Relationship between food and relapse

[LFC in Virginia]

I am now on my third week of tapering Vanco. I had a second relapse after taking two rounds of Flagyl. My question is this - While I'm on the antibiotic I don't have any d* no matter what I eat. However, shortly after I end the antibiotic series I get it to the extreme like at the beginning. What is the connection between the food I eat and the relapses?

[Nancy1]

My GI doc told me there was no connection between what I ate and relapses, that if I was going to relapse I would, no matter what. I'm not sure if that's true, though. He also said I could eat whatever I wanted, and that was definitely not true for me.

Whenever I started having bad D, I went back to the BRAT diet. Then I added new foods very slowly.

[trob25]

My GI told me, months after C-Diff, not right after, to go on a high fiber low fat diet. Right after C-Diff I was still on a more careful BRAT style diet, rice, bananas, toast, chicken if I had any meat etc.

For my PI-IBS, I was told higher fiber low fat would help keep issues at a minimum and I think it has worked. If I eat pizza or something, I usually get D but if I stick to healthy food, I do better for longer periods of time. However, eating lots of fiber with active C-Diff is probably not a great idea.

[Hua Kul]

The cdiff bacteria don't feed off of anything we put in our stomachs, their food source is our gut wall cells. The toxins produced by the bacteria break open our cells and the bacteria feed off the cell contents.

--Hua Kul

[Hua Kul]

LFC in Virginia, the reason you get the D right after stopping flagyl is because it's the antibiotic that is keeping down the bacteria. The thing that seems to keep it down naturally is a full complement of normal gut flora. From what I've read there are up to 600 different bacteria in our colons at any one time. Another study said about 6,000 different bacteria have been identified as living in human guts. If the flagyl is killing off good bacteria then when you stop it there is nothing to inhibit the cdiff. That's why fecal infusions are so effective, they immediately replace hundreds of different bacteria.

Hua Kul

[LindaSp]

My daughter thought oatmeal was very helpful and bought everything at Whole Foods and actually ended up eating a very healthy diet, not as much refined sugar, caffeine etc...It certainly could not hurt.

Best wishes. It took her a long Vanco taper after 2 rounds of Flagyl, but she got better!! I remember someone stating quite simply that the goal should be to get off antibiotics period. That is the best way to restore the flora we need to keep things balanced.

[Kathy George]

I really don't think it's a relationship with the food you eat. Some of else of C-Diff Resistant. I am one of them, and after being on medications for 4 months which worked while I was on them, but ceased working when I was off, I decided to do the home infusion therapy which worked for me. It was created by Dr. Borody from Australia and has a 97% success rate. Good luck to you.