Diarrhea solutions in India! - What's your best bet?

For the benefit of everyone going to stay in the holy Dham I'd like to elicit here different opinions and experiences about the cure of common ailments, starting with diarrhea.

What is your most successful recipe to cure yourself of diarrhea in India (besides antibiotics of course)?

Betal nut: What kind of regimen do Indians do when they get it? I heard about Lemon and rice, yoghurt and rice. What's the most successful course? Any marvelous self-help procedures? Any magic pills to keep in stock?

Do you have special preventative measures, besides drinking only boiled water and avoiding raw food?

Everyone with some experience, please place your input.

Drinking boiled water is safe, but it gives me constipation. Avoid diarrhoea by avoiding roadhouses, restaurants, too spicy food or junkfood. The cure is boiled rice mixed with yoghurt. Avoid milk and spices when having diarrhoea.

It really depends on how bad the case is. Last time we were in Vraja, my wife got a serious case of diarrhea. We were on our way to Delhi, so we popped in for a visit at the famous Kaviraja, Dr. Triguna. He prescribed some anti-germ herbs for her. However, the painful diarrhea went on for a week or so. Time to take allopathic medicine...

Generally we've managed just fine with very light diet and some ayurvedic medicines in case of diarrhea, though. Those small black pills, whatever the name is.

And keep your mouth tightly shut while bathing. A good way to get a bad diarrhea, amoebas and God knows what else, is to not keep your mouth tightly shut and accidentally swallow a mouthful of water from any river or pond you may bathe in.

For all I know, bad water may be even more harmful than bad food.

Also, juice stands, whether fruit or sugarcane juice, are a common source of diarrhea. The man selling the juice generally handles the money and the ingredients without washing his hands.

I think it is so nice that you can order a bottle of ganga jal from somewhere like vedicresource.com and get some pure ganga water from the mouth of the ganges.
I took a bottle to the beach one time and after the kids and me all took a drink and put some on our heads, I poured the rest out into the ocean and chanted Hare Krishna. Now, Crescent Beach is a tirtha because it was sanctified by the Holy Ganges water.(teehee) I figure that the ganga water is so powerful that I liberated lots of fish and sharks that day.

If you can't go to the ganges, let the ganges come to you.

Dr Triguna has been a disappointment for me too on several occasions. His fame never helped the people I brought to him. Also in non-diarrhea related diseases. He reads every westerner as pitta-dosha, and his remedies are just common place stuff. Some at a high price. with a very serious disease I'd still go to see him though. The big disadvantage for travellers is that he mainly recommends aristas, fermented liquids, difficult to transport. Most are just common remedies, nothing special. His fame is kind of a hype to some degree. His remedy helped someone with a chronic back-problem though, surprisingly, and it was not an oil, it was a powder to be taken internally. I'd never take the bottled stuff though that he recommends.

My own cases of diarrhea are so long back and i seem to have adjusted more over the years in terms of bacterias. But I am still looking for the solution for others. When arriving through Delhi I visit the Ayurveda store at Paharganj Main Market, it is to the right at the main bifurcation a kilometer down from New Delhi Railway Station. I get a supply of ayurvedic pills there, whatever they recommend.

What is helpful too is to bring a Zapper, the Hulda Clark device. Western people living in India use that and it appears to bring remarkable results.

I find that frequent trips to India do not cause much of a problem for me. There was a time when I used to visit India every year in the summer and I did not suffer any adverse effects even when eating at outside retaurants/cafes where the hygiene is less than desirable.

Is it possible that frequent trips to India enables the body to get used to the climate and food, or is it just me?

Diarrohea, just take the pills. What was the name of those pills, I forgot. Starts with 'L' I think.

If you have no choice but to eat 'outside' food then perhaps a better bet is to find food that is being cooked on the spot. On my last trip to Calcutta I used to have a lunch of Channa Bhatura (channa and puris, yum!) at a local stall. Sometimes I used to have a snack called Pani Puri (small crispy inflated puris filled with a spicy rasam). I didn't suffer any adverse reaction when scoffing the Pani Puris even though my mother advised me that it was a bad idea. The reason is because the rasam in the crispy puris has a water base (hence 'pani') and that the vendor could have got this water from anywhere. My father informed me that the channa bhatura was more safer since it was being cooked right there on the spot. Cool food, I miss India.

You were damn lucky mate, or you got an iron stomach!

Hare Krishna!
In india you should eat lots of papaya and chew on the papaya seeds and swallow the seeds. They contain digestive enzymes that are very important and easily absorbed by the body. That's why there are so many papaya enzyme tablets in health food stores nowadays. But the best and most nutritious is to eat the seeds and fruit themselves.
However, if a woman is pregnanat or trying to be, don't eat papaya at all. It may cause miscarriage. The seeds were used in olden times as contraceptives. Papaya is one of the most nutritious foods in the world and especially good for digestive tract. If one is constipated it easily relieves that condition usually within minutes of eating on an empty stomach. A mauna diet of just papaya, both red and green (subji) serves as a great cleanser for the intestines, stomach, colon, etc. By eating the enzyme rich seeds ones stomach digestive tract becomes stronger which will help them be better able to digest otherwise "dangerous" foods of india which you are all discussing above - street food etc.

Better eat papaya in India not more than every other day, because they are extremely heating, otherwise you can get boils and other problems faster. The green ones in subji are okay. About the choice of papaya one looks for holes picked by a bird. Those that birds have chosen are best to eat.

No way, Advaitaji! I probably have one of the most fragile stomachs out there! My horrendous experiences with diarrohea and other things may cause you to laugh your head off! But then again, this is what I meant when I said that these things only happened on my 1st and 2nd trips to India. This leads me to think that regular trips to India will enable the body to get used to the climate, food, etc. And then I only need to take care of the really serious stuff such as malaria, etc.

Yes, papaya is a good natural alternative for constipation relief.

Ah ah dunno about that - I was living in India for 9 years continuously. I am having stomach problems even now, 23 years on. You got an iron stomach believe me.

Don't remind me of sugarcane juice vendors. I was so sick from drinking that stuff from a stand in Calcutta that I lost about thirty pounds. I could barely move I was so dehydrated. It was not a fun train ride back to Delhi, since I spent half of the trip in a train WC. Even Mexico is a place to pick up microbial agents. I have had some diarrhea on every trip down there. A good anti-diarrheal like Immodium does the trick every time. Of course you could always just wait it out, if you are so inclined.

Lomotil, that's it!

Are you sure you did not pick up some parasite? Richard Mende had some sort of amoebic dysentery and it stuck with him for many years.

Have you been checked out for ulcers? Most of them are bacterial and can be cleared up in a few weeks with antibiotics.

Is it acid reflux? I have been taking the proton pump inhibitors (Prilosec and Prevacid) for a number of years now for that condition, and I have been virtually symptom free. I just need to avoid things like hot chili peppers.

Jai Sr Krishna

Having been to India twice, I can say no matter what you do, you'll always get the no.2 Bug. You just have to see it through

Yes that is what some of the doctors here told me I had. The tests they made on me were ghastly.



U know which ones? Dont want to get these horrible tests again, though. I must say that through the years it has become a bit less. Cannot eat sour, hot or fried things too much and daal is also a problem.



Acid reflux? Proton pump inhibitors? Whats THAT?

Sounds like your symptoms might indicate GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease - a chronic condition in which the lower esophageal sphincter allows gastric acids to reflux into the esophagus, causing heartburn, acid indigestion, and possible injury to the esophageal lining), but I am not a doctor. Any good gastroentorologist should be able to diagnosis it. That little flap at the top of your stomach may not be closing properly, causing a backwash of stomach acid into your esophagus. Sometimes its referred to as hiatal hernia. Proton pump inhibitors are a class of drugs that reduce the production of stomach acid. Brand names are Prilosec, Nexium and Prevacid. They work far better than the other classes of drugs like antacids. There are also surgical procedures available, but I would rather pop one pill a day than go under the knife, at least for now.

If the doctor diagnoses it as 'Hiatushernia', and if you take the recommended pill regularly, you could try to switch from pill to a piece (6-8 cm) of raw cucumber instead of pill. My friend says it works.
yours Finn

Best cure for diarhea besides yogurt and rice which works pretty damn good in some cases that are not too severe is taking yogurt with psyillium husk powder which is commonly available all over the market place. It absorbs the acid in the stomach. It also acts as a cure for constipation if you take it with milk or cereal. It is an all natural remedy for any intestinal problem. It is available in american health food stores as well if you want to experiment. Another good one is Nutri-biotic which comes in a bottle with its main ingredient grapefruit seed extract. It also takes care of acid problem and is the strongest medicine I have ever taken without going to pharmaceutical route.
I would say it is wise to get accustomed to a little diarhea so that your body can take small amounts of sketchy water like I would eat off plates washed by common salty water supplies in Vrindavan. Pretty soon I was imune. But avoid all city water in Delhi because I got hardcore jaundice after drinking a glass of that stuff.

Kalki, it is good to see your input; the first-timer to India will appreciate to find this if in time of desperation he or she looks for sound advice.

Naturally, what is meant here is the severe type of diarreah. Personally I have never seen any cure with yoghurt-rice, often not even a positive effect. It is just a viable kind of diet if you have to eat something to stay alive and not lose strength altogether. (Another is anna-jal, rice-water). Adding some cooked green banana is also a possibility. I have seen that first-timers to India always have a severe problem at least once on their trip. After having been there for 15 or 20 times, the system seems to have adjusted quite well. Avoiding unpurified drinking-water is still a good advice. A reminder: about 90% of causes of tropical diseases are water-borne.

Always bring a bottle of GI Flora (Gastro-intestinal flora) with you from home. Although originally it has to be refrigerated, it may still have some effect when you want to re-build your intestinal flora after diarrhea. I also bring some locally made alternative medicine which includes charcoal. Charcoal with Ayurvedic herbs is available in India under the Himalaya-brand, the makers of LIV. 52 (that has won fame in Europe). Better buy supplies in Delhi, since in Vrindavan hardly anything is available. The stuff ayurvedic practitioners (I dislike to call them doctors as they call themselves in India) give, hardly ever works. Even Triguna's stuff did not make a difference. Of course, you can always try. Some people say Triguna cured their Jaundice. I do not know whether it is lack of care in other cases or just mere coincidence that what he prescribed in these cases, helped well.

If in Vrindavan and you have jaundice, look for a local witch doctor named Shyam Sakhi. He has the cure. He cured me from jaundice.

Also, this will sound crazy, but if you have dystentary or diarhea, eat ice cream. The cold will coat the stomach and eliminate the acid in the stomach or at least settle the acid before it starts up again. Or eat ice cubes or drink cold water. Or drink coconut water.

Once I felt like I was about to get the runs walking down the street in Vrindavan and I ran to the ice cream vendor, ate the ice cream and my tummy felt immediately settled.

Yeah, it's just that when you eat that ice cream or those ice cubes, you could have something far more serious than diarrhea in your stomach. Amoebas, for example, from the bad water.

Sounds more like prevention. But good to know, ice-cream worked for you.

Where is that Shyam Sakhi at?

It wasn't the green ice cream from one of the Siva emblazoned carts was it? They are renowned for making people feel better.

I'm pretty sure Shyam Sakhi is deceased but a disciple carries on the practice, which involves washing with mango bark, amongst other things. If you have jaundice, the water is supposed to run yellow as you wash.

I went to see him for dysentery and he laid me down, measured from my belly button to the bottom of each foot, surmised that one leg was shorter than the other so he started thumping the sole of my foot on the longer leg to even them up. He then wrapped the piece of thread around my big toe. He also did the "aura cleanse"--waving a bunch of peacock feathers over me several times and then hitting me with the hard end of the feathers. It was a lot of fun, but unfortunately did not help me.

If you're lucky, you'll also get to see his large Radha Krishna deities wearing sun glasses.

Sounds like a great therapy sesssion. Reminds one of the fact that "therapeuts" in Greece were a religious order.

Yes I think you saw the same guy. I got the same treatment with the mango bark and water. He also gave me cow urine to drink and after three liters my gastrointestinal disorder that was causing the jaundice was cured.

Maybe you can help Navadvip with the directions to this guy. I just remember I took a rickshaw sort of going towards bunki Bihari temple from Lohi bazaar.

I saw the deities but no sunglasses.

Perhaps it was a cloudy day.