Posted , 5 users are following.
I've had constant diohrrea every day for five years. About 3-4 bowel movements per day. The faeces are the consistency of dry peanut butter and glistening. Normal colour.
No pain, though I do have a bloated stomach.
Went through four or five different doctors, none knew what it was. Five blood samples, severl stool samples, an endoscopy and colonoscopy. Nothing.
0 likes, 22 replies
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sanya11314 ShitPants
Posted
One thing:
3-4 bowel movements can be very normal. Actually in our constipated world we are so used to maximum one bowel movement per day,
that we forget, that each meal actually should come out as a seperate bowel movement. If you eat 3 meals per day = 3 bowel movements per day would actually be the goal! If you eat 4 times = 4 bowel movements per day.
The consistency of dry but glistening peanut butter I don't quite understand, but doesn't sound too bad either since not gushing liquid.
There are a stool charts and anything soft long 'sausage' like or maximum sausage with bit grape/cracks structure is also the stool consistency to go for.
Please look up Bristol stool chart and compare.
Any 'corn on cob' (pebbles pressed in sausage) style is too hard actually.
Why is your condition called 'diarrhae' if it is not loose stools and more than 5 times? Because it is more than 3 times sometimes?
Even 4 times a formed stool per day is not diarrhae.
Also you got your stool tested for parasites, that's good.
Do you feel ok or do you have other symptoms?
You might want to take daily probiotics
and
introduce a bit of additional soluble fiber (husks, bran), be careful though, soluble fibre needs lots of fluids otherwise can actually constipate or obstruct (hence I love my less dangerous insoluble fibre via green veggies much more)
Maybe you are malabsorbing some foods (sugars) like fructose or lactose that give you a bloated feeling and more stool frequency, that you don't like.
Have you tried elemination diets? FODMAP? Breath tests for fructose, sorbitol, lactose?
All the best!
ShitPants sanya11314
Posted
I have tried elimination diets, not the rest. The stools are not really in any shape, like a paste such as smooth peanut butter. They're very sticky and glistening.
ShitPants sanya11314
Posted
ShitPants sanya11314
Posted
I eat plenty of fibre, I have no deficiencies.
sanya11314 ShitPants
Posted
sanya11314 ShitPants
Posted
Plenty of fiber is actually not good.
TOO MUCH FIBER causes GAS and DIARRHEA!
You can search the internet and also very imporant is to distinguish between soluble and insoluble fiber.
Maybe that's actually what is happening? Too much of so thought good? Could that be?
(Fiber can cause obstruction, fiber can cause diarrhea, it's not just 'good'
Please keep a food diary!
sanya11314
Posted
MrPenguin sanya11314
Posted
Up till my mid 30s I had 1-2 a week and there was nothing wrong with that. I didn't even question it. I had no bloating, no indigestion, no gas. Now I have about 2-3 but only because I've been eating a lot of fibre based foods and started using extra virgin olive oil with all my food and taking probiotics.
If you eat 3 meals per day = 3 bowel movements per day would actually be the goal! If you eat 4 times = 4 bowel movements per day. I don't fully agree with that. Different foods have different digestion and transit times and produce different amounts of waste.. Red meats are 10X harder to break down than veg. Also if you eat within 2 hours of eating you slow your digestion right down as you are mixing new food with old food. Food isn't even digested in the order you eat it in.
Constant diarrhea is not good and can affect all sorts of things including your electolyte balance for one thing. Could be IBS, Celiac disease, Lactose intolerance, Parasites, Crhon's.
If it was me I would eat just chicken and rice or potatos for 2 weeks and see if that has any effect and no sugary drinks..
sanya11314 MrPenguin
Posted
Exactly! Love your post!
Poster says thought to have excellent diet,
tested for celiac, parasites and Crohn (had scopes and apparently calprotectin(?)), (IBS is elimination 'diagnose' when nothing is found to give it a name), has done elemination diets.
yes I hope poster's doc checks electrolytes if it is that thin daily, then again, if one is a healthy adult, the compensation mechanisms are great, if one puts electrolytes in in the first place, but need to be checked sometimes. It said '3 to 4 times', I don''t know which one is more often. 3 times is very normal for me since I changed diet, much more fruit and veggies, hardly extremely expensive meat from local certified farmer (I hate cheap torture meat and kill) and have probiotics, but then again I am in the normal Bristol chart, too.
Poster seems not too happy we all suggest diet trials. But there is nothing really much from our end possible to suggest since we don't know exactly what is eaten or what exactly is happening. I hope it is not an overlooked inflammation somewhere, but then again, pain seems no issue.
Would an L-Glutamine trial be worth it? (if liver is healthy)
MrPenguin sanya11314
Posted
Yes exactly.. I was starting to wonder what exactly he wanted from his post when he doesn't seem to want any advice.. His diet may be excellent in his eyes but it might not be in ours. I'm sure we could pick apart several parts of his diet as the cause of whatever intestinal issue if we knew what that diet was. Nobodies diet is perfect.
I would actually suggest a product called "Flourishe" since he said he has a bloated stomach and it's what solved my constant bloating after i'd tried everything else. Bad bacteria in the lower intestines is the cause of excessive intestinal gas as they feast on sugars and other bits of undigested foods and thrive and to deal with it you must increase the good bacteria in the lower intestines and probiotics are unable to reach there as they are digested much further up which was how I came about Flourishe as it passes through the small intestines and reaches the lower section where it feeds the good bacteria, crowding out the bad. It is basically chicory root.
sanya11314 MrPenguin
Posted
at least I learned about 'Flourishe', soluble fiber in moderation and if it worked, great!
Thank you!
(FODMAP diet will probably exclude it though because it's an oligisachharide/inulin - watersoluble fiber like found in wheat, onion, barley, rye and garlic and chicory root - Flourishe. Luckily I don't have to stick to FODMAP, but others might and need to watch out for oligosaccharides)
Yes, I too would never call my diet excellent, but would like to know what an excellent diet was.
But I fear even if we knew, that what is excellent for one persone can be the trigger for another (one drinks cabbage juice and heals his/her gastritis and the other one is in colics because of it),
hence a food diary is unavoidable due to our individual hickups; with 5 years into symptoms, one would think 2 months of food diary being no time compare to duration of symptoms. But maybe that had been done. We haven't heard back. Hope all is good.
MrPenguin sanya11314
Posted
Yes, like you say, what's good for one person might be a trigger for another. You just have to find what works best for you. When I started down this road I did everything the doctors told me to do and I ended up 10 times worse. They had me taking 8 ibprofen a day, put me on a zero fibre diet when I was suffering from chronic constipation issues and lastly put me on steroids for something they later decided I didn't even have! I was calling the ambulance every other night because my heart rate was hitting 170 - 180bpm & when laying down as low as 45 or less when asleep because of these steroids.
I stopped the ibprofen myself because I knew it was doing more damage and after discovering I only had 1 kidney taking 8 ibprofens a day was downright dangerous. Also the steroids, not only did they affect my heart but they made me so angry and I was abusive to those closest to me and that is not me at all. I tapered off the steroids and decided to try and deal with things myself and it took a long time & I tried many things but month by month I stumbled across new things & weeded out the nonesense.
In the end i what restored my bowels was a combination of probiotics, digestive enzymes & flourish.. Cayenne pepper, ginger, garlic & extra virgin olive oil and lots of green veg. I ate spinach/kale/green beans with fish or chicken almost daily. I also added vitamin C, Vitamin D3 & B Complex & Bromelain & Curcumin supplements.
1 probiotic supplement 1st thing in the morning and a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil..
Digestive enzyme supplement with my lunch and main meals and I had a heaped teaspoon of flourish in my tea once a day in the afternoon..
I wonder what the poster meant by "I'm running out of time" and "I don't have time to try any of these out".
?
sanya11314 MrPenguin
Posted
Wow, well done!
You certainly had a long painful road, but so satisfying when things start to turn and show a positive effect after many trials and you know what works for you. And you can pass on your story and ideas, which are worth trying for anyone in a similar chronic boat.
Why not.
I thought the same like you, Why not just trying, why a closed mind.
There is no quick-fix for intestine, that usually takes years of develope symptoms, when it is chronic, (if no organic certain reason is found and one lives with it for years chronically)
We for example will give now castor oil heat packs a trial (maybe better than hot water bottle?), squatty potty is a new fashionable (questionalbe...haha) look for our toilet. ;-) It keeps us busy and have the feeling to 'do' something or at least try something. If it worked, well, we shall see.
If one doesn't try, there is no way to know if it would help.
Yes, there is a lot of rubbish out there to weed through, but that's part of the 'fun'.
sanya11314 ShitPants
Posted
Coffee, tea, alcohol messes up water-in-stool often too.
I think a real good detailed food diary is way to go and it will take months to see hopefully triggers in order to avoid them?
Good that you had a colonoscopy to rule out e.g. ulcerative colitis. But you are lacking pain luckily anyway.
Has your stool been tested for calprotectin?
That shows in 94% of adults if an inflammatory thingy was going on in intestine (incl small intestine).
Just some ideas to trial, look up or discuss.
I wish you feel better soon and comfortable.
ShitPants sanya11314
Posted
I'm running out of time. I don't have time to try any of these out, all og these have already been ruled out and are NOT the issue.
sanya11314 ShitPants
Posted
Good then.
Have you been tested for BAM? (Bile acid malabsorption)
?
Probiotics are not probiotics btw, I like e.coli 1917 nissle and bacillus laterosporus. Not only good old lactobacillus and bifidus.
I hope somebody else can come up with more ideas, too.
ShitPants sanya11314
Posted
sanya11314 ShitPants
Posted
BAM is measurable and the wrong term for it (bile acid is not badly absorbt, but produced too much and irritates the colon), but called that way.
If you live in a country, where no 75Se-homocholic acid taurine (SeHCAT) test exists, that would really be unlucky. (USA offers only 7a-OH-4-cholesten-3-one (C4) in blood)
If you have just a doc, who does not perform the SeHCAT test or does not believe in BAM, then it's time for a change.
Some docs trial sequestrant therapy (for BAM) without SeHCAT test. Apparently there is one sequestrant tasting and with less side effects than the other.
Many IBS-d were wrongly labelled IBS-d since this BAM was actually behind it, but not recognised (ncbi has great studies about this fact).
If everything is good and really excluded, you will get IBS-d as the final exclusion 'diagnose' saying: no idea what it is, but your discomfort will not cause permanent intestine damage. (even maybe something like BAM is up but never tested)
You need a food diary, really, I can't see a way around it. It's chronic, there is time.
I hope you get some more good other ideas, that help.
All the best!