Posted by cumulative on January 22, 2008, at 2:26:34
Yeah, diarrhea. Gross! Anyhoo, I pretty regularly experience it very powerfully (though not painfully) following meals, sometimes several times a day. Some might recall that I've also been taking a medication, Trivastal Retard 50, which releases steadily over 24 hours. I expect it needs to stay in the body. I was puzzled at my complete lack of response.
Yesterday a lightbulb went on and I went and bought loperamide, and dosed my dose (200mg). Note that I had gone up to that dose because I wasn't getting much from lower doses previously. Probably should have dropped the dose back down for this experiment, but oh well. :) And I got really really sick (didn't vomit though), had some other associated sides, and had some scary/fun audio-visual hallucinations in the dark trying to sleep.
In the morning I was fine, and I felt pretty well though nothing overwhelming yet all morning and afternoon. I took my dose again, with the same beautiful results as last night.
So I still am not 100% positive that the diarrhea was the problem and I found the solution, but things look pretty promising so far. It certainly explains why I thought I might have been feeling some of those side effects before, but extremely intermittently, fading in and out. Probably it started coming on, then I lost the pills, and blood levels never reached a very significant level.
Loperamide is problematic. I honestly don't really mind being addicted to higher and higher doses of this peripheral opioid, if Trivastal works well, but it'll probably be best if I find a better solution. Fortunately, I don't think the problem is IBS ... rather, I sometimes take too many acidic supplements and also I've found the NOW super enzyme with ginger and DGL to clear most of my problem up.
So, I'm doing well. Comments?
poster:cumulative
thread:808278
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080114/msgs/808278.html