Hello

I'm getting conflicting advice about sugar and pounchitis. My stools have been more frequent and watery of late, so I'm drinking plenty of rehydration drinks that are laced with sugar. Likewise I'm supplementing my diet with applesauce to add bulk to the stool.

Yet, it has been reiterated time and again that it's best to avoid sugar with pouchitis!

Help, I'm confused

David

Hi David,

You are better off using something like Dioralyte to rehydrate you. You can get it at most chemists. It doesn't have sugar in it and the new variety has rice flour in it so it actually helps to thicken your stool as well as rehydrating you.

All the over the counter rehydration drinks like Gatorade, Lucazade Sport etc have far too much sugar in them for us colonically challanged. Sugar can act as a laxative in a lot of us.

Have you tried increasing your salt intake (pretzils are good) and perhaps including a banana a day in your diet? These are both things that can help keep you hydrated and can help to thicken your output.

Good luck.

Shell

Shell is right. More salt, less sugar. Bananas are a good source for sodium.

Thanks for the advice.

However, my Doctor is adamant that my body needs rehydrating, and when I told him about my reservation about sugar and pouchitis, he reassured me that it would do no harm.

David

David, I think that you are confusing the issues and there is more than one right answer. Sugar does not cause pouchitis or do your pouch any harm. However, excess sugar can increase the symptoms of pouchitis, by increasing your output. Your doctor is probably quite right about your need for rehydration, so you need to follow his advice.

Gatorade and similar drinks are sport drinks, and are not designed for rehydration of fluid losses due to diarrhea. Many people can drink it without problems, but if your output increases when you drink it, you need to make adjustments. For some people, just watering it down is enough. For others, they need to completely avoid it, at least early in the adaptation phase. In the nearly 13 years since my surgery, I have never consumed any sports drinks, diluted or otherwise. I just don't like them. I get plenty of sodium and potassium from my foods and I drink liquids that I enjoy.

Probably the best thing for you to do is to not ask your doctor so many questions and just see what works by trial and error. I don't mean for you to cut your doctor out of the loop, but when it comes to diet, the docs usually don't really know what you need.

There is a good article on the subject in this Cleveland Clinic Pouch-O-Gram, scroll down until you get to the article about Diet and Diarrhea.
http://cms.clevelandclinic.org/digestivedisease/documents/POG_2003_WInter.pdf

Jan

Hi Jan

I readily acknowledge I'm totally confused about this issue. I read this article yesterday:

http:afludiary.blogspot.com/2007/09/rehydration-solution.html

And to confound the matter, my diarrhoea is responding to the formula suggested!

I'm left 'sratching my head' in bewilderment.

David.

Oh David, I think you are not as confused as you may think. The website you list is 100% accurate, in that to treat diarrhea, you need to approximate the concentration of electrolytes within the cells, so that you don't pull water out of them. This is simple (or not so simple, depending on how you look at it) chemistry and physics. Plus, there is some physiology working in there too (such as active transport). But what you really need to focus on is what works. It doesn't matter if you have an M.D. or a 10 year old kid, what works is what is right.

So, problem solved, and, I am glad you are turning around.

Jan