Super_Geo
10-19-2013, 12:41 PM
So I got a bad case of food poisoning a few days ago and have been a prisoner in my apartment because... well because I'm in a new, unfamiliar city and don't want to venture outside when diarrhea has been striking once every hour or so. I'm talking sharp lower intestinal pains, and having to take my shirt off to combat the sweating (apologies for the visual).
Anyway, I've been reading on ways to fight diarrhea and most of the articles just talked about the typical things (drink water to fight dehydration, get rest, etc), but then one mentioned probiotics so I dug further on that.
Turns out that there are plenty of studies that show a lot of benefits, and it does make intuitive sense. Diarrhea is just your body's way of flushing out the contents of your intestines because it senses something wrong there, and filling your intestines with harmless bacteria should cause them to outcompete with the adverse strains and (hopefully) drop the rate at which they're reproducing to something manageable by your immune system without having to continuously flush the system. Or at least that's my guess at what's going on... I'm sure one of the doctors on Beyond can correct me if I'm wrong.
Anyway, my personal experience was that it worked amazingly well. Maybe I was near the tail end of it anyway, and this just got me over the finish line sooner, but from the studies I've read it showed that taking probiotics reduces the incident rate of contracting diarrhea and shortens the duration of those who already have it. The best method is to take it in pill format, and ideally one that has multiple strains.
Hope this helps save someone from a shitty time!
Anyway, I've been reading on ways to fight diarrhea and most of the articles just talked about the typical things (drink water to fight dehydration, get rest, etc), but then one mentioned probiotics so I dug further on that.
Turns out that there are plenty of studies that show a lot of benefits, and it does make intuitive sense. Diarrhea is just your body's way of flushing out the contents of your intestines because it senses something wrong there, and filling your intestines with harmless bacteria should cause them to outcompete with the adverse strains and (hopefully) drop the rate at which they're reproducing to something manageable by your immune system without having to continuously flush the system. Or at least that's my guess at what's going on... I'm sure one of the doctors on Beyond can correct me if I'm wrong.
Anyway, my personal experience was that it worked amazingly well. Maybe I was near the tail end of it anyway, and this just got me over the finish line sooner, but from the studies I've read it showed that taking probiotics reduces the incident rate of contracting diarrhea and shortens the duration of those who already have it. The best method is to take it in pill format, and ideally one that has multiple strains.
Hope this helps save someone from a shitty time!