Cleanses? Supplements? How to tell fact from fiction with gut health advice

Go on social media these days and you're bombarded with ads and influencers, touting all sorts of products promising to reduce digestive tract complaints, supplements, juice cleansers diets, all promoting what's broadly called gut health.

And indeed, cases of inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer are on the rise. And a 2023 survey for a health care company found that two-thirds of those questions said they have symptoms like gas, bloating and abdominal pain on a regular basis. But how do we separate the facts from the fads?

Dr. Shazia Siddique is an assistant professor of gastroenterology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She's also on the clinical guidelines committee of the American Gastroenterological Association. Dr. Siddique, why all this attention? Why all this focus on gut health?

Dr. Shazia Siddique, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine: Well, we're definitely seeing a rise in gastrointestinal diseases globally over the past two decades, from 250 million cases back in 1990, to now more than 440 million cases. And digestive diseases can range from heartburn to hemorrhoids to colon cancer, and especially recently, what we're seeing is an uptick in colorectal cancer, particularly among young individuals, and is the leading cause of cancer death in men under 50.

Shazia Siddique:

Yeah, absolutely. So if you're having more severe symptoms, like blood in your stool, severe abdominal pain, weight loss that you can't explain, those are all symptoms, that you should be seeing a doctor much sooner, and likely getting a colonoscopy for colon cancer screening.

Other symptoms that are more mild like bloating, oftentimes, those are things that you can do mild changes in your diet, for example, anything that's swallowing air, so carbonated beverages, drinking out of a straw, gum, chewing, those are very simple things you can do cut out of your diet to see for bloating gets better. But like with any symptom, if it's persistent, you should definitely talk to your doctor.