Need advice of Cdiff and Probiotics

Michelle B.
on 12/8/16 7:45 am

I had VSG revision to DS surgery on 9/12/2016.  On Sunday morning of this week I started having watery diarrhea.  I went to my surgeon on Tuesday and he sent me for a stool culture and he prescribed me Flagyl.  It is now Thursday and I'm still having diarrhea.  Other than the diarrhea ,  I feel fine.  I go back to my doctor tomorrow for a follow-up.  Has anyone on here had Cdiff before?  I need any advice I can get on how to handle this.  What should and shouldn't I be eating until this clears up?  

Also, my doctor wants me to start taking a probiotic.  I'm really confused on what probiotic to get.  Are they any recommendations for certain brands?  How many probiotic pills do we take a day?  

larra
on 12/8/16 9:36 am - bay area, CA

Hopefully your surgeon ordered specific testing for C diff and not just a routine stool culture. C diff is not easy to diagnosis (which is how it got its name). If you do have C diff, these days it's much more difficult to clear up than it used to be. Flagyl or Vancomycin are the usual treatments, and it takes more than just a few days to resolve - sometimes weeks/ months, multiplc courses of treatment, etc. So I hope you don't have it, but if you do, flagyl is a good place to start treatment.

There is no diet that will cure C diff, but some docs recommend avoiding specific foods just to ease symptoms - dairy, fruits, veggies.

There are lots of good probiotics out there. I use Primal Defense Ultra, but there are many others.

 

Check back with the doc to learn the results of the stool culture and ask about whether or not you were tested for C diff. Hopefully it's something easier to treat, like bacterial overgrowth, which usually responds well to flagyl.

 

Brandy G.
on 12/20/16 1:58 pm
DS on 08/20/14

I have tried a bunch of different probiotics and none at all.

 

I did notice that if I didn't take any, I had a bit more of a tendency towards nausea in the long run.  

 

But changing brands never seemed to change much of anything and I tried some of the super expensive ones.  I settled on the very reasonably priced BioTech Pharmacal - Lacto Pectin - 100 Count @ ~$18.00 from Amazon for the last year.  But they are more of a habit than any real strong opinion for a brand, but no refrigeration is needed and it is only one small capsule a day that I can take with my iron and that counts for a lot in my book!

 

The brand of probiotics seems to be one of those places where people get wildly different results.  Everything from "I spend $500 a month on a live, specially blended, custom ordered paste" to "I buy PB-9 for $8.00 a month and I'm fine."  Also, different types of bacteria will yield different results because after you take the pill/paste, then they have to survive the stomach and then after arriving in the gut, they battle it out with the bacteria already there for space.  So the exact chemistry of your gut and the food digesting in your gut will matter, so I would just play around with four or five different brands and see how sensitive you are. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 2014 - DS @ Mexicali Bariatric Center / Ungson.
It took me one and a half years to lose 165 pounds.
Weight: High=314, Goal=155, Current=131

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