You can usually treat diarrhea at home and it will clear up on its own within a couple of days without the use of medication or other treatments. If you try home and lifestyle changes for diarrhea and it doesn’t stop, your doctor might recommend medication or other treatment.
Antibiotics
If your diarrhea is caused by bacteria or parasites antibiotics might help to treat it but if it’s a virus that causes your diarrhea antibiotics won’t help. It might be the case that antibiotics are the cause for diarrhea and if so, your doctor might lower the dose or change to another type of medication.
Replacing Fluids
If you suffer from diarrhea it’s likely that you will be losing a lot of fluids and your doctor will recommend replacing these fluids along with salts. It’s easy to do, just drink water, juice or broth. It might be the case that drinking liquids upsets your stomach and causes diarrhea, you might have to get fluids intravenously (IV) through a vein in your arm. Water alone won’t replenish your salt and electrolytes but is a good way to replace fluids. You need electrolytes to help maintain the electric currents that keep your heart beating. These can be replaced by drinking fruit juices which contain potassium or having soup to replace sodium.
Underlying Conditions
Your diarrhea might be caused by a serious condition such as inflammatory bowel disease or other such diseases. If this is the case your doctor will try to control or stop the condition which will then stop the diarrhea. You might be recommended to seek a specialist, like a gastroenterologist, who could work with you to devise a treatment plan for you.
Lifestyle and Home Changes
To help diarrhea to clear up within a few days. To help control and stop your symptoms you could try:
- Avoid certain food — dairy products, high-fiber, highly seasoned, and fatty foods can cause diarrhea so try to avoid them for a few days.
- Drink clear liquids — try to avoid caffeine and alcohol and drink juices, broths and water.
- Gradually add semisolid and low-fiber foods to your diet — as your bowel movements return to normal you can slowly start adding foods like soda crackers, toast, eggs, rice and chicken back into your diet.
- Probiotics — to help restore health to your intestinal tract consider taking probiotics which boost the level of good bacteria. You can find them in liquid or capsule form and in some brands of yogurt.
- Anti-diarrheal medications — you can find some anti-diarrheal medications over-the-counter and include loperamide (Imodium A-D) and bismuth subsalicylate (Pepto-Bismol). These medications can help to reduce the amount of watery bowel movements and can also control the symptoms that come with diarrhea.