After having my gall bladder removed in July, I immediately began having diarrhea. It has now been three months and I continue to have diarrhea daily, regardless of what I eat. I have had a colonoscopy with normal results.
I have been told that this is a pretty common after-effect of the surgery, but had I known this, I would have thought twice.
I wondered if anyone who is experiencing this has found a remedy or something to minimize the diarrhea? The doc suggested fibre 3x a day, but that doesn't work either. I thought, perhaps, there were some herbal supplements that would help.
I had my gallbladder out in April and have had issues with diarrhea also. My surgeon at first prescribed me Welchol to take for the diarrhea, but I had no improvement with it. So my GI wrote me a script for Cholestrymine (Questran) a couple of weeks ago, and it helps somewhat...I still go but not as much. Questran is a cholesterol lowering medication that helps to bind up bile salts, thus reducing post-cholecystectomy diarrhea. It comes in a powder and you mix it up with water and drink it. I take it three times a day, before meals. Hope this may have helped you.
Megan is right you have what is known as bile salt diarrhea-- Questran is the powder form that works to help the very loose stools -- in a person with a gallbladder it has a side effect of constipation.
The med also comes in a pill form-- Colisted.
Many people are bothered with this type diarrhea after having GB removed-- 20% or so.
Bile that use to be controlled by your GB is now un-controlled and it had a toxic type affect on the colon-- producing diarrhea.
