A Comprehensive Guide to Stomach Cancer

Stomach cancer starts when cancer cells form in the inner lining of your stomach. This is a slow-growing disease that usually grows over many years.

If you know its symptoms, you and your doctor might be able to spot it early, when it's a lot easier to treat. 

 

What Causes Stomach Cancer?

Doctors don't know what causes cancer cells to start growing in the stomach, but they do know a few things that can increase your risk of getting the disease. One of them is infection with a common bacteria, H. pylori, which causes ulcers. Growths in your stomach can also increase your likelihood of getting stomach cancer. 

 

Other things that seem to play a role in increasing your risk include: 

 

• Being overweight or obese 

• Smoking 

• Type-A blood 

• A diet that is high in smoked, pickled, or salty foods 

• Certain genes 

• Exposure to asbestos 

• Working in coal, timber, metal, or rubber industries 

• Epstein-Barr virus infection

Symptoms  

Early on, stomach cancer may cause: 

 

• Heartburn 

• Indigestion 

• Feeling bloated after a meal 

• Slight nausea 

• Loss of appetite 

 

Just having heartburn or indigestion after a meal doesn't mean that you have stomach cancer. However, if these symptoms occur a lot, talk to your doctor. They will be able to see if you have other risk factors and give you some tests to detect any problems. As the stomach tumor starts to grow, you may have more serious symptoms, such as:

Blood in your stool 

• Stomach pain 

• Vomiting 

• Weight loss for no apparent reason 

• Trouble swallowing 

• Yellowish eyes or skin 

• Swelling in your stomach 

• Constipation or diarrhea 

• Weakness or feeling tired 

• Heartburn

Getting a Diagnosis 

Your doctor will give you a physical exam. He should also ask you about your medical history to see if you have any risk factors for stomach cancer or any family members who have had it. Then, he might give you some tests, including: 

 

• Blood tests to look for signs of cancer in your body. 

 

• Upper GI series test - You will drink a chalky liquid with a substance called barium in it. The fluid coats your stomach and makes it show more clearly on X-rays. 

 

• Upper endoscopy - Your doctor will place a thin, flexible tube with a small camera down your throat to look into your stomach. 

 

• Biopsy - Your doctor takes a small piece of tissue from your stomach to look at under a microscope for signs of cancer cells. 

 

• CT Scan - This is a powerful X-ray that takes detailed pictures of the inside of your body.  

 

Treatment

There are many treatments that are used to fight stomach cancer. The one that you and your doctor choose will depend on how long you have had the disease or how much it has spread through your body.

 

Surgery

Your doctor might decide to remove part of your stomach and other tissues nearby that have cancer cells. Surgery gets rid of the tumor and stops it from spreading further. If your disease is advanced, the doctor might need to remove all of your stomach. 

 

Chemotherapy  

Drugs kill your cancer cells or keep them from growing. You can take them as pills or through an IV at a hospital. Chemo usually takes several weeks, and the drugs often have unpleasant side effects.  

 

Radiation  

High-energy waves or particles can destroy cancer cells and shrink tumors. Your doctor may use an X-ray or other machines to beam radiation at the tumor. 

 

Targeted Drugs These newer drugs are different because they only fight the cancer cells. Other treatments, such as radiation and chemo, can kill healthy cells along with diseased ones. As a result, targeted therapies have fewer side effects than other treatments.

How Can I Prevent Stomach Cancer?  

Eat Healthy

Put more fruit and vegetables on your plate every day. They're high in fiber and vitamins that can lower your cancer risk. You should avoid very salty, cured, pickled, or smoked foods, processed lunch meats, and smoked cheeses. Keep your weight at a healthy level too, as being overweight increases your risk of the disease. 

 

Don't Smoke  

Your risk of getting stomach cancer is doubled if you use tobacco.

 

Treat Stomach Infections 

If you have stomach ulcers from a H. Pylori infection, get treatment. Antibiotics can kill the bacteria, and other drugs will heal the sores in the lining of your stomach to decrease your risk of cancer.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

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Hyperacidity: Not hyped enough

Have you ever felt a burning sensation that runs up from your chest area and into your throat? It starts off feeling like an annoyance but in some cases, it becomes persistent, turning into a disease.

Jim Palmer, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball, had chronicled about his battle with heartburn. “I had frequent and persistent heartburn for many years during my baseball career. I thought it was normal. I tried changing my eating habits in an effort to allow three hours between eating and going to bed. None of these efforts solved the problem. I have found that more and more people are identifying their own experiences with frequent and persistent heartburn as reflux disease,” he had chronicled. Today, at 74 he is considered one of the famous spokespersons, in addition to former US presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, who’s been helping in increasing awareness about gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) — which in layman term means ‘acidity’.
Hyperacidity is a common symptom that is synonymous with burning pain in the upper abdomen and or chest, usually secondary to bacterial infection, intake of certain drugs, lifestyle habits such as alcohol consumption and smoking. And it doesn’t only affect older people — even active, healthy teens can suffer from acidity, explain experts.

Dr G.V. Rao, Director, Chief of Surgical Gastroenterology, Transplantation Services and Minimally Invasive Surgery, Asian Institute of Gastroenterology, explains it further. “Eating large amounts of food and inadequate chewing of food causes upper abdominal fullness, bloating, nausea, and vomiting. When one has acidity, one experiences a burning sensation under the breastbone, accompanied by reflux of bitter contents. It usually worsens on bending forward or lying down,” says Dr Rao.



What causes acidity?
According to Dr Nitesh Pratap, Consultant Gastroenterologist, KIMS Hospitals, there are multiple causes of acidity, including consuming spicy food, eating a heavy meal and eating citric foods. “In fact, chocolates can also cause acidity. And smoking and alcohol intake can worsen the symptoms. Stomach infections with H. pylori, pain medications such as ibuprofen and aspirin and high levels of stress/anxiety can also trigger acidity,” adds Dr Pratap.

Another commonly ignored aspect that induces acidity in most people is improper timing and spacing between meals during the day. According to Dr Rao, eating large quantities of food late in the night and immediately retiring to bed can also aggravate symptoms.

How can you treat the disease?

The treatment of acidity includes lifestyle modification as well as medication. “Lifestyle modification includes eating small frequent meals, avoiding spicy food, excess tea and coffee,” advises Dr Pratap.

The doctor also adds that antacids, proton pump inhibitors and antibiotics for H. pylori, as per medical advice are some of the medications used to treat acidity.

In some cases, people take antacids but still do not respond to it. In such cases, the treating doctor will evaluate for diseases causing acidity. “These tests include blood test and, if required, an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy in which a flexible scope is passed into the stomach to look for the cause of acidity. If a person with acidity has significant loss of weight, loss of appetite, vomiting or black-coloured stool, he should consult the specialist at the earliest,” the doctor adds.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.     
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Are Functional Bowel Disorders Often Mistaken for Chronic Pancreatitis?

The MRI looks like chronic pancreatitis. The symptoms the patient describes sound like chronic pancreatitis. But a Dr. says it might not be chronic pancreatitis.

“Chronic abdominal pain syndrome has a myriad of potential causes,” he says. “A lot of practitioners rely heavily on imaging studies and endoscopy to make a diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis. But the reality is that we’re looking at just one aspect of a disease that’s actually a syndrome.”

The Dr., says there’s a lot more to abdominal pain than an inflamed pancreas. Since there is no universally accepted criteria to diagnose chronic pancreatitis, he says that the condition is over-diagnosed.

Changes in the pancreas’ function and appearance are common as we age, says the Dr. On scans, those changes can look abnormal, often leading to misdiagnosis. 

“And as a result, we subject patients to a lot of interventions,” he says. “More often than not, these patients are dealing with functional bowel disorders.” A recent large survey study found that nearly 10 percent of respondents met the criteria for a functional bowel disorder.

The Dr. says that ERCP, endoscopic ultrasound and surgical procedures are great tools; but if the diagnosis is flawed, they’ll produce less-than-optimal results. “That’s what we’re seeing more and more,” he says. 

The complex, often mysterious, nature of chronic abdominal pain often leads to opioid analgesics.
“As we know, those can be dangerous for chronic conditions,” says the Dr., who is working with his  colleagues in other specialties on chronic abdominal pain treatments that don’t avoid the use of opioid analgesics. 

Functional bowel disorders, he says, often affect the gut and the central nervous system. As a result, stress and psychiatric diseases can lead to abdominal pain — and the other way around, he says. Thinking about abdominal pain in a new way is leading him to different approaches to managing patients with functional bowel disorders. 

“Patients with back or knee problems can receive injections and other procedures to help alleviate discomfort,” he says. “But it’s much more complicated with abdominal pain because of the way it connects into the body and brain’s ‘central circuitry.’”

He compares prescribing opioids for chronic abdominal pain to swatting a fly with a skyscraper instead of a fly-swatter.

“More and more, we’re looking to neuro-modulators because they tackle pain at its source,” he says. 
Drugs often used to treat depression or anxiety, he says , can be useful alternatives to the “blunt instrument” of opioids. By managing the neural network that carries pain signals to the brain, Singh says patients can find relief without the dangers of opioid dependence and abuse.

Finding exactly where a patient’s pain is can also present a challenge – is it in the gut or does it now also involve the central nervous system? He and his colleagues are researching tests to determine whether pain from the abdomen is present in the central nervous system.

“Because if your pain is already in the central nervous system, then no matter what we do in the belly, it’s not going to fix it,” Singh says.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/       
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Dyspepsia - Ways That Can Help You Diagnose It

Proper digestion and absorption of food is very important to lead a healthy life. Digestion is an extremely intricate process and involves many organs. Impairment in any of the organs can hamper the digestive process, leading to a very common condition called dyspepsia. It is caused by malfunction of one of the muscular organs along the digestive tract including esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines and colon.

Causes: While dyspepsia is more of a symptom, there are various reasons that lead to it including gastritis, peptic ulcer disease, infections, motility disorders, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), cancers of the digestive tract or any other abnormality in the digestive tract.

Evaluation: When a patient has chronic dyspepsia or indigestion, the first thing to do is a thorough evaluation to find out the underlying cause. As noted above, there are functional and nonfunctional causes leading to dyspepsia. While gastric ulcers or polyps are visible during an endoscopy, conditions like gastritis and malignancy can only be diagnosed under microscopic examinations.

Some of the tests that are used for evaluation of the cause of dyspepsia include:
1. X-ray: Any growth would be visible on an x-ray and further testing can then be done to confirm the exact nature of it.
2. Endoscopy: This will allow the doctor to see the actual digestive tract and identify any structural abnormalities or growth.
3. Colonoscopy: If the problem is suspected to be in the lower gastrointestinal tract, then a colonoscopy may be indicated.
4. Gastric emptying study: This study can also reveal the abnormalities in the digestive tract
5. Culture: Dyspepsia caused by Helicobacter pylori can be diagnosed through cultures of the stomach contents.

Treatment: The treatment of dyspepsia is quite complicated and cannot be clearly outlined , given the various conditions that it is associated with. Even specific foods can induce indigestion in some people. Therefore, a multipronged approach is required to treat dyspepsia.

Education: The affected person should be educated about the non-life-threatening nature of the problem and its chronicity. Some of the drugs used in treatment of dyspepsia include:
1. Proton pump inhibitors: These reduce the amount of acid produced in the stomach and thereby help in relieving symptoms.
2. Promotility drugs: They improve the movement of the muscles in the intestinal tract and are used in managing dyspepsia.
3. Antibiotics: If an infection is suspected, antibiotics are effective.
4. Smooth muscle relaxants: Drugs like hyoscyamine and methscopolamine have been shown to provide relief in some patients.
5. Psychotropic drugs: Anxiety and depression are frequently seen in people with dyspepsia, and managing these can help reduce the dyspepsia.

As noted, the causes, symptoms, and management are very specific to individuals and need to be managed by the doctor.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                                                                                                                                                                                      PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/   

FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                                           https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/                              

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