Diet and Health FAQ

Tagged As: Treatment For Ibs

Question:
I'm a first time poster. I recently had a major breakthrough with treating my IBS and I thought I'd share it here. I've been wrestling with IBS for about 23 years now.   During this time I've been trying to figure it out: what causes it; what should/shouldn't I eat, how much, and what hour of day should I eat it; and what medicines could I use to treat it or even prevent it altogether.  Like most other people that have chronic gastrointestinal problems I have my list of foods to avoid and a general mealtime schedule that I try to follow. But it seems that all this does is reduce the occurrence of IBS. It is not preventative. Also, over the years I'd experimented with bismuth (Pepto) and loperamide (Immodium). Sometimes they would work but only for short periods, too often they would make things worse, but they were good for treatment when one was episodic (diarrhea). IOW, even though these medicine were, sometimes, a good treatment of the symptoms they were useless or even part of the problem if you tried to employ them prevent the outbreak of the symptoms. I also started experimenting with laxatives to treat the constipation part of my IBS, Ex-lax and prune juice.   The net effect of the inclusion of these laxatives was very similar to that of the bismuth and loperamide: they were good for treatment when one was episodic (constipation) but they were not preventative. IBS is considered a disease that involves both constipation and diarrhea. In light of this fact it occurred to me that, possibly, a treatment that altered between treating the diarrhea loperamide and bismuth) and treating the constipation (ex-lax and prune juice) in regular, scheduled intervals would be preventative. At first it didn't work. After considerable trial and error I eventually realized that the intervals that I had originally started out with were much too long. I was going two or three days at a time taking the loperamide-bismuth and then two or three days with the prune and ex-lax. Eventually I realized that the interval that seems to work best (for me) is just 4 hours.  This is the treatment that works for me: Midnight -- 2 ex-lax pills and 6 oz cup of prune juice 4:00 AM -- 2 bismuth chewable tablets and 2 loperamide pills 8:00 AM -- 2 ex-lax pills and 6 oz cup of prune juice Noon -- 2 bismuth chewable tablets and 2 loperamide pills 4:00 PM -- 2 ex-lax pills and 6 oz cup of prune juice (you can skip the prune juice here if it's not convenient) 8:00 PM -- 2 bismuth chewable tablets and 2 loperamide pills Midnight -- continue as above (Note: I've had an especially hard time not sleeping through the 4:00 AM treatment.  Be sure to set a separate alarm and to have the medicine readily available upon waking.) As I suspect most everybody already knows, bismuth, loperamide, and ex-lax [or a generic version thereof] can be found at any drug store, and prune juice is available in any supermarket. I only figured all of this out very recently, September-Ocober of 2004.  So it's all very new.  But so far the results have been incredible.  It's been about a month and a half now and, as long as I keep to the schedule my symptoms are reduced to maybe 10% of what they used to be.  The biggest benefit of all is that I'm able to get through the night without the spasms that regularly used to prevent me from getting more than two or three hours of sleep (no joke).  I highly recommend that anybody out there who suffers from IBS give this treatment regime a try.  And if you do please email me or respond here and let me know how it's going.

Answer:
Very interesting. I've had similar results with three doses a day of generic brand Metamucil, then an Immodium in the late afternoon. Part of what is interesting about this is that the Metamucil is supposed to do what your regimen does -- namely, address both the diarrhea and constipation issues. I'm just realizing that I forgot the Immodium dose this afternoon. It will be interesting to see if the current Prednisone takes care of things anyway.