How to treat diarrhoea

Most of us will recover in 1-5 days from acute bouts of diarrhoea, just by managing the symptoms ourselves. There are three main things you can do to help ease your symptoms:

• Keep up your fluid intake

Diarrhoea causes the body to lose fluids. To avoid dehydration, take small sips of water or diluted fruit juice but stay away from alcohol and milk, which could further irritate your gut. You may also find it helpeful to take rehydration salts – sachets of powder usually containing a mixture of glucose, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, and disodium hydrogen citrate, which you dilute and drink to help prevent and treat dehydration.

• Eat some food

Current medical advice is that you should try to eat foods like pasta, rice or bread, which are high in carbohydrates, as well as other foods as soon as you can. If you are also feeling or being sick and don’t feel up to eating, just make sure you’re taking in regular amounts of fluid.

• Use an anti-diarrhoea medicine

Medicines like IMODIUM^® contain the active ingredient ‘loperamide’, which helps to calm your digestive system down and get it back to normal. Using an anti-diarrhoea medicine helps your body absorb more fluid from the bowel, relieving your diarrhoea and means you can get on with your day more comfortably and confidently.