Description
Dr. Meer Akbar Ali, a neuro-gastroenterologist at UAMS Health, explains the critical role of gut motility—how the digestive system moves food through the body—and what happens when that movement is disrupted. Known as dysmotility, these disorders affect up to 50% of patients in GI clinics and are often linked to nerve, muscle, hormonal, or microbiota imbalances. From diabetes to medication side effects, many factors can impair gut function. Dr. Ali emphasizes a holistic approach that includes advanced diagnostics, tailored diets from registered dietitians, and integrated mental health support. For patients struggling with motility issues, there is real hope and a growing number of effective treatments available.
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Transcript
The gut is a long muscular organ which moves at its own pace. When it’s working fine we don’t care much about it but when there is dysmotility, that is the movement the propulsion of the gut is impaired that’s when we start getting symptoms and issues because of which we have to start taking care of the patient and start working up the patient. Anything that affects nerves or muscles will can can cause dysmotility whether they are systemic diseases like diabetes or medications can at times do this we have I would say almost 50% of patients who come to a GI clinic have motility issues and this dysmotility is caused because of as I said issues with nerves hormones or other things that can affect the gut. The nervous system that controls the gut is of course the brain spinal cord nerves but the gut itself has a lot of nervous tissue in fact a fun fact there are more nerve cells in the gut than there are in the brain. Couple this with something called the microbiota. The microbiota are bacteria viruses and fungi that normally cohabitate in the gut. Things that can cause dysbiosis that is abnormality in the microbiota can also have significant impact on the gut and our overall health. So diet and nutrition play a very important role in making my patients feel better. As far as diet is concerned we like to involve the registered dietitians at UAMS to help educate my patients to make better choices or to give them specific diets as far as their condition is concerned stress plays a very important role in I would say all diseases and especially GI diseases and we work very closely with our psychiatrists and mental health providers at UAMS to get these patients feeling better. I would say patients with motility issues shouldn’t give up hope there
are plenty of tools available and the desire to help them and there’s a lot coming down the pike.
