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Diarrhoe
Usually a self-cleaning that ends on its own — what matters most is drinking enough.
Also known as: diarrhoea · loose stools · diarrhea · upset stomach
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
Frequent, loose or watery stools. Acute diarrhoea (up to about two weeks) is usually harmless and caused by a gut infection (viruses, less often bacteria), spoiled food or travel — it stops on its own. The most important thing is to drink enough to replace the loss of fluid and salts. If diarrhoea lasts longer than about two to four weeks (chronic), it’s worth seeking the cause: irritable bowel, food intolerances (e.g. lactose), coeliac disease, inflammatory bowel disease or medicines. Get checked quickly for blood in the stool, high fever, severe abdominal pain, signs of dehydration, or diarrhoea in babies, older or weakened people. With the water, salts are lost — above all potassium and sodium; replacing them matters as much as the drinking itself.
Water, diluted juice or a rehydration solution replace the loss.
Small, bland meals are gentler; strict diets aren’t needed.
Lasting weeks, the cause should be sought medically.
With blood, high fever or dehydration, don’t wait.
Loose, very foul-smelling and lasting weeks, after a mountain stream, travel or nursery: then the stool antigen test for giardia, three samples on different days.
The commonest bacterial cause of diarrhoea here — usually from one’s own kitchen, with after-effects lasting longer than the infection.
With diarrhoea lasting over two weeks, after a journey or with weight loss, a single sample finds too little. Three samples on different days are the difference between looking and finding.
A diarrhoea that comes and goes for weeks, with tiredness and weight loss, after imported raspberries, basil or salad: it needs a targeted stain in the laboratory.
Cryptosporidia survive chlorine and are passed on in the pool. The watery diarrhoea lasts one to two weeks, longer than with a virus, and needs a test of its own.
The only tapeworm that needs no intermediate host multiplies in the same gut and can build up over months. Diarrhoea, belly pain and restlessness are the picture.
Loperamide slows bowel movement — it stops the diarrhoea without touching the cause, and is not the right route with bloody stool or high fever, because it holds organisms in the gut. What counts is fluid with salt and sugar in the right ratio: this mixture uses a transport route in the gut wall that still works during inflammation — which is why it beats water alone. Most infections last two to four days, with or without a drug.
Diarrhoea counts as three or more unformed stools a day. Acute means under two weeks, persistent two to four, chronic beyond four. An acute infection lasts two to four days. An adult loses one to two litres a day, a child proportionally more — which is why it tips faster there. The rehydration solution uses salt and sugar in the ratio that opens the transport route in the gut wall; sweet drinks alone pull water into the gut and worsen the diarrhoea.
Most germs arrive via water and raw food washed in water. Drink boiled or sealed, no ice cubes, peel fruit yourself, eat cooked food hot.
A gut infection usually settles on its own within days.
Drinking enough (with some salt/sugar) is the key measure.
Irritable bowel, intolerances, coeliac or inflammation come into play.
These signs — or diarrhoea in babies/elderly — need prompt assessment.
The single most important hint of worms in the blood. They are raised with worms that travel through tissue — not with giardia, threadworms and amoebae, which stay in the bowel. A normal value therefore rules nothing out.
The body holds water back as soon as it loses it — urine turns dark and scant long before thirst arrives. In children and older people the amount of urine is therefore a more honest measure than the feeling of thirst.
This hormone retrieves sodium. That is exactly what the drinking solution rests on: sugar and salt together are taken up in the gut through the same carrier — which is why it works where water alone does not.
An overactive thyroid speeds the gut and makes frequent, loose stool — together with weight loss despite appetite, sweating and a fast pulse. With lasting unexplained diarrhoea the value belongs in the picture.
Rebuild gradually.
Best documented in antibiotic-related and travellers’ diarrhoea; in other forms the data are thinner.
Traditionally used in acute diarrhoea. It also binds medicines — so keep a gap from other remedies.
Dried bilberries are the classic remedy — the tannins draw together. Fresh ones do the opposite.
Diluted as a belly massage for cramps. What counts is the drinking solution — sugar and salt together, because they use the same carrier in the gut.
Advertised against gut germs and irritating to the lining when taken internally. With acute diarrhoea it is the wrong choice — the gut is already irritated.
The Spleen in TCM stands not for the organ but for the transformation of food. Loose stool and tiredness after eating are the classic picture of a “Spleen deficiency”.
Raw and cold food counts as hard to transform; cooked and warm is recommended. Not studied — that warm rice sits better than a salad with acute diarrhoea is everyday experience nonetheless.