Two weeks now after my take down, and I am still suffering with server pain when I go number 2. Everything seems to burn on its way out. I am going anywhere between 15-20 times a day and sometimes each visit has a few burst of gas and stool mixed in. I am not a big eater, I do not indulge in a lot of fatty foods or spicy foods. I know everyone tends to have trigger foods but overall what works best for the pouch in the beginning.
Replies sorted oldest to newest
It should get better in time, but 2 weeks is still very early in your recovery. For what it's worth it may be more about what you do more than what you eat.
Going to the bathroom 20 times a day is going to have a wear and treat affect. You need to be as gentle as possible on the skin. Personally I use barrier cream (sudocreme actually) BEFORE going to protect the skin. Then go before blot clean then apply more barrier cream and gently wipe once to revive excess. This cleans and protects. Stay away from water.. even washing your hands 20 times a day will dry then out, so washing you sensitive butt is gonna cause problems.
Calmoseptine has its place and is good, but it contains menthol which is out the last thing you want to run on a but that sore. Besides using a barrier cream advice should help significantly. Make sure the area is fully cleansed when you bathe though.
Diet does make a difference though, try to eat from the allowed food list. Nothing acidic (tomatoes are infamously bad).
You could also take some digestive enzymes to help break the didifficu down a bit.
Along the lines of what Bobish said....if the menthol in the Calmoseptine is burning, you can mix in a small amount of lidocaine which is numbing. Or you use the lidocaine alone or with another barrier that does not have menthol. All that said, Calmoseptine is amazing and doesn't necessarily burn a sore butt.....just depends how angry the skin is and your tolerance until the soothing kicks in.....trial and error.
The burning has absolutely nothing to do with what you are eating. After takedown the stool has a higher alkalinity pH - this is because your body is adjusting to your colon having been removed. It’s not a finger snap for your body to do this. It could take up to a year. The pH then adjusts and in most cases butt burn will fade away. In my case it was up to a year. Obviously certain foods like vinegar and jalapeño peppers will exacerbate the situation but there is no food that is butt burn proof during this phase.
Best thing to do is experiment and use calmoseptine and other zinc oxide preparations. Check the % zinc oxide in any such preparation. 10% is a looser or creamier ointment and 40% (Desitin original formula) is a thicker pastier cream. I found between 10-20% preparations worked best on my sore butt cheeks and that the 40%, really designed for a baby’s ass and not butt burn, was too thick and caulked my butt cheeks together. The creamier ointments do need to be reapplied more. Calmoseptine has menthol as well to provide some soothing relief.
Good luck.
I thought I would go insane from the butt burn and tenesmus the first month. What I found worked the best—thanks to this board and experimenting—was a couple of hit sitz baths per day, completely drying the anal area after the bath with a cool blow dryer setting, and then applying a thin coating of ILex paste followed by another round of cool blow drying. The ILex paste is the only barrier cream that—for me—is water and stool proof and helps protect sensitive skin. Also, with a high frequency, you’ve got to be careful with your cleaning habits.
Regular oatmeal was one of my soothing foods. It bulked up the stool and helped give it a smooth exit! I used Calmoseptine but I do understand Ilex is the premier barrier cream. I started off introducing foods gradually but never really denied myself any food or drink I liked. I just used the barrier cream ahead of time! All of this improved greatly with time but still happens once in awhile. Knowing that once the culprit food is out of me all returns to a feeling of what is normal for me......leaves me with no problems!
Thank you all for the great advice, I was told it may take awhile and I guess everyone was right. Right now I am using Critic-aid barrier cream and Baza protect skin protectant cream both made by Coloplast. I will limited the amount I wash now, since water may not be helping that much. I do a few sitz baths in my tub just to take away the immediate pain. Will try calmoseptine and sudocreme at this point it cant hurt.
Sudocrem is my go to for any butt burn. Its worked like a charm from the first day . Also you can wash the area just make sure you dry it well. I wore gauges for 1 week to keep it dry from any leakage.
Sudocrem, iIex, A&D, Calmoseptine, and Desitin all have zinc oxide as their active ingredient (Calmoseptine also adds menthol as an active ingredient). So if you want to get past hype, reviews, and internet marketing as to what distinguishes one product as better than the other, before actually testing each product on your butt, I would suggest a look at the operative zinc oxide % in each product. Sudocrem is 15.25%. Calmoseptine 20.6%. A&D is 13%. I believe Desitin Original Formula is 40% whereas their creamier formulation is around 13 or 14%.
Although Ilex has great reviews and tremendous hype all over the Internet, zinc oxide is also its active ingredient. Yet nowhere on the Internet can I find, either on the Ilex website or elsewhere, what the % of zinc oxide is in Ilex. I suppose it should say this on the actual label of the product so if someone has that information please post it.
While I realize that each of these formulas have different inactive ingredients, for me to decide and recommend the merits of one over another without trying them would be based on the thickness of the cream which is determined by zinc oxide %. So I am very curious about what that % is because Ilex on its website treats that information as a closely guarded state secret whereas the other companies openly tell you what it is.
All of the above being said, you do have the time to test each of these products and then draw your own conclusions. Back in the early 1990s when I had butt burn all of these products were not available. So I mostly used different formulations of A&D and Desitin which, at that time, were the go to butt burn creams. I am curious about the actual science that makes one cream "better" than the others when they all have the same active ingredient, excepting Calmoseptine which adds menthol. This makes Calmoseptine a somewhat unique product and one I would be likely to try first if I had takedown all over again in 2018, like Valli.
ILex works best for me because it doesn’t wash or wipe off easily as compared to others.
Can you look at what the zinc oxide % is in Ilex and post it? I am guessing it’s higher than 20% if it doesn’t wash/wipe away easily.
My Ilex paste doesn't give a % of Zinc Oxide. I agree with jfill, it's the bomb.
