Foods & Medicinal Treatments for Bowel Movement Consistency

@bc321 Reading your words addressing foods and medicinal treatments for the bowels are music to my ears.

My approach to feeling as good as I can includes activity and diet as the foundation. Various foods have been a part of that and over time has become part of every day. I am convinced my body functions better and processes the drugs I do need to take better.

You added a chart of what looks like supplements to your initial discussion. You state there are many foods as well. I am hoping you add foods to this list. One recommendation I have is that you add sources so others know where you information came from, either your own experience or other specific resource.

I am curious to learn more about you and what led you to create this discussion. Do you follow a specific diet of foods and take supplements? What benefits have you experienced?

can I ask where you got this chart. can't seem to pass it on and know a few people that I would like to share it with.
thank you

@jlharsh I apologize if there is confusion about what I posted and how I posted it. The chart is solely based and structured on Active Ingredients that are used for treating either acute Constipation and/or Diarrhea since they're both something we deal with regarding digestive health issues. That is why the Active Ingredients are in bold and prominently located in the first column and why the issue(s) they each treat are in the second column - which are Constipation, Diarrhea, or Both. Then the rest of the chart is data regarding each of those Active Ingredients, including Natural Food Sources (column 7) and/or over the counter medications (column 6). I specifically wanted to add foods because some people, including me, would prefer to treat constipation and/or diarrhea with natural foods rather than medicines if we can. I have recently discovered the power of prune juice in treating constipation - and I mean POWER! That stuff is no joke:)

It sounds like what you are looking for is information on a daily, meal and snack-type diet for your digestive health. That is something I'm always interested in learning about too, but this chart is for treatment of BM consistency - meaning treatment for constipation and/or diarrhea.

As for me I had a Sigmoidectomy for diverticulitis 22 days ago and as I stated in the post, I wanted a go-to tool to understand the options, differences and other details regarding food and OTC medicinal options for helping with BM consistency. It's a real challenge coming out of colectomy surgery with some people experiencing wild swings to and from both extremes of the BM consistency spectrum. Likewise, I see people describing how they're treating it by throwing everything at it - the proverbial "everything and the kitchen sink" method. And I thought - before I start doing that, I would like to have a tool that lays out the options I have for available treatments and all the key factors about each one. Then I can pick and choose the ones I want easier since they're all displayed together in one spot.

I hope that helps and best of luck in your digestive health journey!

@samclembeau I created the chart and saved it as a PNG here because I believe that's the best digital format for viewing and reading text. How you save and share it with others is going to be based on what hardware/software you're performing those steps on. Once you open the file you should have a way to save it as a file on the "hard drive" of your computer/pad/phone. Then you should be able to share it digitally, like via email. Sorry, I'm not a big IT guy so that's about as technical as I can get:)

@bc321 Ahhh, I totally missed the column, ‘natural food sources’ listing a few options. The meaning of all cap letters…you gave me a good laugh describing the POWER of prune juice.

I love that you are being proactive and planning how to best manage recovering from surgery. You may be interested to review another discussion @hopeful33250 started:
- How do I eat after digestive tract surgery? https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/how-do-i-eat-after-digestive-tract-surgery/

How long have you been dealing with diverticulitis, and is it too soon to know if getting a sigmoidectomy has helped? Did your doctor have recommendations for you?

I went into what is probably way too much detail in my profile. So rather than re-do that here, I think you can view my history and current circumstances there. At 23 days I think it is way too soon to know if the sigmoidectomy helped. And to clear, my diverticulitis was "not that bad". I put quotes on that because it probably seem counter intuitive since I had surgery for it. What I mean is that my 11-12 flareups in as many years were, on average, not that bad:

- Fever and chills - yes but I got more proactive, maybe too proactive at times, about getting on antibiotics;
- Pain - yes, but even in my worst flareups there wasn't too much pain if I wasn't pressing on "the spot". When I'd go to the ER or Urgent care they of course always ask what your pain level is. My answer was usually something like - "Right now as I sit/lie here, it's not bad, maybe a dull ache level 1 or 2. But if you push on "the spot" I may involuntarily punch you". I hear of people having bend-over pain constantly during flareups so I always counted myself lucky that I didn't have that.
- Nausea & Diarrhea - never. Again, I hear others have different experiences so I counted myself lucky.
- Recovery - Easy and quick. Once on antibiotics it was 10-14 days later and I was good to go, back to normal.

So you may ask why have surgery? Well, first I'll note that I did get hospitalized once, early on at about episode 3, when I waited too long to go in. 2 or 3 nights on antibiotics via IV and a little longer recovery and I was good to go. But that was 1 of many. I remember a surgeon coming in my last day, with a bunch of med students in-tow; and saying well, this is your 3rd and it's 3 strikes-you're out. You should get surgery. And I was shocked. Obviously I put my head in the sand at that point and drove on for many more years like that. Second, my frequency was 14-16 months and with quick healing my plan was just to live with it, it's not bad enough to get surgery. But then I had a 2 month, low-grade, of what I'd call a smoldering episode, in early 2025 and also started a round of consults with GI docs and surgeons. That increased my knowledge of the disease and potential elevated risks of waiting for a surgery, and the fact that none of the docs were even close to saying you should wait and see. And finally, I had another 2-month smoldering episode in Nov-Dec - but that was when surgery was already scheduled. It wasn't part of the decision making process, but it definitely helped solidify my confidence in my decision and realization that I probably waited too long and was lucky to get it done electively.

I go through all of that for some perspective as I gauge how I'm going to consider if my sigmoidectomy "helped". Since my symptoms "weren't that bad", I don't think I have as high of an improvement bar to clear as many patients do because mine wasn't a horrible case to begin with. Now, I am confident that my improvement bar may have been raised if I waited for surgery for another 2, 3, 10 years because I may have and likely would have seen my symptoms and complications start to ramp up. I mean I already had 11-12 episodes, what happens when I reach 20?

That's the long answer, more than you likely wanted. But you never know who may read someone else's experience and learn from it. - Regards.

Fermented foods

@bc321 Something I left out from my 2025 timeline was that between the Jan-Feb and Nov-Dec smoldering episodes, I also had a 'traditional' flareup with infection in Sep25. The ER doc did a scan to rule out a perforation but did say that it was "angry enough" down there that he wanted to give me a bag of IV antibiotics before sending me home with augmentin pills. So my episode frequency was picking up dramatically as well. Again, the decision for surgery had already been made by Sep25, but it just further solidified my decision for the sigmoidectomy.

@samclembeau screenshot it and save to photos. If you can’t save it other ways! It works.

Screenshot is an option, but I was hoping people could save the PNG format. I am on a Chrombook laptop so I do not know if other platforms have the same options, but when I open the file and right-click on it, I get the options you see in the pop up window that is shown in the middle of the image I'm attaching here. Try this "right-click" option if you haven't already.