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Saturday, December 29, 2012

Stomach Flu Symptoms - Ugly Truth


Stomach flu symptoms appearance depends on incubation period of the cause, which further on depends on type of cause and immune system of infected person. However, once you get infected, in a short time you'll start experiencing symptoms, and it can happen in several hours after infection or after ten days in some cases. Once the bug has entered your body, its primary destination is your gastrointestinal tract, and when it reach there, it star a process of multiplying and reproducing itself, which will certainly cause you a nightmare for a couple of days.

stomach flu symptoms
Symptoms of stomach flu are an terrible experience and will bring a great suffer upon you. As I already mention in previous posts, there are several types of causes for stomach flu and that most known are viral. After them comes bacterial and parasitical. What is in common for all of these three types of causes are, symptoms!

No matter what cause stomach flu, symptoms are mostly the same. In general there are several symptoms of which you'll get some for sure. It is an luck if you have only one of them, and not several of them at the same time.

Stomach flu symptoms are: appetite loss, diarrhea, fatigue, mild fever, muscle aches, nausea, stomach cramps and chills, vomiting. In cases of mild symptoms, after only one day you can get relief from symptoms and experience only some of this symptoms. However, you should take care about nutrition and avoid dairy products, together with solid food, and get yourself on liquid diet. In other, more serious cases, symptoms can take up to ten days, and you must have a proper nutrition to get better! Liquid diet is a must, and light food after first two days until you fully recover from symptoms.

If you experience stomach flu symptoms such are vomiting and diarrhea, for more than several days, you must visit your doctor and sick for special medical treatment. The possibility of dehydration are high, and you might be hospitalized and took under infusion for several days.

Patients who suffer from frequent diarrhea and frequent vomiting at the same time, are exposed to high risk of dehydration because they lose huge amount of body liquids, and are unable to replace it by intake of liquids. Dehydration should be taken very seriously since our body is in huge percent built out of liquids. Having this in mind, much serious disorders can happen if liquids are not replaced.

Experiencing only diarrhea is a most common situation of suffering from stomach flu symptoms. Frequent watery stools are frequent in first day or two and slowly decrease by days passing. Your stomach is very sensitive in this period of time, and you have to get yourself on liquid diet until you get better and frequency of diarrhea slowly decreases, then you can start your treatment with light food. If this doesn't happen, and after several days you still have frequent diarrhea you should visit your doctor!

Do not take medicines for diarrhea because they will only worsen the situation, not to mention that you can experience side effects! Especially do not do this without consultation with your doctor! Regular medications for diarrhea are not helpful with this illness!

I found part of this information on this site, which I found very useful in understanding stomach flu symptoms. You can find there some more information, I dedicated this post mainly to understanding diarrhea and vomiting, since I suffered from them and because of they are the most common symptoms.

Hope I helped with the information and I hope you'll get better soon!

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Stomach Flu - What to Eat!?


Today I got my self almost recoverd at all, symptoms are almost gone, and I can now function pretty normally. I would like to write a brief note about food consuming during stomach flu. 

Well, when you are experiencing nausea or vomiting, and you have fever, food is the last thing you are thinking about, and even thinking about it can make you feel more worst, but you have to eat anyway. One thing is for sure, you can't eat correctly, rather you have to take care on what you are taking in. Your stomach now need special treatment and you have to take care about food you are eating, in order to help your stomach get better and heal. Light food is a must and hard food is necessary to avoid at all. Here are some advice based on my experience.

Stomach Flu - What to eat
Stomach Flu - Bananas and dry toast are good combination.
Firstly I would like to point on food and drinks you must avoid if you want to get any better. Fatty and spicy food, should be forgotten for even a few days after you relief from stomach flu symptoms and not to mention during symptoms. Milk and cheese, in fact, all diary products can make your symptoms go wild, especially diarrhea. Sweets and super-sweet foods, forget them for a several days. Do not drink coffee or soda, or consume alcohol. This is an excellent opportunity to quit smoking, since you must quit it for several days, you can use the chance to relief from this bad habit..

In the first 24 hours, you must put your self on a diet with clear liquids! You are allowed to eat gelatin without sugar, and to take water. Water should not been taken in big doses, rather you should take it in small doses and more often. Apple juice mixed with water together with teas are recommended. After first 24 hours you can start with bland foods.

When you survive first 24 hours you can add bland foods to your meals. This food should be soft and easy for your digestion. Fruits should be avoided, but bananas are recommended, especially in combination with dry toast. I have tried with chicken meat, but other types of meat are forbidden for consume. Rice, pasta, apple sauce, crackers are also good for your belly in this condition. Stick with bland diet and in several days you'll get much better! Once your stomach get better, slowly add other types of food in your nutrition.

Give your stomach a special treatment, from one to five days period of time that well treated stomach flu should least, and you'll get better soon. If you don't treat it the way it should be treated, you'll suffer from symptoms much longer.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Stomach Flu - Treatment With Ginger


 Treating Stomach Flu Symptoms With Ginger
Treating Stomach Flu Symptoms With Ginger
I did some research on how to treat stomach flu with home remedies, and I found that many people talk about healing effects of ginger, so I decided to collect some tips in this post.

Today I feel much better and stomach flu symptoms are repeating rarer and rarer. However, I still suffer from frequent diarrhea and for me it looks like it's an never-ending nightmare.

Many people on the web talks about miraculous effects of ginger in treating stomach flu symptoms and here are several tips I had collected with different approaches in using it.


  1. You can clean the ginger and suck the juice from it and then swallow, after that take very few small bites of meat. These may have a disgusting taste and can be very hard to swallow, but according to people who did it and their mitigation of symptoms, you should try it.
  2. If you think that previous method is to disgusting, you have my vote. you can go to local pharmacy shop, buy some empty capsules fill them with grated ginger and make your own ginger pills which are much easier to be swallowed since they doesn't leave any awful taste in your mouth.
  3. Make a ginger bug: this is one more way but it looks to ambitious from my point of view and I think need much more effort to get done, but can help a lot since this is even more probiotics. Easily find this method by searching for it on google


If try any of these methods, please leave your feedback in comment section. I will try with ginger pills and will post back my experience.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

What is Stomach Flu? - Basic Information


What is stomach flu?


With no particular virus that affects digestive system, stomach flu got its name to describe a state of digestive system under attack of any viral illness, and not to be classified as influenza. Now, you can make conclusion that this is, actually, an stomach infection caused by a virus; an inflammation of the gastro intestinal tract due to a viruses or in some cases bacteria or parasites.

What this virus do is, not just affecting the stomach, than it attacks the small intestine too and makes a person affected with the virus suffer from many well known symptoms.

As any other illness, stomach flu also has many names; so you can hear different phrases such are:
-stomach virus,
-gastroenteritis or a
-gastric flu,
but don't get confused with these, they all refer to the same sickness.


What are potential carriers?


We already mention that stomach flu is in most cases caused viral and bacterial, but the question is how this get in your body and organs!? 


Well the answer is really simple, those viruses, bacteria, parasites and toxins are usually brought by contaminated food or water. In some other cases, which are not rare at all, especially nowadays, diets, food allergies and medications can lead to gastroenteritis.

I would especially like to highlight several other ways of getting stomach flu, and would like you to consider it with special attention. Beside those factors above, you should be especially aware that gastroenteritis may be brought to your body from such a bizarre situations as is shaking hands with infected person and consuming food without previous washing hands; kisses with infected persons are even more dangerous since your respiratory organs are the front doors for viruses, not to mention exchange of fluids; and on the and I think you already get it yourself, but let's mention it too, sharing food and utensils with infected person, is potentially more dangerous than anything above.
Be aware that if your family members are sick, you should not get to close to them as you can get sick too.


What causes stomach flu?


There are many viruses and bacteria's which cause gastric flu. At this moment we will just count them, because we will take a special attention on all of them one by one in future posts.

Viral enemies are named:
  • Adenoviru, 
  • Astroviruss, 
  • Norovirus, 
  • Rotavirus and
  • Sapovirus.

Bacterial enemies are named:

  • Aeromonas,
  • Bbacillus,
  • Listeria,
  • Plesiomonas,
  • Salmonella, 
  • Shigella,
  • Staphylococcus,
  • Vibrio and
  • Yersinia.

Parasitic enemies are named:

  • Cryptosporidium,
  • Entamoeba and
  • Giardia. 

In some other cases food allergies, antibiotics, medication and  toxins, can cause gastroenteritis and we will mention them in future posts as well.

The time of incubation of virus, bacteria or parasite can take much longer before any gastroenteritis symptoms occur. The person become a patient once he or she get transferred infections from infected person our other source. Depending on the immune system, the infection will spread and soon the symptoms will appear. That  is the point when all trouble begins.


What are stomach flu symptoms?



When symptoms of stomach flu suddenly appear, this means that causer has done the job, and person begin to suffer from various symptoms. Well, these symptoms are so strong that they are considered as illness itself. Since all symptoms are classified as specific disease, we will pay more attention on each one of them and write more about them in future posts. Here we will just count them as well and letter on we will decompose each problem individually.

So the most common stomach flu symptoms are:

  • appetite loss
  • diarrhea,
  • fatigue
  • mild fever,
  • muscle aches
  • nausea,
  • stomach cramps and chills,
  • vomiting.

As you can see, more or less, all these symptoms are illnesses itself. Considered like that, they all can be triggered because of some other reasons.
Having this in mind, infected person and his or hers doctor must go through the series of laboratory tests to confirm if stomach flu is in case before proceeding to treatment.


Stomach flu treatment


Even if we all would be the most happiest with prescribed medication, in most cases medications are out of use. The most important factor in fight with stomach flu is immune system. While body can dehydrate because of vomiting, it is important to take water, but only in small doses. No solid food should not be used while the symptoms are in the worst phases. When patients symptoms improve, the patient can eat soft bland food. More about diet I will write in future articles.


As you can see, this is an very serious illness and you should never treat it yourself. Respect your doctors profession, they has the best words to prescribe us in such a bed health condition.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Welcome To My Stomach Flu Diary



Hi dear visitor, first of all, I have to thank you for visiting My Stomach Flu Diary blog.

Being on this blog is not as good as I would like it to be, at least because you are not brought here by any hobbies neither entertaining reason, however, being on this blog can make you feel better in the way you realize you are not alone with your problem. In the matter of fact, this is the main reason why I'm here and why I'm blogging about stomach flu - no one should suffer alone in any disease.

I am writing these lines for myself, I am writing them to remind me on my struggle, but I am writing them for you too, to realize that your suffering is not lonely. We are both sufferers of  the same illness and we are able to motivate itch other by sharing our individual experiences and the ways we fight back.

The purpose of sentences between  the lines of this blog is to make you feel better and help get improvement in your health condition. Furthermore, I will do my best to inform you with all present information on our illness without any hesitation.

Between the lines of my diary you're be able to find all information that are closely related to stomach flu. If you are not familiar with these illness I will make sure to give you wright inputs on what is stomach flu, gastric flu, gastroenteritis, what cause them, what are symptoms and treatment. Also I'll provide you with info about medications used to treat it, and their side effects.

Before you proceed with reading my blog, please take good care that you SHOULD NOT do anything on your own hand to treat the stomach flu. Me and you, we are just the same persons with the same illness, except that I am gathering the information about it and making them public, and you are reading them. 

My words SHOULD NOT be used instead of your medical health provider professional advice based on your individual state of the disease. 

Please if you are experiencing these problems, make sure to visit your doctor as soon as possible! This blog is only for informative purpose and should not be used in any other way.

Once again thank you for your visit. I wish you all I wish to myself, get health and keep health.
Think about yourself before you get any disease, the prevention is far now the best treatment, the prevention supported by discipline.

Cheers, Alannia.