What is diarrhea?
Diarrhea is loose and frequent bowel movements. Diarrhea can be caused by a virus or bacteria in your child’s intestines.
- Mild diarrhea is when you child has a few loose stools
- When the bowel movements are watery and frequent, diarrhea is severe
- Diarrhea is one of the most frequent reasons for patients visiting our office
- The vast majority of all episodes are caused by viruses which require no treatment
- Most viruses last only a few days, however, certain viruses can last as long as two weeks
Treatment
- We usually recommend continuing a regular diet (if not vomiting) with a slight increase in fluid intake
- Infants: Formula or breast milk, give more than normal to keep your child hydrated. For formula fed babies you may need soy formulas if the diarrhea is severe or doesn’t improve in 3 days. Do not add extra water to the breast milk or formula.
- If your baby is over 4 months you may give rice cereal, strained carrots, strained bananas, and mashed potatoes, if your child has previously eaten these solids
- Children over 1 year of age: You may give them milk and water. Give solid foods such as dried cereal, saltine crackers, yogurt, oatmeal, bread, noodles mashed potatoes, carrots, applesauce and bananas.
- Avoid sugar
- Avoid dairy except yogurt
- Try to avoid juices and beverages containing sugar such as apple juice, Gatorade, Powerade, etc. as they may worsen the diarrhea
- You may give probiotics such as Culturelle.
- You may give yogurt but watch out for the sugar content in the yogurt as sugar may worsen the diarrhea.
Things to Watch For:
- Diarrhea associated with blood
- Diarrhea associated with fever
- Diarrhea after recent travel outside the US
- Excessive diarrhea causing signs of dehydration (See signs of dehydration under Vomiting article)
- The office should be contacted if diarrhea lasts longer than 7 days. In general, we will send stool studies for bloody diarrhea or diarrhea that has lasted for 7 days.
We do not recommend giving any medications to stop the diarrhea (like Imodium, etc.)