How long does it take to recover from digestive disorders

In fact, there is no unified standard answer. I have seen too many examples when I help patients with dietary guidance in outpatient clinics. It is just a mild disorder caused by eating unclean barbecue for three days. After adjusting the diet and taking some probiotics, there are many people who are completely back to normal in about two weeks. But if you have three irregular meals all year round, There are many chronic functional disorders caused by regularity and long-term anxiety. After treatment for more than half a year, there are many cases where the disorder still occurs from time to time. Currently, there is no clear unified clinical definition of recovery period. The general consensus is that mild symptoms usually resolve in 2 to 4 weeks. Chronic disorders with a duration of more than half a year may require 3 to 6 months or even longer follow-up adjustments.

I recently treated a little girl who was a sophomore. In order to catch up with the fat loss progress in the summer, she only ate boiled vegetables for three months, and even secretly induced vomiting several times. Later, whenever she ate something with oil, she would feel bloated and painful, and her stomach often growled so loudly that she was embarrassed in the classroom. At first, she bought several stomach medicines and took them for almost a month, but they didn't work. I didn't prescribe any complicated medicines for her when she came here. After taking the medicine, I asked her to adjust her diet back to normal first, add a spoonful of steamed lean meat or eggs to each meal, avoid ice drinks, spend 10 minutes rubbing her belly in a clockwise direction before going to bed every day, and do not need to diet deliberately. She persisted obediently for less than three weeks, and the flatulence basically disappeared. Later, she maintained a regular diet for more than two months, and now she occasionally goes out to eat hot pot and drink iced milk tea with friends without doing it again.

Of course, not everyone can recover so quickly. Last month, a young man who works in Internet operations came for a follow-up consultation. He stayed up late all the time to catch up on projects. As soon as the big version came online, he suffered from stomachache and diarrhea. Even after gastroscopy and colonoscopy, there was no problem. It is a typical brain-gut axis disorder. When he gets nervous, his stomach and intestines will get angry. , he himself knows that he should be less anxious, but due to the nature of his work, he has to stay up all night to catch up on the progress from time to time. It has been almost four months since he adjusted, and he can be completely comfortable during the two weeks of annual leave. However, it is still easy to make mistakes when he is busy. This kind of situation involves multiple triggers of emotions and living habits, and the recovery period is unpredictable.

Nowadays, many people hold different views. They believe that as long as you take the right specific medicine, it can be completely cured in a week or two. There are also many clinicians who believe that the essence of digestive disorders is "three-thirds of cure and seven-cent nourishment." Drugs can at most relieve uncomfortable symptoms such as acid reflux and diarrhea in the acute phase. If you have been ruining your intestines and stomach for several years, it is unrealistic to expect it to be restored to its original state in a few days. I have also seen many people feel comfortable after just a week of treatment, and then turn around and eat and drink. As a result, the relapse becomes chronic, and it takes longer for treatment.

Speaking of the intestines and stomach, it is actually similar to that of a child of a few years old. Feed it warm, soft and easy-to-digest food, don’t always stuff it with spicy ice to stimulate it, and don’t torture it by starving it for a meal. When it feels good, it will naturally return to normal state. If you always focus on "when will it be better" and worry about it, anxiety will easily affect the regulation of the brain-gut axis and slow down the progress of recovery.