BODY SIGNAL ALERT DIARRHEA, CHRONIC, NONBLOODY: TREATMENT
Changing your diet or your medication will often correct chronic diarrhea.
If you think you have lactose intolerance, try eating some ice cream or drinking a large glass of milk. If you begin to have diarrhea an hour or two later, and you also feel pain and bloating in your abdomen, you probably have a lactose intolerance. You should then eliminate dairy products from your diet as much as you can. This, however, can be a problem, since you still need to get some calcium in your diet, especially if you are a woman. Fortunately, you can take calcium supplements, 1000 milligrams a day for premenopausal women and 1500 milligrams for postmenopausal women daily. You can also buy a lactose-free milk such as Lactaid in the supermarket or add Lactaid drops to your milk or take pills whenever you eat or drink foods that contain lactose.
If you have a gluten intolerance, your doctor will take an X ray of your small intestine to show the typical pattern of gluten malabsorption. An endoscope may also be used to take a biopsy to confirm the diagnosis. One of my patients came to me a few years back complaining of chronic weight loss, and we gave him every test in the book and came up empty-handed. Then I ordered an X ray of his small intestine, which immediately showed all the signs of gluten malabsorption. With the help of a dietitian, we changed his diet to avoid all gluten, and he recovered quickly.
If you have an intolerance to gluten, a gluten-free diet is easy to achieve, even though gluten is found in almost all bread products and cereals. You can eat rice cakes and buy gluten-free products at the health food store.
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