Sunmountain's Log

[thebigpeatowski]

You can get a comprehensive stool analysis, like Jennifer did. I agree with your decision NOT to get a colonoscopy. They are waaaay too invasive and you run a very real risk of perforation and/or infection. Certainly not worth it unless you are having severe issues with pain/blood in your BM's.

I personally have found probiotics to be pretty useless (waste of money). You body temp seems low and could contribute to low stomach acid or low enzyme output for sure, that would slow the guts down even further and contribute to endotoxin.

I'm happy you were able to pinpoint the caffeine/diarrhea connection, but if you are swinging the other direction perhaps less starch would get things moving a bit quicker?

 

[sunmountain]

Too quick to celebrate...I just had diarrhea.

Milk for breakfast with sugar:fructose and glycine. Coke mid-morning. Cottage cheese with jam for lunch and an orange, made me feel full. Hungry an hour later so drank some more milk. Soon gurglings in stomach and then diarrhea. Milk again had same sugar:fructose and glycine.

Milk also was made with a tea bag each 10oz. Can it be that the caffeine in a tea bag is setting me off??? That would be slightly unreal...

Somehow I think it has to do with drinking fluid on "empty" stomach. Or fructose. Anyone else have this problem?

My morning supps: Estroban rubbed on body, 5 drops thorne k, one drop B-12, 12.5 P5P sublingual, 1 capsule allithiamine, small strip progest-e, small amount preg, nibble T3.

 

[Jennifer]

Hmm...tea does have a good amount of caffeine depending on the variety, but I'm not sure there's enough in it to set it off, sunmountain. You've been dealing with the diarrhea since last summer, right? Or at least, I think that's when we were talking about it in the digestion thread.

What about the allithiamine? Did you take it on the days you didn't have diarrhea?

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Too quick to celebrate...I just had diarrhea..... Or fructose. Anyone else have this problem?

To be perfectly 100% honest sunmountain, I never really figured out what was causing my chronic diarrhea. I tried every food elimination strategy imaginable including dairy, fructose, nightshades, histamine, supposed "allergy foods", caffeine etc. None of it made a damn bit of difference. It wasn't until I did the raw garlic Shock & Awe that things turned around for me....even then, I don't really know if it was a bacterial imbalance, a fungal imbalance or both or NONE at all.

Sometimes I think it was because it was June and the days were long and I was doing some sort of combination of stuff that raised my overall metabolic rate...Perhaps my gut spontaneously healed and my personal microbiome suddenly decided to get along with me and just accept what I was feeding it. I wish I could be more helpful. Truthfully, I think the latter is the most probable as I have no other obvious explanation despite making myself crazy trying to figure it.

The best advice I can offer is to EAT FOR HEAT and severely restrict your PUFA intake, eventually it pays off. :2cents

 

[sunmountain]

I just remembered that I took 200mg Magnesium glycinate also this morning. Why? Just because it was sitting there. That bottle has been there for a while. I don't usually take it. But I took it this morning.

Could be that. Or the lack of starch, which is another thing different from yesterday. It's conceivable that though starch slows me further, it also prevents diarrhea. I'd need to test this theory though.

Jennifer, yes the diarrhea has been going on for a long time, but I'm now fed up with it, so trying to figure out what sets it off. I don't remember if I took allithiamine yesterday, but I think I did, and much more than today.

BigP, I tried the garlic shock and awe for 4 days and then wimped out. If I can't figure things out, I might do the genova test. I do severely restrict PUFA already, so that is good. Except I'm going to Mexico land of Peat with my daughter mid-March and will probably do PUFA then, though I plan to gorge on sweet, fresh fruit, while laying in the sunshine...

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Mmmmmmm....Mexican papayas are soooo yummy!!!

I ate a lot cottage cheese, fresh fruit, eggs, milk, coffee, sugar, seafood and margaritas the last time I was there. Unfortunately they cook everything in some sort of cheap industrial oil...at least where I was staying they did.

Have a swell time!!!

 

[HDD]

Hi sunmountain,
I remembered Peatarian recommending activated charcoal and Odansetron for diarrhea. This is part of a really great post by her.


"As I know now, you usually don't have any trouble with bowel movement when there are 'enough' endotoxins in your intestines. In fact everything blocking or lowering serotonin (which is mostly promoted by endotoxins as is estrogen and as are the other stress hormones) will start a shift toward constipation. Using too much ondansetron will cause constipation. Using just enough will normalize soft stool or stop diarrhea (there is a new off label use in gastritis and other stomach diseases). Most bacteria - even the so called 'good bacteria' produce toxic waste. "
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=266&p=5096&hilit=Diarrhea#p5096

 

[Peata]

Have you tried pepto bismol? I have a thread here about it. I was plagued with chronic diarrhea for a year and couldn't figure it out. I also tried the garlic for 4 days. What cured me was Pepto bismol. I took a dose everytime the diarrhea came and if I even felt like it was coming. So sometimes I was taking it a lot (though i don't think i had to exceed the max. doses on the bottle) Eventually the diarrhea came less and less and soon i didn't need the pepto anymore.

Link to thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5540

 

[sunmountain]

Thank you all so much for these recommendations!

Pepto is easy to get so I will get it today. If I understand your thread, Peata, it would be effective if I had gastritis or colitis, and maybe if I had gastroparesis. I certainly have the feeling of fullness after eating just a small amount and even though I'm still hungry. It would be great if this worked.

One question I have for you is did you get constipated while on it, and what you did if so. I take cascara every day, so is it ok to take it along side of pepto?

Diane, thank you for the link to Peatarian's post, and the suggestion for AC and ondansetron. I took AC in the past, though not regularly. The main problem with it is that I get a lot of my calories close to bedtime and waiting 2 hours after that disrupts my sleep cycle. I will see if I can get Ondansetron in Mexico since I am going there mid-March. A very nice poster named Freyasam lives in Mexico and had answered my earlier questions about buying thyroid in mexico. If the pepto doesn't stop the diarrhea, then it's on to ondansetron!

One question I have for you is how the Ondansetron works. If I understand, it knocks out the serotonin, but does nothing to the bugs. So if it's bugs causing the problems, then will Ondansetron be effective? How does it work? (I'm not a scientist so a lay explanation is fine!)

I had diarrhea yesterday morning which I traced (I think!!!) to mango puree in the OJ (Uncle Matt's Mango OJ). Most of the day I felt like it was coming on but avoided going to the bathroom. I also had acupuncture in the afternoon, where she treated me for constipation among other things. At night I had soft but large BM that seemed to take out the older stuff from the colon, but it could all be my wishful thinking!

Today I had another soft, large BM around noon (sorry, TMI!). These last two BM's have been great, so I'm hoping the acupuncture is doing something.



D

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Pardon my slowness sunmountain, but why are you taking cascara if you are having diarrhea? I've never taken it and don't know a lot about it, but doesn't cascara have some sort of laxative effect? Btw, mango fiber in the just the right amounts happened to work wonders for my gut issues...

 

[sunmountain]

Hi BP
I'm taking cascara because I have both constipation and diarrhea if that makes sense. Let's say I eat or drink something and get diarrhea soon after. That seems to take out what I just ate or drank but there's still more inside that's older stuff.

I could be wrong. I could try discontinuing cascara for a few days and see what happens.

On the lately few days I dont have diarrhea, my stool doesn't move without cascara or moves so slow it could take two days.

How did you figure out what was the right quantity of mango fiber for you?

 

[thebigpeatowski]

The mango thing was trial and error, measuring out the quantity on a digital scale and tracking by keeping notes on Cron-O. My intestines seemed to need a certain amount for good gut flora and peristalsis, but too much seemed too rich and irritating.....it's like walking a tightrope at first, but eventually you get more robust and can push the limits a little further. I can now eat a lot of dried mangoes or frozen mango chunks and never have diarrhea, it took me a very long time to get there tho.

 

[HDD]

Have you tried a course of tetracycline? Flowers of Sulphur? Odansetron is a serotonin antagonist, I don't believe it would be effective for a bug. Do you eat the carrot salad? I have also found portabella mushrooms to be very helpful for movements.

"If there are only mild problems (no estrogen dominance, no diseases, no stomach problems, no high serotonin or prolactin levels) carrot salad and charcoal every other day might be enough to keep a clean environment in your stomach and intestines. But since most people 'discover' Ray Peat when things are not going too well and start wondering about bowel movement the moment they have problems with it - a week or two of tetracyclins might be a good idea. As is staying away from pro-biotics. I know it's a big business branch now but in the EU it has been forbidden by law to advertise that pro-biotics promote bowel health. There are just no proves for it.

 

[HDD]

Here's a little on the Flowers of Sulphur-

"In the Q and A Part 1 with Josh Rubin Peat said "A pinch a day for 3 days" or one teaspoon once a year. Both doses would clear up any candida excess and Kill all parasites - It turns their blood to sulfuric acid which I thought was pretty cool. What you would put that teaspoon in I don't know. Does it taste ok? Do you just down it as is?
He said men in the 1900's used to use the spoonful a year to ensure no parasites etc."

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=971&hilit=brimstone


Hopefully the Pepto Bismal will fix things for you!

 

[Peata]

Thank you all so much for these recommendations!

Pepto is easy to get so I will get it today. If I understand your thread, Peata, it would be effective if I had gastritis or colitis, and maybe if I had gastroparesis. I certainly have the feeling of fullness after eating just a small amount and even though I'm still hungry. It would be great if this worked.

One question I have for you is did you get constipated while on it, and what you did if so. I take cascara every day, so is it ok to take it along side of pepto?

I didn't get constipated because I only took it as needed to stop/prevent the diarrhea, and when the loose bowels stopped, I didn't take the Pepto anymore. i don't know what cascara can be taken with. i've never used cascara.

 

[Jennifer]

Here's a little on the Flowers of Sulphur-

"In the Q and A Part 1 with Josh Rubin Peat said "A pinch a day for 3 days" or one teaspoon once a year. Both doses would clear up any candida excess and Kill all parasites - It turns their blood to sulfuric acid which I thought was pretty cool. What you would put that teaspoon in I don't know. Does it taste ok? Do you just down it as is?
He said men in the 1900's used to use the spoonful a year to ensure no parasites etc."

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=971&hilit=brimstone


Hopefully the Pepto Bismal will fix things for you!

I just did a round of flowers of sulphur. It hadn't even been a full years since doing it last, but I went ahead and tried it anyway because Ray said it would help with the trapped gas in my colon.

This time around, instead of just taking it in some water, I put the FOS in gelatin caps and took it that way hoping it would stay more potent further down my gut to reach my colon. I don't know, it made sense to me at the time. LOL I did 1/3 of a teaspoon for three days straight. The trapped gas was gone after that, but I also cut out all fiber and starch at the same time so I'm not sure what helped or if it all did.

Sunmountain, I think having both constipation and diarrhea are very common with gut inflammation. I had it too and still do every now and then. If I remember correctly, it has to do with the walls of the intestines thickening up due to the inflammation. So fiber, such as cooked bamboo shoots, cooked mushrooms or raw carrot salad, can help with peristalsis, but then can also irritate the intestines like BP pointed out in regards to trial and error in finding your fiber sweet spot.

Anyhow, lots of good advice you girls are giving. :)

 

[sunmountain]

Allright. After diarrhea all day no matter what I ate or drank...I just took the first dose of pepto.

There's gurgling going on and I can feel the weight of the pepto in my stomach. A bit of pressure at the other end like a possible BM, but not too bad, so I won't go to the bathroom just yet.

Why do they need to put the gross color in it, and the gross wintergreen flavor! Yuck.

Peata, did you feel like going after pepto, and if so, did you take another dose or wait it out?

 

[sunmountain]

Ok, just went diarrhea again AFTER the pepto. Should I take another dose?

 

[sunmountain]

ok, just see online I can take another dose in 30 mins if needed.

 

[sunmountain]

Just took another dose after going 2 times following first dose. Again rumbling and probably going soon. Is this to be expected? I thought pepto is supposed to STOP diarrhea?