I didn't have those exact symptoms but did have a colonoscopy for bright red rectal bleeding, with weight loss, trapped wind and occasional loose stools. I was 40 too and the specialist said that at my age, I would have to be "the most unlucky person in the world" for it to turn out to be cancer, that that was a possibility with those symptoms but the least likely of all the options and that it was most likely hemorrohoids. Which was all they found when they did the colonoscopy.

I will add that this might not be the best place to find people who turned out to have hemorrhoids.Just that being a cancer site, people who had cancer are more likely to be on here than people who turned out to have hemorrhoids or even other possibilities such as IBD.

I didn't think you were being insensitive at all. Sorry if it sounded that way. I just meant that it might worry you more if you got a number of people replying and saying that their symptoms had turned out to be serious, that's all. I didn't mean to suggest you shouldn't post here or that you shouldn't ask for advice. I just meant that you don't get many people replying saying they had hemorrhoids, that's all. Sorry if I sounded critical.