Silent Signals: Understanding Bowel Cancer Through Stomach Noises

Introduction

Bowel cancer or colorectal cancer is a big health concern for almost every person belonging to different parts of the world. It mainly affects an individual's large intestine, which consists of the rectum and colon. Such cancers characterize the growth of various malignant cells in the bowel lining.

Moreover, if you leave them undiagnosed or untreated, the cancer may spread to other body parts as well. One of the easiest ways to identify bowel or colorectal cancers is to detect and differentiate bowel cancer stomach noises from normal stomach noises. However, before learning about the key signals, you should get an overview of stomach noise and its underlying causes.

Overview of Stomach Noise

Stomach noises refer to stomach growling or churning sounds produced by the large and small intestines of a person. Whenever a person has a noisy tummy, it may or may not indicate any gastrointestinal diseases or conditions.

However, if your stomach produces loud, abnormal, and frequent bowel sounds, it may have relations with your gastrointestinal condition.

Causes of Stomach Noises

There are many causes of stomach noises, which include the following-

Normal Bowel Sounds

Hunger

Stomach growling often takes place as an internal signal that your body wants food or you are feeling hungry. Whenever a person feels hungry, his brain’s substances activate his desire to have some food.

Later, the substances send signals to the stomach and the intestines. Hence, your digestive system muscles contract to produce the sounds.

Digestion

Stomach growling or abdominal noise often indicates proper digestion. It refers to the movement of digestive juices, food, air, and liquids from your intestine. Accordingly, enzymes present in your gastrointestinal tract fluids break down the food items you consume daily.

Later, the walls of your large and small intestines contract and relax in a waveform pattern to squeeze and mix the consumed food from the intestines to digest it.

Medical professionals refer to this process as peristalsis and it creates stomach growling or abdominal noise. Such a procedure takes place for many hours after you eat anything and even during the nighttime when you attempt to sleep.

Hypoactive Bowel Sounds

Hypoactive bowel sounds or stomach growling occurs whenever your bowel noises are relatively less frequent or quiet than usual. These noises also have different tones to indicate any activity in your small/large intestine has become slow.

Hypoactive sounds usually take place when a person sleeps. However, a few additional causes of stomach noises under the hypoactive category are-

• Certain drugs may slow your digestion or excretion of waste products
• Overcoming the effect of general anesthesia
• Abdominal radiation
• Epidural or any other type of spinal anesthesia
• Abdominal surgery

Hypoactive bowel sounds may even indicate a reduction in your digestion activity and it leads to constipation.

Hyperactive Bowel Sounds

Hyperactive bowel sounds refer to relatively loud noises. These noises may indicate certain stomach or gastrointestinal problems, especially in the large intestine. Such sounds occur after you eat or suffer from diarrhea and indicate dumping syndromes.

Furthermore, frequent hyperactive sounds indicate any health condition that needs proper medical treatment. A few common hyperactive bowel sounds include the following-

• Intolerance and allergy to certain types of foods
• Crohn’s disease
• Gastro-Intestinal bleeding
• Ulcerative colitis
• Infectious enteritis
• Irritable bowel syndrome

Stomach Noise to Signal Bowel Cancer  

People with bowel cancer usually do not experience any signs or symptoms during their initial stages. However, as the problem progresses, it develops certain symptoms and potentially causes the stomach to make unusual noises.

A few stomach noises are noncancerous or normal, which helps to identify abdominal pain or any other related issues. In contrast, your stomach may produce noise as gas if tumor growths or changes in your bowel. Moreover, the stomach may create noise like any substance moving or working from your digestive tract.

Whenever an individual feels like something is moving in the digestive tract, he should immediately give some time to find the causes of stomach noises. Accordingly, one should identify a few additional colorectal symptoms whether they appear with unusual stomach noises as follows-

• Pain, cramping, or ache in the abdominal area, which continues for a few days or repeats even after medication
• The feeling that the bowel is not emptied completely
• Sudden changes in your bowel habits
• Constipation, diarrhea, or any other motion-related problems
• Presence of a few drops of blood in your stool

Note-

Each of the symptoms discussed here may take place because of multiple bowel or colorectal conditions.

However, consult your doctor immediately, if you experience two or more symptoms to diagnose and treat bowel cancer stomach noise timely.

Conclusion

Bowel cancer leads to many changes in the human abdomen and causes hyperactive stomach noise. Such type of cancer also involves a few additional symptoms with unusual and loud stomach noise.

These are abdominal pain, drops of blood in the stool, bowel movement changes, and unusual fatigue. Therefore, it is your prime responsibility to keep track of the symptoms of your stomach noise to identify bowel cancer timely.

Remember that timely identification, diagnosis, and proper treatment may fight back death and complications from bowel cancer.

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