I've had constant diohrrea every day for five years. About 3-4 bowel movements per day. The faeces are the consistency of dry peanut butter and glistening. Normal colour.
No pain, though I do have a bloated stomach.
Went through four or five different doctors, none knew what it was. Five blood samples, severl stool samples, an endoscopy and colonoscopy. Nothing.
One thing:
3-4 bowel movements can be very normal. Actually in our constipated world we are so used to maximum one bowel movement per day,
that we forget, that each meal actually should come out as a seperate bowel movement. If you eat 3 meals per day = 3 bowel movements per day would actually be the goal! If you eat 4 times = 4 bowel movements per day.
The consistency of dry but glistening peanut butter I don't quite understand, but doesn't sound too bad either since not gushing liquid.
There are a stool charts and anything soft long 'sausage' like or maximum sausage with bit grape/cracks structure is also the stool consistency to go for.
Please look up Bristol stool chart and compare.
Any 'corn on cob' (pebbles pressed in sausage) style is too hard actually.
Why is your condition called 'diarrhae' if it is not loose stools and more than 5 times? Because it is more than 3 times sometimes?
Even 4 times a formed stool per day is not diarrhae.
Also you got your stool tested for parasites, that's good.
Do you feel ok or do you have other symptoms?
You might want to take daily probiotics
and
introduce a bit of additional soluble fiber (husks, bran), be careful though, soluble fibre needs lots of fluids otherwise can actually constipate or obstruct (hence I love my less dangerous insoluble fibre via green veggies much more)
Maybe you are malabsorbing some foods (sugars) like fructose or lactose that give you a bloated feeling and more stool frequency, that you don't like.
Have you tried elemination diets? FODMAP? Breath tests for fructose, sorbitol, lactose?
All the best!
I have tried elimination diets, not the rest. The stools are not really in any shape, like a paste such as smooth peanut butter. They're very sticky and glistening.
It is definitely diohhrea, no where near a normal consistency. The stools are loose. I know I have a problem!
I tried daily probiotics, they only worsened the diohrrea making it more liquid.
I eat plenty of fibre, I have no deficiencies.
What is it then compared to the Bristol stool chart? (no need for pic please ;-) )
Plenty of fiber is actually not good.
TOO MUCH FIBER causes GAS and DIARRHEA!
You can search the internet and also very imporant is to distinguish between soluble and insoluble fiber.
Maybe that's actually what is happening? Too much of so thought good? Could that be?
(Fiber can cause obstruction, fiber can cause diarrhea, it's not just 'good'
Please keep a food diary!
Has celiac been ruled out?
Last idea: Do you use any artificial sweetners or jams/candies/lollies/chewing gum, that contain mannitol or sorbitol?
Coffee, tea, alcohol messes up water-in-stool often too.
I think a real good detailed food diary is way to go and it will take months to see hopefully triggers in order to avoid them?
Good that you had a colonoscopy to rule out e.g. ulcerative colitis. But you are lacking pain luckily anyway.
Has your stool been tested for calprotectin?
That shows in 94% of adults if an inflammatory thingy was going on in intestine (incl small intestine).
Just some ideas to trial, look up or discuss.
I wish you feel better soon and comfortable.
I'm running out of time. I don't have time to try any of these out, all og these have already been ruled out and are NOT the issue.
Also calprotectin?
Good then.
Have you been tested for BAM? (Bile acid malabsorption)
?
Probiotics are not probiotics btw, I like e.coli 1917 nissle and bacillus laterosporus. Not only good old lactobacillus and bifidus.
I hope somebody else can come up with more ideas, too.
No, apparently bile acid malabsorption is not a recognised by most doctors.
It sounds like you need to change your diet. Try to get the flora of your stomach back together. First do this happen when you eat or it doesn't matter? Drink regular liipton tea bag 3 times a day hot or cold , it doesn't matter. This will help with the diarrhea. Ice tea instead of juices. Limit your Sugar intake and stay away from foods that are high in fiber for about 2 weeks, especially wheat and oats. Use non dairy milk. Buy some probiotics to use also. Let me know at the end of two weeks how many bowel movements you had each day. Keep a diary of the things you eat and your trips to the toilet. Cook with garlic . You will see a difference.
Up till my mid 30s I had 1-2 a week and there was nothing wrong with that. I didn't even question it. I had no bloating, no indigestion, no gas. Now I have about 2-3 but only because I've been eating a lot of fibre based foods and started using extra virgin olive oil with all my food and taking probiotics.
If you eat 3 meals per day = 3 bowel movements per day would actually be the goal! If you eat 4 times = 4 bowel movements per day. I don't fully agree with that. Different foods have different digestion and transit times and produce different amounts of waste.. Red meats are 10X harder to break down than veg. Also if you eat within 2 hours of eating you slow your digestion right down as you are mixing new food with old food. Food isn't even digested in the order you eat it in.
Constant diarrhea is not good and can affect all sorts of things including your electolyte balance for one thing. Could be IBS, Celiac disease, Lactose intolerance, Parasites, Crhon's.
If it was me I would eat just chicken and rice or potatos for 2 weeks and see if that has any effect and no sugary drinks..
BAM is measurable and the wrong term for it (bile acid is not badly absorbt, but produced too much and irritates the colon), but called that way.
If you live in a country, where no 75Se-homocholic acid taurine (SeHCAT) test exists, that would really be unlucky. (USA offers only 7α-OH-4-cholesten-3-one (C4) in blood)
If you have just a doc, who does not perform the SeHCAT test or does not believe in BAM, then it's time for a change.
Some docs trial sequestrant therapy (for BAM) without SeHCAT test. Apparently there is one sequestrant tasting and with less side effects than the other.
Many IBS-d were wrongly labelled IBS-d since this BAM was actually behind it, but not recognised (ncbi has great studies about this fact).
If everything is good and really excluded, you will get IBS-d as the final exclusion 'diagnose' saying: no idea what it is, but your discomfort will not cause permanent intestine damage. (even maybe something like BAM is up but never tested)
You need a food diary, really, I can't see a way around it. It's chronic, there is time.
I hope you get some more good other ideas, that help.
All the best!
My diet is excellent.
It's funny you say limit your sugar intake and then you suggest Ice tea?? You're talking about a drink of which 20% of it is pure sugar.
Exactly! Love your post!
Poster says thought to have excellent diet,
tested for celiac, parasites and Crohn (had scopes and apparently calprotectin(?)), (IBS is elimination 'diagnose' when nothing is found to give it a name), has done elemination diets.
yes I hope poster's doc checks electrolytes if it is that thin daily, then again, if one is a healthy adult, the compensation mechanisms are great, if one puts electrolytes in in the first place, but need to be checked sometimes. It said '3 to 4 times', I don''t know which one is more often. 3 times is very normal for me since I changed diet, much more fruit and veggies, hardly extremely expensive meat from local certified farmer (I hate cheap torture meat and kill) and have probiotics, but then again I am in the normal Bristol chart, too.
Poster seems not too happy we all suggest diet trials. But there is nothing really much from our end possible to suggest since we don't know exactly what is eaten or what exactly is happening. I hope it is not an overlooked inflammation somewhere, but then again, pain seems no issue.
Would an L-Glutamine trial be worth it? (if liver is healthy)
Love the name lol surprised they let u have it
Yes exactly.. I was starting to wonder what exactly he wanted from his post when he doesn't seem to want any advice.. His diet may be excellent in his eyes but it might not be in ours. I'm sure we could pick apart several parts of his diet as the cause of whatever intestinal issue if we knew what that diet was. Nobodies diet is perfect.
I would actually suggest a product called "Flourishe" since he said he has a bloated stomach and it's what solved my constant bloating after i'd tried everything else. Bad bacteria in the lower intestines is the cause of excessive intestinal gas as they feast on sugars and other bits of undigested foods and thrive and to deal with it you must increase the good bacteria in the lower intestines and probiotics are unable to reach there as they are digested much further up which was how I came about Flourishe as it passes through the small intestines and reaches the lower section where it feeds the good bacteria, crowding out the bad. It is basically chicory root.