Diarrhea from NOT eating?

[Deleted]

I am 8.5 years out.

I have been taking a small amount of Adderall in the AM for about a year. Interestingly, I seem to be getting MORE sensitive to it over time, and have cut back from 15 mg to 5 mg to avoid jitteriness.

But it works pretty well as suppressing my appetite, at least for the first 6-8 hours of the day. I am pretty regular about eating a large, protein-based breakfast of a couple of eggs with either bacon or cooked into a cheese-heavy omelet. But I don't get hungry most days for a while after that.

I have noticed that on days where I don't eat for 4-6 hours or so, I often get crampy acidy diarrhea in the middle of the day. It is worse on the occasional day when I can't eat anything at all (blood work, colonoscopy, e.g.). Does anyone else have this problem?

I suspect (but I can't be sure) that when I don't eat, the bile trickles down the biliopancreatic limb and DOESN'T meet up with food, and enters my colon without being bound to anything. And this acidic bile makes my colon unhappy, and the result is acidy diarrhea.

Any other theories?

I guess I just need to eat more often, even when I don't really feel hungry.

[anna]

Hi Diana! I get really nauseous when I don't eat for several hours, but no diarrhea. I think your theory makes a lot of sense though. Maybe you should get in the habit of taking an antacid a couple times a day.

[Dudette]

Diana,

I took Dexedrine and/or Adderall prior to my DS. You're correct, it's great for controlling appetite. It also helps with energy level, focus and concentration. While using it I was able to keep my weight under control without much effort. However the side affects weren't so hot. I also got the jitters and even developed an eye tick after being on it for a few years. Very weird. It also exacerbated my high blood pressure and did me no favors when it came to my chronic insomnia.

I decided to kick the ADD meds to the curb after more than 8 years of taking them on and off. Of course, I then put on 40 lbs in the following 18 months. Boy that sucked! That's when I ended up getting my DS.

I was actually thinking about calling my doctor last week and getting a new prescription for Dexedrine... not for the appetite suppressant qualities since I'm not very hungry or eating much these days, but for the energy boost and focus it provides. I could really use some of that at this point to amp up my activity level and take better advantage of the rapid weight loss phase I'm in now. Then I thought about the side affects and I'm not so sure I want to jump back on that merry-go-round again.

Which brings me to my point... diarrhea. Yup. It's a well known side affect of both Adderall and Dexedrine. Anyway, as someone who has taken that stuff in the past I can tell you that I do question how good it is for us in the long run... esp. with our reconfigured intestines. Just my two cents. Hope you get the diarrhea thing figured out. Keep us posted on that. I am still on the fence on calling my doctor to get back on it again. I think I'll wait and see.

[supershae]

I get extremely nauseous if I go too long without eating!! It's awful! My stomach cramps up and I feel like I"m going to have diarrhea or vomit. Almost immediately it goes away after I eat something!

[Deleted]

Meh, it happened again today!

I arrived in VA very late last night. The plane landed at about 11, but it seemed like it landed in Louden County - the newly configured airport required walking at least 1/2 mile plus up and down escalators. And then they had us waiting at the wrong baggage carousel - there was another wasted 1/2 hour. And then the Hertz bus didn't come right away. And then my rental car wasn't on my Gold Card and I had to wait to check in while this poor ESL kid on the Saturday 1 AM shift tried to figure out how to fix it. And then the long drive (about 35 miles?) from the airport to Arlington. And then I got to the grocery store to find it was closed, so had to shop at the CVS for some food for the hotel room. And had to get my luggage and groceries out of the car and upstairs, and put the car in my work parking lot.

So I ended up going to sleep anout 3:30 AM local time.

I woke up about 9 AM, and since I had bought coffee and creamer and milk, decided to not go down for breakfast right away. By the time I was ready to go down, I realized I had miscalculated, and breakfast was over. So I ate a frozen chimichanga I had bought, minus some of the wrapper (DS pickings were slim at CVS at 1 AM!)

By the time I got showered and dressed, and got down to Springfield to pick up my stepdaughter and her baby and then drove up to a Greek restaurant in McLean I wanted to take them to for lunch AND then realized it wasn't open during the day on Sunday, and found another Greek restaurant, it was already about 1:30 by the time I we got to the restaurant. I had to run to the bathroom, and OMG what happened in there! The courtesy flush and Ozium (which I normally don't carry with me, because I never have to go outside the house, but I had my purse with me for the trip, and had tucked the Ozium in just in case) saved me, but just barely.

I had gone poop 3 times in the morning before I left the hotel. I could not believe the volume that came out of me at the restaurant! It was way more than a chimichanga's worth.

I will try to be more regular about my eating on this trip. I bought a box of pulled pork (the Safeway brand is really quite nice, with very little BBQ sauce and very moist) and yoghurt for snacks during the day.

I do not like poop surprises.

[bb212]

I have noticed that the more I eat, the fewer bathroom breaks I need to take- unless I eat something with a lot of fiber like bran flakes (lesson learned!). Strangely no matter how little or how much I eat I noticed the volume that comes out is INSANE- almost as if the food in my pipes expands threefold. I haven't figured out why, it's one of those little DS mysteries for the time being.

I haven't been on adderall for many years, but I was thinking of going back on it. I didn't know that the runs was a side effect! That's something for me to think about because I was considering taking it again. I've been working on a lot of web programming recently- which is detail oriented, and therefore an ADDers worst nightmare- and work is suffering a little bit. Have any of you been effected by the adderall shortage?

[Deleted]

And...it's 3:50 am and guess why I'm up and reading! I'm going to go eat something and go back to bed. (I figured it might be any of the stuff I'm taking for the pulled muscle...but it's probably because it knocks me out and I SLEEP for hours at a time. Duh.)