Professor Harry Seftel replies:

You and one million other people. It's a very common condition, but fortunately you will still live till you're 149. It probably causes you some distress with gas, pain, constipation or diarrhoea - there are a whole lot of associated symptoms.

The listener replies:

Everything that you've described there has happened to me in excess in the last two weeks. I wanted to know what the severity of it is because the doctor just told me only that this is what's wrong with me.

Professor Harry Seftel replies:

It is a disturbance of the function of the colon, and is therefore nothing serious. It is obviously inconvenient and the symptoms can be distressing, but the condition is harmless. It is not a serious condition at all.

Unfortunately like so many other problems in medicine, we don't understand what the fundamental cause is. There are all sorts of theories - some say it's related to the diet, some say it's related to tension. There are various theories about this, but at the end of the day we really don't understand the cause. But what we can do is use various symptomatic treatments.

If you've got diarrhoea, we can give you something for that. If you've got spasms, we can give you an anti-spasmodic. But please don't worry about it provided the diagnosis has been made and you've excluded more serious conditions. There can be conditions that can resemble a spastic colon that are due to a physical disease. The most important of these as far as the colon is concerned, would be cancer.

You've always got to be very careful that there is not an underlying cancer or some other physical cause, which can give rise to exactly the same symptoms. That diagnosis can be done quite adequately by a gastroenterologist, and on that basis you can rest assured that you are going to live a long, long time.

The listener asks:

What about diet?

Professor Harry Seftel replies:

Well some people try different diets. We usually advise Harry's diet - the fish, fowl and fibre diet. Sometimes a high fibre diet does help, but sometimes it doesn't.

But at the end of the day, a high fibre diet is of good value generally, so even if it doesn't help the spastic colon it's a good general health principle to follow.