answers to some of the questions that people may have towards this condition. For instance, by studying its causes and diagnosis, this project will make it easy for its readers to find better ways of identifying and preventing this condition. Moreover, finding its impacts on a person's lifestyle would help a reader know how to deal with the disease. Therefore, this research project is of high significance to its readers and other researchers, since it will help them gain more knowledge about the condition.

Significance of the Research

This research project will provide more information about IBS. While many researchers have focused on this topic, most of them usually study just a single area. For instance, some focus on its diagnosis, others on its causes, or its impacts on a person's lifestyle. However, research projects that combine all these areas of study are lacking. This research project seeks to provide information that links all these areas and then shows how this condition impacts a person's lifestyle. These results will help health service providers find appropriate ways of preventing and treating this condition. It will also make it easy for patients to manage their health since they will already know how to determine if they have the disease or not. Giving them information about its impacts on their lives will make it possible for them to find suitable ways of dealing with these effects.

Summary of the Chapter

This chapter introduces this research project. It states that this paper will investigate the causes, diagnosis, symptoms, and impacts of IBS on a person's lifestyle. The chapter provides a background of the problem of diagnosing and treating this condition. It also shows the need for establishing the impacts of the disease on a person's lifestyle, after which it provides the aim and objectives of the research. Finally, this chapter gives justification and significance of the study, which shows the benefits of the research project.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Introduction to the Chapter

This chapter seeks to review the literature related to IBS. It will focus on peer-reviewed journal articles that report research results from the United Kingdom. The review will initially consider existing literature on the topic, after which it will focus on the theoretical and conceptual framework of the research project. Later, the chapter will highlight gaps in the literature, which this investigation seeks to fill. Specifically, this research will focus on gaps that are aligned with the research problem that is the focus of this study. The successful completion of this chapter will provide information that will help fill the gaps in the literature on how IBS affects a person.

Existing Literature on the Topic

Irritable bowel syndrome affects many people globally. It is a functional disorder that originates from an array of different factors. Researchers, such as Chong et al. (2019), have studied its origins and concluded that its causes are varied. Specifically, these authors said that it could occur from epigenetic, genetic, stress-related endocrine, and nervous systems. It could also arise from a dysregulation of the immune system. This description implies that these authors agree on the existence of this condition.

Moreover, this conclusion agrees with that of Brown (2019), who compared this condition to an umbrella of factors that share common symptoms. Specifically, being an array of conditions, this disease can have many different causes, but they will all have similar symptoms (Portincasa et al. 2017). This condition arises from factors that change how the colon works relative to the rest of the digestive tract. Firstly, it can speed up, leading to diarrhoea, or it can slow down and cause constipation (Gaber, 2016). This change in the working of the colon typically causes the patient to experience much pain.

Other authors have also studied the varied nature of the causes of this condition. A good example is Jones et al. (2015), who defined this condition as diseases of the gut. Their definition implies that IBS refers to all the conditions that affect the normal working of a person's stomach. Now, despite the prevalence of this disease, it still baffles many people. For instance, the last 50 years have brought people closer to understanding it, yet knowledge about its causes and treatment is still vague (Jha et al. 2010). Some researchers have studied its origins and concluded that it could originate from environmental, post-infectious, genetic, food intolerance, or bacterial overgrowth in the small intestines of a person (Jha et al. 2010). The conclusion of these authors implies that this condition does not arise from a single cause. Therefore, since it arises from many different factors, each cause could have a different impact on the gut of a person. For instance, a case that originated from environmental factors, it would have different consequences compared to another instance that originated from a small intestinal overgrowth of bacteria.

After focusing on its causes, it is vital to consider its diagnosis and methods of identifying this condition. Specifically, it would be hard to treat it if one cannot detect it. Many researchers have studied the diagnosis of this condition. Diagnosis of this condition could use either blood tests, physical examination, colonoscopy with biopsies, or gastroscopy (El-Salhy, 2012). This author said that the diagnosis is multifactorial, depending on the cause of the condition. Specifically, if the cause of the disease is hereditary, its diagnosis will be different from another one that arose due to intestinal microbiota. Moreover, this author stated that despite a large number of factors that can cause this disease, it mainly occurs from an alteration of the neuroendocrine system that changes the gastrointestinal secretions, sensation, and motility. Therefore, the diagnosis depends on the best mode of ide...