A recent survey suggests that the average age range of IBS patients seen by their GPs is between 26-35 years, but the average age of members of The Gut Trust, the National Charity for IBS, was 60 years –  suggesting not that the condition improves after 35, but merely that sufferers stop looking to their GP for help.

Of those patients who took part in the survey 35% reported experiencing IBS symptoms/flare ups nearly every day while 21% experience symptoms three to four times a week.

Michael Mahoney, one of Britain's leading clinical hypnotherapists to specialise in IBS, said he hoped the findings of the survey would spur doctors and specialist therapists to look at new ways of alleviating the suffering currently being endured by older IBS patients .’We have known, for some time,’ he said, ‘that there is no simple cure for IBS but this new information of the level of suffering among older patients is still shocking.’

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