A doctor has offered advice over the differing symptoms of chronic diarrhoea and how people can avoid it.
In a recent ZOE Shorts podcast, CEO Jonathan Wolf and Doctor Will Bulsiewicz discussed the topic. Dr Will said: "Chronic diarrhoea is defined as loose or watery stools, which happens three or more times within 24 hours.
"But the key here is how long it's been going on for, so this is not a one day or one week thing. This is at least four weeks of this type of diarrhoea."
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Dr Will also spoke about the most common symptoms, explaining: "Many of us have experienced this you could experience anal irritation when you have this kind of chronic diarrhoea. Of course there can be loss of bowel control which leads to incontinence. You could have abdominal discomfort or the urgent need to run to the loo."
He added: "The other thing too is that the manifestation of diarrhoea could actually be the harbinger of something more serious that's going on with your body. And in that particular setting, you definitely would rather know early in the process so that you can get the treatment that you need.
"Things can be a little more urgent, but there's certain things that I look for as a gastroenterologist. We call them red flag signs, and these are things like rectal bleeding or progressive abdominal pain, intense abdominal pain, having a fever getting low iron levels. If you don't, if you don't have an explanation for why your iron levels are low.
"For some people, if you have a family history of inflammatory bowel disease or a family history of colorectal cancer, these would all be reasons to seek medical care earlier in the process.
"And the other thing too is we have to consider age. So not to be discriminating or anything like that, but as people age, we wanna take these conditions more seriously. So over age 50, we wanna get checked out."
Dr Will also went into detail on how people can avoid dealing with these symptoms, and how to avoid any form of diarrhoea, reports the Daily Record. He continued: "This includes temporarily cutting out dairy and artificial sweeteners to see if your symptoms get better you could also temporarily remove gluten containing foods, alcohol and caffeine.
"These are for people who have issues with one of these things, when you for example, routinely consume alcohol or routinely consume coffee, it could exacerbate that problem and actually make it a chronic diarrhoea. Also, we should not lose sight of the fact that many medications and supplements can cause diarrhoea. And many people, they will take these things and not realise that it's something that you're taking and that's causing it.
"There's some classics, magnesium non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen or aspirin, vitamin C supplements, metformin for diabetes, and of course the classic — antibiotics."
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