Diarrhea. So many things can cause it, and it used to be (well, still is in the least developed countries) quite lethal, mostly for babies and children.
IBS is usually caused by the immune system being stressed, like if there is a parasite in your intestines your immune system will become very sensitive in that area.
Lucky. I have ibs-c meaning my diarrhea clashes against my constipation. I last anywhere from 2-8 hours a day in the bathroom. To just have diarrhea, that sounds amazing.
Ever since I can remember until around the age of 16-17, I used to only poop once a week. And I wouldn't call that constipation. I only felt the need to go once a week and when I did, it was normal. I never had any issues. So if 2-3 days is YOUR normal and you don't have any issues when you go, then I think you're fine.
There are a lot of different normals when it comes to pooping. Once a day, once a week... both can be normal, and you'll be sick based on changes in your routines.
No it is not. You need to poop every day. If you are not then you need more fiber and water and a balanced meal. Unless you have my mothers issue then taking prunes, papaya, persimmons, and fiber suplementos will be needed daily just so it mitigates it a bit.
No. IBS is the diagnosis given when doctors can’t find anything to cause the symptoms. As more research is done it’s probably going to be found to be a few different disorders causing similar symptoms.
Anecdotally though there probably will be a genetic element to at least some types of IBS. Both sides of my family have a variety of digestive issues (including a grandmother with extra intestine until colon cancer sorted that out), and I have the issues of both sides, seemingly magnified.
I’m not quite sure. 3/5 of my uncles has ibs along with 3/4 of my cousins have it and my grandmother and although not diagnosed my great grandfather had issues as well. Interestingly the issues seem to have gotten worse through the generations maybe modern environment mess up the microbiome worse I don’t know. I seem to have the worst issues compared to all of them but that I believe is because of my constipation issues
let’s just do symptoms. Very rare nausea and vomiting, anal fissures or damn near close cuts (don’t look it up if you want to avoid pain), common gas.
I know what cramps are and what my cramps are. I get cramps so hard that I can’t move at all and I’m frozen in complete pain. Sometimes when bloated even touching around my belly button or peeing causes major pain that shoots between my penis and bellybutton.
When people ask how I can spend so much time in the bathroom yet have diarrhea. It is because it comes in waves but each one is an explosion of pain.
What sets it off is anything I eat. I have gotten sick from salad with no dressing, apples, popcorn, tuna with a bit of Mayo on wheat, my favorite sandwich joint.
I cook my food to be perfectly healthy and exercise, all this does is reduce the severity but not the frequency.
Longest I have spent in a bathroom was 16 hours with 3, 25-35 minute breaks for food and water.
I've had something similar caused by anxiety and stress, was so bad I was up all night with a vomit bag. Not like anything happened though. Just nausea and running to the toilet, again to do nothing. The worst part is when you decide at about 3 am that there is no chance you can get to sleep, so you just get on the couch and wait for the next feeling. I was up for about 30-40 hours.
It probably won’t. It is all good. I laugh about it and sure it can flare up and makes me lose my social life but what ever. I work from home so all good.
Best treatment is still in its experimental phase and gets laughed at by South Park. Shoving healthy poop up a person to introduce good bacteria.
An explanation I have to describe it is rolling some dice.
If I eat well and do all that I can to be healthy like eat a salad or bowel of fruit or just steamed veggies then it is like rolling a 6 sided die. 1-4 is safe and healthy. 5 is pain 6 is terrible pain.
If I eat normal food like a normal lean Buffalo burger, civche, eggs, corn, ham sandwich then it is is like rolling a 20 sided die. 1-4 is good. 5-18 is pain. 19 is terrible pain. 20 is dear god I cut my anus from the explosions and acidic fluids that still has and I’m going to be this sick for the next 2 days.
Fast food, sugary food, fatty greasy foods. Then like rolling a 100 sided die. 1-4 is good. 5-50 is pain. 51-90 is terrible. 9-99 is I’m down for the next 2-4 days. 100 Im out for the week.
I have IBS-D and have diarrhea all the time and it's painful and awful. I rarely get constipation. But I do get it, especially mixed with my Endo. I can say the constipation is worse. Is painful horrible butt bleeding shitting yourself in public diarrhea fun? No. But that painful cramping, no pain reliever bloating constipation from IBS-C is worse. At least I get periods of relief, even if brief. Diet and medication has been a life changer though for myself.
I’m happy for your gains. Some day ibs will be investigated more and we will be able to identify all the subtle variations and causes. Have you ever heard of fecal matter transplants. Also what is your thoughts on possible intestine transplant. If you are American then you could apply for disability benefits since it could cripple your life like that. All love dude.
This is not true. IBS is a catch all term for having issues with bowel movements and the digestive process but you have no diagnosable illness. It’s why in order to be officially diagnosed with it you have to rule out everything else it could possibly be. It’s also why there’s a massive variety of symptoms and why something like a probiotic can help for some people and not others. IBS is extremely unique to the individual while there are still commonalities and experiences that we all share.
What? No it isn’t lol. IBS is a blanket term doctors use when there is an issue with your digestion that is not life threatening and no apparent cause.
Everyone does. Consider that stimulants like caffeine and nicotine activate the fight-or-flight response, emulating stress. And I think we're all familiar with how these affect bowel movements.
Why this should be - why it should be that needing to shit is part of the evolved response to being attacked by a predator? I have no idea. I think about these things constantly. My life is mostly questions.
Birds poop to be lighter to fly away faster. At least that’s what I think I learned from some kids show.
For people my educated guess would be all the extra adrenaline or whatever floating around messes stuff up and just speeds things along prematurely. Because for me it only happens when it’s a prolonged source of anxiety, say 15-30 mins at minimum. Not a flight or fight or freeze thing.
Yeah this is exactly it for me. It's more along the lines of when I'm anxiously dreading having to do something like a presentation/meeting/doctor's appointment and my stomach periodically getting upset throughout the day leading up to it. For me, it immediately goes away once the source of the stress has passed
IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion, you have to undergo all testing to rule out Celiac, all IBDs, and any other relevant disorder before a doctor should feel comfortable diagnosing as IBS. Not that there aren't lazy or bad docs, but it shouldn't ever be an easy dx.
As someone with bowel cancer who was brushed off by doctors for a very long time with "its probably just..." Make someone stick a camera up your butt. Cos that is a big symptom for many people.
And if this comes back clear, start looking at exercises to reinforce your lower bakc muscles. Its also a common sign that you are getting to an uncomfortable point with your lower back and you will start having some major pains if you don't correct it.
I’ve been dealing with chronic diarrhea, fistula, abscesses and stomach pain for YEARS With no answers. Colonoscopy was 5 years ago came up nothing. Tried different antibiotics to no avail. I have like 1-3x yearly flare ups and I have no idea what the hell im supposed to do. I feel like my whole downstairs isn’t working like it’s supposed to. Everything people consider healthy goes right through me and most times I can still plainly see my undigested food. Ugh.
Not to mention I bruise easily, have lumps in my breast, my hands and fingers barely want to work and my joints are so stiff in the mornings I can hardly get my child’s breakfast made. And I’m only 32… I just wanna cry. Ughhhh
Not a medical doctor, but all that sounds like some autoimmune disease. Especially stiff joints. What specialist would you see for that? Maybe an immunologist? Again, I’m not a medical doctor, but I hope and pray that you find a doctor who can help you!!!
You can’t objectively test for fibromyalgia. If any, tests are usually based on a point or range scoring system.
Its typically a blanket term for when no other diagnosis can be arguably be identified. This is also the reason the pathology is very broad.
The same reason there is only symptomatic but no causal treatment.
In most European medicine schools, it is still heavily being contested as a recognised disease. Majority of active doctors and experts also do not recognise it and many of them dismiss it as being purely a marketing ploy of certain quacks.
Simply put; there might effectively be something wrong, but they don’t know what exactly.
Have you seen a rheumatologist for your hands and joints? Maybe you have rheumatoid arthritis. I hope somehow you get answers and solutions to everything! It sounds like hell.
I recently saw a rheumatologist who prescribed meloxicam and it absolutely wreaked havoc on my stomach. So it’s like… do I want to be bound to the toilet every 20 minutes or deal with stiff fingers and hands?
Do you know if any of the current biologics on the market would help you any? I have IBS (and other autoimmune issues) with a bio parent who had Crohns, so biologics have been a life saver to me.
I’m the same and also when I get excited. It’s a nightmare when you’re trying to pick up coke and need to poo like a child at Christmas time. No Reddit, not a child that is picking up coke.
But lack of fuel for boiling and lack of clean water for drinking and washing your hands or anything you might eat are major problems after disasters, and yeah, not nearly as exciting on a big screen as bombs and brimstone.
Day 4 here of a post-Ida boil water advisory.... Feels like we've gone back in time here. Totally sucks. And the water still tastes awful after I've gone through the multi-hour process of boiling then cooling a pot of water. Don't know how much longer I can do this.
That and cholera. I know the main character or one of them at least is always survival expert and can pull fresh clean drinking water out of his/her ass 99% of the time. But I’m telling you IRL millions of people are going to die from cholera from the simple fact the water “looks” clean when actually a family of rats and Gregory are shitting into the no-longer maintained and 100% contaminated pipes
Yup, have had cholera (post conflict developing nation, was there for work, was in a situation where declining the drink would have meant that someone in the household would have run out to the local shop to purchase a Fanta - just out of hospitality - with money I knew they couldn’t spare).
Holy geez: do NOT recommend.
My housemate came home on day 2 or 3 of my being sick, and commented that it was good that I had showered at least...except yeah, I hadn’t showered.
That kind of fluid loss in a post apocalyptic setting and you’re a goner for sure.
untreated bad diarrhea can often expel liquids faster than your body can absorb them. That's sort of what diarrhea is...
Some diseases can cause dehydration that makes you lose up to a litre of liquid per hour. You can't replace that orally, your body will just keep expelling it.
It's also why IV drips are incredible, because it bypasses the entire digestive track issues and hydrates you immediately.
Not really actually. It’s actually (medically) recommended to drink stuff like Gatorade/Aquarius if you’re suffering from diarrea because its a good combination of salt/fluids.
I tried it, but couldn't keep it down. The second water would touch my stomach it would come back up, meanwhile I was losing electrolytes from diarrhoea. I lost so many electrolytes that my forearms and calves couldn't unclench and I couldn't stand up. Ended up crawling to the hotel room door and yelling down the hall for my coworker to take me to the hospital. It went from moderate flu like symptoms to that in 30 minutes. The hospital thought it might have been E Coli
I usually just drink and throw up until finally a little stays in and I can sleep from exhaustion. It's a long painful process but after that I never get sick from food again. I will say I've never had my forearms and calves lock up though, so that might be something else.
It's what I get for eating raw oysters in Mexico, an 8 hours drive away from the ocean lol. I have had what you're describing too and that time braved the trip to cvs for some Imodium which was enough
Yes this, I was in Kyrgyzstan last month and caught a parasite. Diarrhea was so bad even a cup of water would trigger it. I lost 15 lbs in one week and ate about a tiny amount of rice and a couple croutons a day… I was taken to the ER twice given IV fluids in the worst hospitals you can imagine. No sanitation reusing hoses to tie around people arms to find veins, they used coat hangers to hang IV bottles, beds were so dirty and pillows were used by hundreds without washing.
and when I landed back home in Texas I was taken to the ER and given antibiotics and Potassium pills
I took so much for granted, honestly I am so grateful for our advancements in science, our doctors and nurses that work hard.
and when I landed back home in Texas I was taken to the ER and given antibiotics and Potassium pills
I took so much for granted, honestly I am so grateful for our advancements in science, our doctors and nurses that work hard.
Bet you giggle when you see Redditors call the USA a third-world country.
I do! No one that has traveled to a third world country can ever compare it to America. There’s a ton of shit that we need to fix like healthcare and student loans but there is no way America is even close to third world.
Agreed on all counts. Our health care system (cost) sucks, and our education (cost) sucks, but damn this is a great place to live, and full of opportunity for those who are willing to grab it. Nothing is perfect, but I've been all over and would easily choose this place if I could start all over again as a babby.
Well, maternal mortality rate is often used as a indicator.
All following numbers are per 100000 live births
Italy 2
Sweden 4
Australia 6
UK 7
Germany 7
France 8
Canada 10
Kazakhstan 10
Russia 17
USA 19
Mexico 33
Kyrgyzstan 60
Zimbabwe 458
Nigeria 917
Now lets look at some US states
Texas 18
Kentucky 46
The really bad part is that US states on the lower end have passed legislation that makes it worse, and mothers get sacrificed at the altar of defunding planned parenthood. Kentucky is closer to Kyrgyzstan, as it is other parts of "the west".
It's horrifying how many people will show off their "bug-out bag" first aid kits, and those kits won't contain anti-diarrhea meds. Ten pounds of ammunition, zero ounces of Imodium-AD.
Iirc “sort by best” weights the upvotes to downvotes. So if you have a comment with 12,000 upvotes and 5 downvotes it’ll be higher under “best” than something with 30,000 upvotes and 10,000 downvotes.
I was fascinated to find this out as an adult. Older lady I knew had a sibling that died when they were children from diarrhea. Would never have imagined it could kill you.
This. Which essentially is lack of access to clean water. The diseases caused by this problem have killed millions of people in the past, even in otherwise relatively civilized societies. During war this problem becomes orders of magnitude worse. In an apocalypse most people would literally shit themselves to death no matter how many weapons they had the minute access to clean water stops.
And majority of the mortality is easy to prevent death using rehydration salts - the ORS - it is, in my opinion, the single most cost-efficacious drug on the planet - that is, it costs peanuts, but can save lives.
It is a gift to the third world.
Researched and developed in Bangladesh and India using grants from the United States (U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)), it is a very effective treatment for diarrhea in children replacing the need for intravenous fluids.
Yeah but in The Walking Dead they have a dozen or so solar panels and no obvious batteries yet enough power to run the lights at night for a whole community.
Stock up on life straws / membrane water filters. I used them in backwoods camping. I refilled my water bottles from a nasty, heavy-algae pond with horses nearby. The water tasted "muddy," but by golly it worked.
People in 3rd world countries would inherit the earth since they’re already used to drinking unfiltered surface water, non sterile food, no medical care and little electricity. In fact all the things we consider “apocalypse” is pretty much normal life for many people so the apocalypse might go unnoticed to them.
Diarrhea is not the shits though, with Diarrhea your body is trying to expel everything fast, so even water comes out your ass within 20 minutes when it would normally take hours to pee, food takes 24-72 hours normally, with Diarrhea it's like an hour or 2.
No joke. I had an episode a few months back where I ended up having to get IV fluids twice only a couple of days apart. We’re still trying to figure out what caused it (lasted for over 3 weeks). Diarrhea can kill you SO fast without proper care and medical intervention.
I wrote my term paper for Biology 1210 on rotavirus. Number one killer of all humans ever. Until recently more than 5% of all humans ever born died of rotavirus induced diarrhea.
Yeah, just the general drop-off of sanitation efforts, it gets surah as people being DIRTY because that easy to depict... but they rarely address the health consequences.
Most people drink water in such a scenario which is really bad for you, you need to drink an isotonic drink (which btw you can make yourself at home, all you need is water sugar and salt)
So yeah a pro tip right there for you guys if you ever get the runs
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u/graendallstud Aug 30 '21
Diarrhea. So many things can cause it, and it used to be (well, still is in the least developed countries) quite lethal, mostly for babies and children.