[mercy]

I have a situation in my immediate family with a young adult child experiencing apparent emerging schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder. Although I've been aware that enormous stress triggers diarrhea from my early adult years, and also painful evacuation (including very painful gas almost as bad as labor pains), for the past three weeks (due to this situation) I am a MESS. It began with diarrhea, progressed to huge fatigue, got over that, then seemed to abate a few days, then came back with (almost) constipation, lower right abdominal pain, feels like something is trying to claw its way out of me. I took imodium a few times (big mistake, I think), and today I took an acidopholous (sic?) pill. I'm eating as little as I can, hunger makes the gas worse. Anyone have any suggestions to help me? thank you.

 

[Kathleen M.]

Generally the way to eat that is easiest on the GI tract is small frequent meals that are relatively low in fat (don't have to be fat free, but grilled or baked things rather than deep fat fried).Eating as infrequently and as little as possible usually only makes things worse over time, and people get in a cycle of avoiding eating that can be hard to break even if they know 4-6 small meals a day (like 300-400 calories) would be much better for them.