# Taking Imodium and Pepto Bismol/Kaopectate at the same time?



## suffering

Anyone know if it is OK to take Imodium at the same time as either Kaopectate or Pepto Bismol?Imodium has loperamide as the active ingredient, while both Kaopectate and Pepto Bismol have bismuth subsalicylate as the active ingredient. So I wonder if taking both of those will help stop D better than just taking one of those?


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## keycat

I'm not sure, but if I may ask - is the problem that you've found Imodium, Kaopectate, and Pepto Bismol to be ineffective on their own? I would try taking greater doses of one medicine before I'd try combining them, but if that hasn't worked for you, perhaps you should ask your doctor for a prescription-strength anti-diarrheal. I say this because I assume it would be simpler to take one dose of a stronger anti-diarrheal than a bunch of not-as-effective OTC medicines, but I don't know what the side effects of a prescription anti-diarrheal might be, so maybe not.Argh, I'm afraid this isn't of much help to you.


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## suffering

I think that imodium loses its effectiveness for me if it take it more than a day or so. So I thought I could take them both at the same time, so if one of them were to lose its effectiveness, then the other one might still work.And I think more than one imodium at a time might make me constipated.


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## crstar

u'r lucky if one imodium does it for u...........at one time i was up to 8 of the generic........i was desperate, i had to leave the house for the freeway at rush hour & couldn't afford to b late........these things r not a cure.....if u've had this problem for a long time, there r other things involved..........have u tried taking calcium carbonate??....it's in a post here, called linda's calcium cure, i think.........it helps alot, the only thing is if u have had ibs-d for a while, ur intestines r inflamed.......this takes time to heal.......there's also stomach acid to check into.........i bet no dr ever tested the levels of ur stomach Ph, before, during & after food.......u don't have enough & there is hell to pay..........sometimes increasing serotonin can help, it's a natural relaxer.........there r others, do some research on all the things that go into digestion........sometime a little potassium can help, too much can cause D.........too much magnesium can do the same..........there r so many things to look at...........


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## Thai

suffering,what makes you think that more than 1 will constipate you?Aren't you saying that 1 is not enuff?Maybe try cutting 1 in half and upping your dose to 1.5 tabs at a time.Sometimes we have to play around, A LOT, in order to find what works, right?Thai


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## dani22

i know this is a very late response based on the date you posted but i've always been told pepto and kaopectate and such are bad for IBS because it has ASA in it (basically the stuff that makes aspirin). from what i've been told from a doctor and a pharmacist the ASA will irritate bowels more. I have IBS-A though so perhaps its different for me


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## mrae

Try taking to immodium in the morning before you leave the house they take about 2 hrs to kick in. If you find immodium isn't strong enough then ask your doctor about lomotil, it has worked great for me so far and its been about 2 months.


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