Where abouts are the bowels situated?

Question

if i was to look down onto my own body which side are my bowels situated? left or right?

I'm having pain in my right hand side (mostly round the back) and so i'm wondering what organs/etc are situated on that side?

Answer 1

Dear Cassy

When I see a question like this, which can be so easily answered by a quick Google search, I am tempted to simply ignore it as coming from a lazy individual who wants someone else to do their homework.

But the real question you are asking is the 2nd paragraph, and it seems as though it is not simply a question, but a bit of worry too. So I will answer the 2nd question first and then the first.

The area that it sounds like you are having pain is usually described as the "flank". The most common source of short term pain there is a muscle injury to the muscle(s) that make the spine lean from side to side. Like many muscle injuries, you may not feel the pain until the day afer the injury, so think back to when it started and try to remember if anything happened to that area the day before. Sliding into second base, tripping and falling onto that side, taking a particularly viscious swing at a baseball or throwing it especially harder than usual, wrestling with your brother/sister, etc.

Does the area hurt when you touch it? Is it bruised? When you lean from side to side and stretch that muscle does it hurt? Has the pain been present for less than 2 weeks and getting better? If these all answer yes, this is likely nothing more than a bruised muscle and you'll be fine.

But if there was was no injury that you can recall, and the answers to my questions are no, then we must consider the only organ that sits inside the flank area in the body and that is the kidney. Pressing on the outside should not hurt, and movement may or may not hurt but if it does it will hurt inside, not on the surface. There are too many possibilities to go into here about why this might be the case but you should see your doctor about it soon. DO NOT put it off hoping it will get better on its own. Find out what's wrong now while it's early. Promise?

Now about your bowels; there is a set of small bowels which digest and absorb the nutrients in food, the duodenum which begins at the stomach outlet under the edge of your right ribcage and continues on to become the jejunum, and then becomes the ileum which connects to the first portion of your large bowel, a large horseshoe shaped organ whose purpose is to reabsorb water from the waste material  that will eventually become f***s (stool, bowel movement).

The ascending (rising) portion of the large bowel begins at the lower right corner of your abdomen and is usually the place where most people have their appendix (this area is called the cecum). It comes up to just under your right rib cage, about even with your stomach, and then turns left (the transverse portion) and goes to the left side of the abdominal cavity next to the spleen and turns down (the descending portion) until it reaches the pelvis. Then it twists and turns a bit as it forms the sigmoid colon and r****m where stool is stored waiting for evacuation.

The large bowel basically outlines the perimeter of the inside of your abdomen and the small bowel, all 23 feet of it, fills up the middle.

Bowel problem pain, by the way, is almost always in the front.

I hope that takes care of both of your questions Cassy, but should you have others feel free to drop me a line.

Doctor J.

Answer 2

http://www.innerbody.com/htm/body.html could be any no of things this link shows where everything is