[quote]sarah1 wrote:
Hello. I have a terrible flu in Germany. I have been in bed for a week and a half now with severe nausea and dirrhea. I am worried that the diarrhea has persisted this long. I take immodium and that stops it temporarily, but then it comes back.
I have searched online and I found a lot of resources saying what you can eat…basically refined carbs that won’t start up your stomach. However, I have been eating only crackers for 10 days now…my body is shriveling. Does anyone have ideas on what I can do to help get at least some protein in withough upsetting my intestines again?
I have also not been able to find what diarrhea really is. Does anyone know this? What is my body doing? Is it not digesting the food…so is it just going in and out? Or is it digesting the food and getting the nutrients and calories, but just not compressing it and stuff normally?
Thank you very much.[/quote]
Diarrhea of 1 to 2 weeks is not abnormal, diarrhea lasting more than a month is called chronic diarrhea and offers another list of differential diagnosises.
Most gastroenteritis are caused by viruses, then bacteria then parasites and then food toxins/food poisoing and meds.
Generally, blood tests reveal nothing except what we already know, electrolyte screwups b/c you don’t drink/eat correctly and the excessive vomitting and diarrhea. White blood cell elevation telling us there is an infection (Yeah, that adds some new information).
Sometimes they will do ovum and parasite search in the more indolent and longer lasting diarrheas.
But yeah, keep hydrated, replace the electrolytes, wash your hands thoroughly post-bathroom and rest. Immodium is rarely indicated, basically keeps viral/bacterial toxins (if produced) in and bacterias/virus in more and acts only as symptomatic treatment. So unless you need to go somewhere and not ‘‘go’’ use it if not skip it.
Antibiotics are rarely indicated unless bacteria or parasite as been documented. In general, Abx tend to cause more diarrhea than help clean them out especially if the cause was actually viral, since you end up killing you own helpful bacterial flora.
Even if viral gastros tend to be shorter in duration than bacterial ones are also self-limiting most of the time even if the can last for more than a month for some bacterias.
So you look for infectious contacts, travel history, raw/contaminated food ingestions, animal contacts and so on but rarely do you find something concluant.
Anyway, hope things resolve soon, but if you go see another doc, you’ll probably be told the same thing again, b/c it is proper management at that stage (lenght and severity of disease).
Of course, everybody here knows better than the physicians…
Good Luck,
AlexH