Pill form treatment for bile acid malabsorption?

[agamemnus]

As I posted here,

For someone with surgery to their small intestine and who now has bile acid malabsorption, can anyone advise as to the best pill-form medicine to control diarrhea, for whom cholestyramine already works very well? (to complement Imodium once-a-day).

Welchol seems like it doesn't work very well, or maybe there is a specific amount of time one must wait before eating, or a specific time period that it actually works during afterwards?

Maybe there is an expiration date on the pills? (do they last more than a year?)

 

[ronroush7]

I don't know from personal experience but have you tried Questran?

 

[Scipio]

Ron - Questran and cholestyramine are the same thing.

 

[ronroush7]

Sorry

 

[Scipio]

Hey, that's okay. No harm, no foul. We're all here to help.

 

[agamemnus]

I guess it's just Welchol and cholestyramine then. I heard back from my doc and he said it's better if the Welchol is taken regularly. Well, let's try it. Maybe I can ease into it by taking both? Ugh.

 

[MissLeopard83]

As I posted here,

For someone with surgery to their small intestine and who now has bile acid malabsorption, can anyone advise as to the best pill-form medicine to control diarrhea, for whom cholestyramine already works very well? (to complement Imodium once-a-day).

Welchol seems like it doesn't work very well, or maybe there is a specific amount of time one must wait before eating, or a specific time period that it actually works during afterwards?

Maybe there is an expiration date on the pills? (do they last more than a year?)

Just out of curiosity, how were you diagnosed with bile acid malabsorption? Is there a test for it? I ask because, sometimes when I have D, it's highly acidic and causes really bad hemorrhoids. I was diagnosed with internal hemorrhoids when I had my colonoscopy 2 days ago. My gallbladder is functioning normally at 50% with no stones, but I wonder if there is something else going on. I'm currently waiting for my scope biopsy results. Thanks.

 

[agamemnus]

It's quite mechanistic. They sometimes cut that part out when they do surgeries like that (depending on where they cut)... without cholestyramine, diarrhea, but with it, no diarrhea. It's typically one of the first things to go in the small intestine.

Edit: the test would probably be the diarrhea you get and just the lack of that part of small intestine, as well as a B12 deficiency...