What to do when the sh*ts hit? There are many things that I found helpful and I'm going to list them here so that every surfer stumbling on this site can benefit from them.
When the whole thing starts and you get nauseated, you can
lay down on your left side: that will prevent vomit and ease your nausea. Because of its anatomy, the Gubaroff valve will keep your stomach closed.
When the pain hits, put a
hot water bottle on your tummy: heat relieves the cramps you undergo due to diarrhoea.
After loosing all those liters of fluids, rember to
rehydrate your body! In order to do it correctly, you have to
weight how much you loose.
If you don't have oedema, you can drink
isotonic solution (1 liter, 9 grams of salt, 30 gr of sugar) and use the equation for burnt people to establish at which pace to rehydrate (half of the total losses in 8 hours and the other half in the next 16 hours). If you do have oedema,
add a protein mix (such as Meritene) to the whole solution.
Stop eating for a while. Your diarrhoea is of the osmotic type, which means it will go on as long as there is food in your bowel. Therefore,
fast for some number of hours, usually 12, meanwhile living on isotonic solution and solution of water and sugar.
Re-start getting eating those
foods that block your bowel. It's pretty personal, but mine are canned tuna, french bread and cous cous, together with unheated skim milk/dairies.
Eat foods with a
very low fat content for a couple of days before restarting pushing toward a higher percentage. My personal threshold is 3%, and I eat food below 1% for a day or two after an "episode".
If you are eating a fattier meal, take some
simethicone (Mylicon): that will prevent unabsorbed fats from being used as food by bacteria, with consequent production of gas that will overstretch your bowel's wall (which is already full of oedema by itself!) and accelerate your bowel movement speed.
Taking 1 teaspoon of
lecithin per meal helps emulsifying the fats, thereby enhancing absorption and diminishing the symptoms. A food that can help you hugely, because of its content in phospholipids (emulsifiers) is
egg.
The way you eat is also
very important.
1. try to eat MAINLY polyunsaturated fatty acids: they are absorbed via a protein, not through the "fat" part of cell membranes the way saturated fats are and create far less pain for you because they put less pressure on your lymphatics;
2. avoid transfats COMPLETELY: they enhance diarrhoea even in healthy individuals, so.. bake your own tarts, cakes, muffins, etc.
3. don't give up on making tasty food, there are zillions of ways you can substitute, for example, butter in bakery or use spices. Just learn, learn, learn
Labels: food composition, symptoms, tricks to minimize symptoms
