[JulesD]

For years I have always had so much pain with Diarrhea, but now have started to get painless diarrhea, i posted last week so sorry to harp on again about it. But it is so out of the ordinary for me, to have so much diarrhea and no pain, it still happens after eating, and I then get foul smelling wind, lots of gurgling and growling, then soft mushy stools, then comes the diarrhea. Can IBS alter this way, can it flip between Functional Diarrhea and IBS or is still classified as IBSsorry if i sound confusing I am just not used to this new aspect of my IBS and am a little worried. I have had colconsopy, blood tests, celiac tests ect.

 

[Brianmay1975]

I don't know if one can switch back anf forth from IBS to functional diarrhea, but I did have diarrhea without pain many times. It was most of the times accompanied by some degree of abdominal discomfort. I think it can still be classified as IBS and, anyway, I guess that functional diarrhea would be treated pretty much the same...

 

[Kathleen M.]

While the diagnostic criteria for the various functional diseases make it seem like there are solid lines, I think a lot of people fall in between or can vary (and if you find something that treats one symptom well it may look like another one, like if you can normalize stool consistency, but still have pain it looks more like CFAP than IBS even if you'd have diarrhea or constipation if you weren't taking something).Now discomfort does count for IBS, you don't need to be discomfort free and some poeple never have severe pain with their IBS, just bloating or urgency or other symptoms that are enough to be bothersome, but aren't exactly painful.Anyway, I think you could mutate from one functional disorder to another over time (even with no treatments), however if you go from IBS to copious watery fairly discomfort free diarrhea, especially if the problems are mostly at night then I'd get rechecked for microscopic colitis.For the most part it really doesn't matter much which functional bowel label you throw on it as the diarrhea of functional diarrhea is treated the same way the diarrhea of IBS is (or even the diarrhea from organic disease). It isn't like each one has a completely different set of medications that work. However some of the organic diseases do need other treatments on top of what slows down the diarrhea (like an immune suppressor for autoimmune diseases).