shelly how many???.

I feel your frustration.  I take Colestid 1 time a day at bed time.  It is a 1 g. pill.  At first, it was working well...now I have D every morning, usually 1 time a day (only in the morning).   I hate IBS-D!!!  I just hate it.  It's hard to hear that it is a "minor" problem and doesn't pose a threat to your health.  I have lost weight because I'm scared to eat a lot of things that I used to eat and my hair is falling out. 

I was perfectly normal until mid-March when this all started.  I just want it to stop so I can have my life back.

Hang in there!

Yes, Colestid is a colesterol medicine.  I don't have high colesterol though.  A GI doctor Rx it for me for the consitipating side effect it has.  It worked for a bout a week and a half and I am back to the good 'ol 'D" again.  I feel like a walking pharmacy! I hate taking medicines.  Especially medicine that is used to treat a condition that I don't even have, like high colesterol.  Wouldn't think that wouldn't be good for your body? 

I'm considering going to a Dr. that emphasizes supplements and vitamins.  I HAVE to get in check soon.  I've been dealing with this everyday for 4 straight months now.  I go back to teaching in a little over a month. I thought I'd be better by now...it HAS slowed down a bit...but it is still there...every morning I have diarrhea.  Not 1 normal BM in 4 months now.  I've lost weight and can't afford to lose any and my hair is falling out bad now.

My G.I. told me that the Welchol doesn't really get into your body; it pretty much stays exclusively in the digestive tract (I think the Questran and Colestid are the same way). It helps your cholesterol by keeping you from breaking down all of your food in the digestive tract. When the bile comes at it to break it down some more, the medicine binds up the bile and keeps it from breaking it down. But it works so late in the digestion process that it doesn't harm you to miss that last little bit of digestion. In regular people this can be constipating. It also doesn't keep you from absorbing all that much cholesterol, so it's not very effective on that account. But for some people it's the only thing they can take because it's not supposed to interact with other medicines. And some people take it in addition to the other type of cholesterol medicine because they need all the help they can get. I think they are finding, though, that it does a whole lot better for treating people with bile diarrhea than it does for people with cholesterol.

Maybe you should just try one of the other types and see if they work better for you--or ask your doctor if you can take more. I can take as much Welchol as I need to to get my D stopped; some people on here have taken as many as 6 pills a day, although I only need one on average. I love my Welchol; I wouldn't take nothing for it. It's always better to try everything in every possible dosage before giving up on it because sometimes one little thing--an extra pill, taking your medicine at a different time of the day--is all you need to set you aright.