Tips for Stomach Bug Recovery

Greetings!

Somehow I contracted what seems to have been a stomach bug 13 days ago - fever, vomiting, diarrhea, cramping. I felt much better the next day, and vomiting and fever stayed gone. Unfortunately, off and on ever since, the cramping and diarrhea have returned intermittently (though more mildly) seemingly without regard for what I am eating. My stomach and large intestine have been comfortable; my small intestine is what gets sore and crampy. No gas, bloating, or belching. Normal smells. Appetite comes and goes, and I have not been able to eat a normal amount since getting sick, so am feeling weak and woozy some days.

I know that sometimes the GI tract is irritated and takes a while to recover, but people also develop "post-infectious IBS" and chronic symptoms after infections, as we all well know. Being immunocompromised since tick-borne disease adventures began - specifically not making normal amounts of the immunoglobulins used to fight off viral and bacterial infections, giving me a history of basically long COVID following a normal cold - I just worry about these symptoms not resolving in a typical course of time.

I would like your collective wisdom about how to make sure my gut heals promptly. I want to take into account the microbiome (both antimicrobials and probiotics), gut lining health, nerve signals, the biliary tract, mast cells, and inflammation.

So far I have been trying to wait patiently, not overreact, and trust that my body has some idea what it's doing. In the past, as some of you will find familiar, I have let health anxiety compel me to take lots of remedies and create a muddied picture of what's actually wrong versus what's a result of the chemistry experiment I'm conducting on my body!

I have focused on hydration, so I'm okay in that area. I have continued the usual supplements to address MCAS (curcumin, quercetin) as well as adding cromolyn sodium for chilling out the mast cells that line the GI tract. (I have never had that not work to resolve GI symptoms before, until now.) Otherwise I have left things alone, mostly.

What would you recommend trying first, with a goal of not destabilizing things further? Would you wait a bit longer before intervening, since some gastroenteritis viruses do take two weeks to resolve?

(I assume the bug was viral and not bacterial because the fever was low and the acute symptoms only lasted a day.)

Hi Sara

i have had similar things over the years with Lyme - and of course knowing how we can be susceptible to many things its easy to feel that this may be the beginning of a backwards step - but i think in general these things do seem to self correct in time.

there was research in the last few years showing that even respiratory viruses do often / typically also infect the lining of the gut ( covid does this for instance ) as well as gastric viruses
when this happens there are a few interesting effects - one is blooming of one or two bacterial species in the microbiome - ie dysbiosis is triggered and this in turn often triggers leaky gut
so this is my best guess as the mechanisms behind what is going on

so my approach when this happens to me is to be a bit more strict with my attention to fodmaps / normal triggers just as a way of helping take the load off the system
along with anything else i can do to in general be a bit kinder to my gut and help its recovery

another useful step if to increase the time between the last meal of the day and the first meal the next day - this longer gap ( 13-14hrs ideally) gives the gut a chance to clean itself better and enter rest ad repair - and so promotes healing and also actually increases diversity in the microbiome.

there is another post on colostrum today - and most members report little or no effect from it - but i would actually advocate using it here - and have myself a couple of times in similar situations - not sure if it helped - but - helping establish a health microbiome is its primary purpose in young mammals - and its anti-inflammatory and supports the gut tissues - so its a good fit

ref others on your list - i think probiotics may or may not help - depends on the individual - if you are used to them and do not react i think they would be OK - if you are reacting - i would leave them out for now

sleep, moderate exercise, relaxation techniques, time outdoors etc all have beneficial effects on the gut and its microbiome - so i would do a bit more of those also

so mainly just some gentle helping hands type things fort your gut - mostly i would let it sort itself out

Hey Sara, have you thought about trying charcoal or a binder to ‘mop’ up any leftover toxins?

I guess I'm not the only one with the stomach bug--I had a similar virus last week, and I haven't had the stomach flu for a really really long time. Ive been healthy otherwise though. No one else in my house had it, which was surprising.

I lost about 5 pounds, which is not really a problem for me, but my stomach has been upset in general ever since.

I've been drinking peppermint and chamomile tea. Coconut yogurt from Siggi's is good. I generally have an appetite and eat normally but then just feel slightly nauseous in general.