Tag Archives: diarrhea

Diarrhea

Diarrhea

YUM-O what a topic!

Diarrhea is one of the biggest threats to human life there is. Even at that diarrhea is a symptom of disease, not a disease in and of it’s self. Sometimes diarrhea and vomiting is helpful to your body. How can that be? ;] glad you asked that! If you ingest something that is either poisoness or spoiled, the body has a way to get ride of it – think of a cat with a hair ball. This applies to germs too. Even when diarrhea is helpful to your body at some point it stops being good for you and becomes bad for you.

Most of the time diarrhea [and vomiting] are self limiting and will pass in a few hours to a few days. Treatment for the most part for diarrhea [and vomiting] is supportive in nature. At first do not consume anything for the first couple of hours. Then start with ice chips or sips of fluids. Next use an oral fluid & electrolyte product such as the re-hydration drink we discussed in an earlier post. http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/re-hydration-drink/ . Or if you are not comfortable with making your own then go out and spend way too much for a commercial product. Limit solid foods during the active phase and consume mostly fluids and clear [ish] liquids. If you need to you may decide that you need to be more aggressive in your treatment of the symptom of nausea, vomiting or diarrhea. Some people make use of Dramamine or Phenergan if you go the aliopathic system or ginger root tea if you go with a naturaopathic or homieopathic treatment system.

Another home treatment for the symptom of vomiting or diarrhea with or after the rehydration drink is called the BRAT diet. The BRAT diet stands for bananas, rice, applesauce and toast, and you are supposed to use it during a stomach upset until the symptoms are gone. The rice is cooked very mushy. If you don’t happen to have bananas you can substitute mashed potatoes, which actually is higher in potassium.

For most cases of vomiting or diarrhea won’t last more than a few hours to a couple of days. If on the other hand the diarrhea is secondary to use of antibiotics most people will add yogurt [with a live culture] to there diet for a few days. What this does is repopulate the gut flora so that it resumes functioning. Most of us would most likely benefit from eating some yogurt every few weeks.

There are some cases of diarrhea that will not resolve with the treatment already discussed. We will discuss the treatment for this later.

http://www.preparesurvivethrive.us/re-hydration-drink/