Further therapy options | Diet for diarrhea

Further therapy options

If conventional and nutritional treatments do not help, an attempt at medical treatment can be made. For this purpose there are the natural medicines available, which can be taken with practically no side effects, but also numerous chemical preparations, which should be taken with caution. Among the natural preparations are Perenterol®, a yeast preparation, and for example Omniflora®, which contains probiotic bacteria.

An old medicine is the charcoal tablet. This is a substance that increasingly withdraws water from the stool, resulting in a rapid thickening of the thin stool. If these measures do not help, a stool culture should be prepared by the doctor at the latest then, which should show whether germs that do not belong to the normal intestinal flora are present in the intestine.Quite frequently it comes after longer treatment times with antibiotics to a loss of the important intestine bacteria.

This leads to the fact that only one or two groups of bacteria in the intestine are present and can grow, which can lead again to a strong failure. Often it is the bacterium Clostridium difficile, which spreads in this way strongly and leads to often strong diarrhea. In case of detection, treatment with an antibiotic should be started immediately. Non-treatable, recurrent diarrhea should always give cause for a colonoscopy.

Diseases that can lead to diarrhoea

Listed below are some of the most important causes of diarrhea briefly described. The individual clinical pictures also briefly describe therapy and a possible need for a visit to the doctor. Acute enteritis or gastroenteritis (if the stomach is also affected) or enterocolitis (if the colon is also affected) is an inflammatory change in the digestive tract with various causes and symptoms.

Food poisoning occurs when food is consumed that contains pathogenic germs or when there is a strong increase in the number of germs that do not actually cause illness. As a result, toxic metabolic products of the germs accumulate in the food and lead to inflammatory damage to the intestinal mucosa after consumption. Such bacterial food contaminations occasionally lead to mass diseases if food prepared in canteen kitchens is not sufficiently cooled.

Patients complain of diarrhoea diarrhoea and vomiting. In most cases, therapy is not necessary because the symptoms subside as soon as the triggering germs are eliminated. These infections of the digestive tract are serious diseases.

They are triggered by food, such as eggs and products made with them and poultry. These foods are often contaminated with salmonella and minimum hygiene requirements must be met when handling them. Often the germs multiply in insufficiently cooked food and food containing raw eggs.

Salmonella are killed at about 60 degrees. If food contaminated with Salmonella is eaten, after an incubation period (time from infection to outbreak of the disease) of 8 – 24 hours, vomiting, diarrhoea, fever and abdominal pain occur. With already weakened persons this disease can become quite life-threatening.

An antibiotic therapy is necessary and the liquid lost through the massive diarrhea must be replenished. In severe cases this is done by infusion. Salmonella diseases are notifiable according to the Federal Law on Diseases.

The best protection against salmonella is poultry and food containing raw eggs, which should always be cooked thoroughly. Raw poultry should always be stored separately and kept away from other foods during processing. Mainly when travelling to southern countries, there is often a brief diarrhoea known as “travel diarrhoea”, which is accompanied by stomach ache, nausea and vomiting.

Symptoms such as fever, aching limbs and headaches are also possible. The cause of this acutely occurring disease is unclear. The usual pathogens of a diarrheal disease cannot be detected in these patients.

A change in diet could also be excluded as a cause. The most probable cause is the intake of germs with the food, which, however, are not known so far. The nutrition on journeys has a certain preventive meaning, which consists in particular of not drinking tap water and preferring cooked food to raw food.

One of the most common causes of enteritis (diarrhea) are mistakes in a diet such as eating large quantities of unripe fruit, very fatty and very cold foods and the abuse of alcohol. Certain medications such as salicylic acid (see Aspirin) or iron supplements can also cause symptoms.