# New excruciating pain; could antispasmodics be the cause?



## FlyingMandarine (Apr 29, 2015)

Hi everyone! Apologies for the long post, but I feel I should be somewhat exhaustive given the particular accident I went through.

A little background information first: I'm a 29-year-old male who has had what is believed to be IBS-D for about 14/15years. Lots of doctor/gastroenterologist visits throughout the year yielded no result at all; none of the medication I was subjected to over the years had any positive effects. That was over ten years ago, and then I just gave up until recently. My 'only' symptoms are diarrhea and a feeling of incomplete evacuation along with going to the bathroom between three and seven times the day on bad days -- curiously, I used to have bad stomachache too when I was younger, but it stopped at the end of my teenage years. I also have red rashes on my body, which I feel I need to mention even though I don't think it's related.

A few months ago, I tried Imodium and, wouldn't you believe it? It worked! It felt like a dream come true, because I was told all my life that "X medication should work" and they never did. This one did the trick, though: after two, maximum three pills, I would be symptoms-free for about three to four days (the maximum recommended dosage being 6 pills in 48 hours, so I wasn't anywhere close to overdosing). Then diarrhea would come back, I would take a pill, it wouldn't get better, would take a second pill, and I was set for another few days.

About two months after having started treatment, one day my stomach felt strange; it didn't 'hurt' per se, but it was an unknown feeling. I decided I should perhaps stop taking Imodium for a bit, but I didn't need to anyway because I had been symptoms-free for a few days already until six days after that strange feeling. I woke up at night with a pain that was enough to make me empathize with all those victims in the Alien movies. I had to go to the clinic in the morning, where I was prescribed Omeprazole. I don't know it that's what helped or not, but in any case, about a day after, the pain started to decrease in intensity. At first, I thought it might have been food poisoning (I had had some hummus that I thought looked suspicious on the evening before the pain started; in retrospect, I don't think it was related at all) but my doctor advised me to stop taking Imodium as it's only meant, she said, as a short-term treatment. She prescribed Mebeverine, another antispasmodics, telling me it should be better and I would be able to use it long-term.

I started taking Mebeverine -- at first, it did nothing, but it seems that as weeks went by, my IBS-D symptoms started to fade once again. However, after about a month of treatment (and another hummus tin the same day... hopefully that's not related, I love hummus!), a similar thing happened: weird sensation in the stomach (while being ill with perhaps a virus that was around, but not sure if related), and about a week later, excruciating pain. This time, the pain wasn't so much spread out, and more focused on a specific point on my left side. Still, as a whole, it felt like the same thing that had happened with Imodium -- the pain was so bad I ended up at the hospital, but once again only got prescribed Omeprazole. I'll be undergoing more tests soon -- namely, a stool test and an endoscopy.

I'll be so very grateful if you could give me pointers, and more specifically answer the following questions if you do know the answers:

-Is it possible those two antispasmodics were the cause of those abominable stomach pains? I do not want under any circumstance to have to experience them again -- I'd rather live with IBS-D for the rest of my life, and that's saying a lot! A website ( http://factmed.com/study-IMODIUM-causing-GASTRITIS.php ) lists 1.3% of patients taking Imodium ending up with gastritis as a side-effect, but I can't find much else on the Web about a possible link between the two.

-I've heard a lot about peppermint oil and the studies done on it; however, from what I read, it is also an antispasmodic. If Imodium and Mebeverine really did cause those two events, does it then make sense to consider that medicine such as Colpermin would have the same serious side-effect?

Thank you very kindly for everyone who took the time to read and will take a few minutes to answer.


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## Oceangirl (Apr 6, 2014)

I really can't say you should ask your doctor. I would stay on the acid pills daily and see if you improve. Maybe switch to Pepto Bismo.


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## jaumeb (Sep 1, 2014)

I hope that you find answers and share them with us ...


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## Lorelei56 (Apr 7, 2014)

I tried peppermint oil capsules and oddly enough, they made my symptoms a lot worse. Any kind of oil is a gamble with my gut. Peppermint Tums help, though.


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## Erin5678 (Apr 18, 2015)

Hi flying mandarine. I am sorry to feel about your sufferings with ibs it can be so debilitating. I did have a question regarding your use of Imodium and the antispasmodics. I know that you normally suffer from d with ibs but did you feel constipated during the times when you had severe left side pain? I have ibs a with alternating c and d. I find that while Imodium helps with d it can make me very constipated. I usually get severe lower left abdominal pain because I am so backed up and this is where the last part of your intestine is. It's just a thought but you may have been experiencing something similar.


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## FlyingMandarine (Apr 29, 2015)

Thank you very much, everyone, for your replies! I didn't get any answer for two weeks, so I thought my message would get lost in the abyss of this forum. 

Unfortunately, the same excruciating pains happened once, about three weeks ago, without me taking Imodium or Mebeverine. At this point, I feel a bit lost -- could it be the iron in the vegan vitamin supplement I take everyday? I believe the same type of pain happened at least once more, but of a much milder variety.

In any case, the pain in those occurrences is so intense that it makes me paranoid about not eating too much for my meals. I am going through some tests, the first of which is a sigmoidoscopy. Slightly unrelated, but I had to take an enema, go to the hospital's endoscopy department and wait for my turn... just to be told the appointment was canceled because the equipment had caught on fire the night before. Talk about luck!

If any of you has experience with (or sourced writing regarding) this type of pain, for instance due to iron supplementation (even though that's a shot in the dark at this point), please do reply.  Thanks to everyone who did so far! Unfortunately, I'm not so much looking for educated guesses and more for people who would happen to know more about my condition -- if there are any around!


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## jaumeb (Sep 1, 2014)

Iron supps are evil.


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## Leo41 (Dec 13, 2010)

Ok... so first we need to define this pain to determine if you are feeling spasming or something else. My main problem is pain and then spasming in the left lower area. Near, in, sometimes above the left hipbone.. Can spread around the side, and even around and up a touch into my back. Sometimes it is merely uncomfortable, sometimes it is a fluttering, sometimes it is a pinching, sometimes it is beyond excruciating. When it is like that you cannot function, you can't drive, you can't sit, you may curl into a ball, and many times you will begin salivating and then shortly after vomiting.

This will be in waves from that same spot radiating through your body. Building... peaking..(which is much like a horrendous cramping sensation.. I am male but I describe this as how I would imagine the worst labor pains to be) letting off a little, repeaking, repeat, over and over.. then finally letting off where you can breath and be like wow, then 5-10 seconds later.. the building begins again and you are right back into someone poking a knife in your colon ever y 10-20 seconds. This can go on for hours, then it let's go slowly until maybe another hour later and feel almost normal, it is so weird, like it never happened. Until the next attack of course.

Is that what you encounter during this?:

I highly doubt 2 antispasmodics would or could cause spasming like this. What is the other one you are on? Now I will say if your IBS can be like mine above even TWO antispasmodics are not enough when it's real bad to stop the spasming. I use Levbid and Bentyl.

As another note most any antispasmodic I know of will slow gut motility, stopping most diarrhea, and even constipating. Immodium really should not be needed if someone is on two antispasmodics.

If in fact (like me) you having true spasms after using 2 antispasmodics then peppermint tea /oil as a third will help. As I have said many times on this forum.. to me peppermint tea from Heathers help for IBS has stopped flat spasms, but fair to say there was always an antispasmodic medicine in my bloodstream. Peppermint tea for me honestly does as much as both meds. A bentyl with the hot tea will shut anything down. As a final note of this though peppermint is nature's biggest smooth muscle relaxer I have noticed no slowing of the bowel/motility with it's use. Prescribed ones, yes, levbid worse/bad, bentyl light effect.

Iron no, but most of the population in most countries are magnesium deficient which is crucial for the bowels. Magnesium citrate has helped me a lot with pain as well, but will cause loose stools in low dose. For me (as I am on 1 to 2 prescribed antispasmodics daily and have slow motility from them) this works perfectly, and I can take 400mg daily magnesium citrate.

Omeprazole is nothing more than over the counter Prilosec.. "Treats heartburn, stomach ulcers, and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). Also helps heal a damaged esophagus."


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## Leo41 (Dec 13, 2010)

Lorelei56 said:


> I tried peppermint oil capsules and oddly enough, they made my symptoms a lot worse. Any kind of oil is a gamble with my gut. Peppermint Tums help, though.


Same here.. well at least my GERD symptoms. If you haven't, and have spasms you may want to try Heather's Peppermint tea. I love this stuff beyond beyond, but cannot take the pills.


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