What medicine should be taken to treat digestive disorders?

There is no uniform medication for digestive disorders. It all depends on your specific symptoms and triggers. Taking medication randomly may make the disorder worse.

Last week, a young girl who works in Internet operations came to me and said that her chest felt tight after eating, and she occasionally suffered from acid reflux. She had been taking stomach-stimulating and digestion tablets at home for almost a week, but they had no effect at all. After careful questioning, I found out that she worked overtime until 10 o'clock every day, and ate heavy takeout for late-night snacks. After checking, there was no organic problem, but excessive gastric acid secretion and insufficient gastric motility. I prescribed some omeprazole with mosapride, and told her not to eat too much oil at night. After three days, she came back and reported that she felt much better.

Speaking of which, I have to mention the most common pitfall of probiotics. Nowadays, it is said all over the Internet that probiotics can cure all digestive problems, and some people drink sugary probiotic drinks every day. This is actually quite controversial. Clinically, we will only prescribe probiotics with medicinal brands to patients with clear intestinal flora disorders, such as those who have diarrhea after taking antibiotics for a long time, or those who are recovering from intestinal surgery. Clostridium butyricum and Bifidobacterium are effective. Ordinary probiotic drinks contain more sugar than bacteria, and drinking them will cause flatulence. Moreover, the current attitude of the academic community towards long-term supplementation of probiotics is not uniform. Some experts believe that externally supplemented flora cannot colonize the intestines for a long time, and it is useless to take them. Some studies say that long-term use will make your own intestines dependent, and you will be too lazy to breed beneficial bacteria on your own, so there is really no need to buy hundreds of dollars of probiotics for nothing.

There are also many people who rush to take antibiotics when they have diarrhea. This is also a common misunderstanding. A while ago, a college student went out to eat skewers and had diarrhea for two days. He took levofloxacin for three days, which made the diarrhea even worse. When he checked his stool, there was no bacterial infection at all. It was just that eating too spicy and oily food had irritated the intestines. He was prescribed some montmorillonite powder to temporarily stop diarrhea, and he took medicinal probiotics for two days. He was completely cured soon. The antibiotics were useless, and they also killed most of the normal flora in the intestines, which delayed the recovery time.

If you just occasionally overeat and feel full, or if you eat something too greasy and cannot be digested, then just take some Jianweixiaoshi tablets or hawthorn pills. The sweet and sour ones have no side effects, so there is no need to make a fuss about taking powerful stomach medicines. If you often get stomachaches or diarrhea when you are nervous, and there is no problem after a colonoscopy, it is most likely irritable bowel syndrome. If it does not affect your life, you don’t need to take medicine at all. I once met a child who took the college entrance examination. He had diarrhea two or three times before each mock test. I told him not to touch the ice before the test. If he felt uncomfortable, he took half a tablet of pinaverium bromide to relieve spasm, which is much more effective than antidiarrheal drugs.

As for traditional Chinese medicine or Western medicine, it all depends on personal acceptance. There is no absolute good or bad. Among the patients I have come into contact with, there are some who have been cured of chronic stomach bloating after taking Xiangsha Liujun Pills for more than half a month, and some who found the effects were too slow and soon relieved themselves by using gastric motility drugs. As long as they are prescribed by regular hospitals or purchased from regular pharmacies, they will be effective if the symptoms are corrected. Don't believe in the three-no stomach nourishing powder on the Internet that claims to be amazing.

To be honest, I stayed up late for a month working on a project two years ago, and I also suffered from digestive disorders. I felt dizzy when I ate something cold. I didn’t take any medicine at that time, so I replaced the two cups of iced coffee a day with warm honey water. I ate less than two bites at night and took 10 minutes a day to go downstairs for a walk. I recovered on my own in less than two weeks. Digestive disorders are basically a matter of taking 70% nourishment and 30% cure. If you stay up late every day eating skewers and drinking cold beer while taking conditioning medicine, no medicine will be of any use.