EDIT: Let’s cool it with the downvotes, dudes. We’re not out to cut funding to your black hole detection chamber or revoke the degrees of chiropractors just because a couple of us don’t believe in it, okay? Chill out, participate with the prompt and continue with having a nice day. I’m sure almost everybody has something to add.
I think many of these classifications are caused simply by doctors refusing to say “I just don’t know” and patients refusing to accept that they really don’t and probably never will…
Take IBS. We are supposed to believe that there is a disease with no known cause, so many possible triggers and influencers that anyone can find some that fit and wildly varying symptoms… something similar could probably be said for many other “syndromes”. Of course all of those people have something else or a combination of something else but nobody wants to admit they just don’t know and everyone wants a diagnosis.
Yes—IBS is a good example of something that’s likely a constellation of different disorders (aka why it’s a “Syndrome”). There’s some promising preliminary data that a lot of IBS may actually relate back to the insecticides that are used on commercial crops (hence one of the reasons why people get relief from going “gluten free”—it may have less to do with the gluten and more to do with the chemicals on the wheat itself). Stay tuned for more.
IBS is also a more generic condition with Crohns and Colitis being related conditions with identifiable physiology and treatments. The “cause” isn’t known but it’s similar with genetically susceptible individuals having environmental, bacterial, immune factors. Immunomodulators being frontline treatments.