What medicine should be taken to treat digestive disorders?

There is no universal "magic medicine" for digestive disorders. Most clinical trials use probiotic preparations to regulate the intestinal microecology, and then respond to different specific symptoms such as acid reflux, bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhea and constipation, with auxiliary medicines as needed. It is recommended that all medicines be used in accordance with the doctor's advice after organic disease has been ruled out. It is not recommended to buy medicines by yourself for long-term use.

I treated a 28-year-old Internet operator in the past two months. It was common for him to stay up late at night to catch up on projects. It was common for him to delay meals for two to three hours when he was busy. When he was free, he would meet up with friends to have skewers and drink cold beer. He had been unable to defecate for more than three months or two or three days in a row. As soon as I ate something cold, I would have diarrhea, and after eating I always felt like my chest was pounding and I was belching constantly. I bought Jianweixiaoshi tablets and took them for half a month, but they didn’t help at all. I had a gastrointestinal endoscopy and there were no organic problems. It was a typical functional digestive disorder. I prescribed Bifidobacterium Quadruple for two weeks, and told him to take a tablet of Domperidone as needed when he felt uncomfortable with bloating. He should also try to keep the time of his three meals as fixed as possible and avoid eating ice. After three weeks, he was reviewed and his symptoms were basically gone.

Many people have misunderstandings about medication for digestive disorders. They think that as long as they have gastrointestinal discomfort, they can just take omeprazole or antidiarrheal drugs. This is not true. Last time, there was a little girl who was in the senior year of high school. She was so nervous before the mock exam that she had stomachache and diarrhea. She secretly took antidiarrheal medicine for more than half a month. The diarrhea stopped, but she started to become constipated. Her stomach was so bloated that she couldn't sit still in class. She had emotion-induced irritable bowel syndrome, and gastrointestinal medicine alone was not effective at all. She was prescribed some vitamin B1 combined with low-dose probiotics, and asked her to run two laps for ten minutes every day to relieve stress. Two weeks later, her mother came over to express her gratitude and said that she had not done it again.

There is currently no consensus in the industry on the use of digestive enzyme preparations. Some believe that daily supplementation can help reduce the burden on the gastrointestinal tract, while many doctors believe that long-term consumption will make the secretory function of the gastrointestinal tract "lazy". When I usually treat patients, if I encounter patients with atrophic gastritis or digestive gland degeneration over 65 years old, I will recommend short-term small-dose supplementation of digestive enzymes. However, for young people in their twenties and thirties, unless it is transient indigestion caused by overeating in a short period of time, it is generally not recommended to take it regularly. To put it bluntly, the intestines and stomach are like a little employee that follows your schedule. You feed it cold, spicy and oily foods from time to time every day. If it can’t figure out the rhythm, it will naturally go on strike. Taking medicine is just to temporarily find a helper for it. When it adjusts to its rhythm, it still needs to be allowed to work on its own to prevent it from deteriorating.

There is another very common pitfall that I would like to remind everyone, do not blindly buy Internet celebrity stomach medicine or imported probiotics. A patient previously followed the trend and bought a certain Japanese Internet celebrity stomach medicine. After taking it for two months, his acid reflux was cured. When he went for a gastroscopy, he found that the gastric mucosa had mild atrophy. The acid-suppressing ingredients in that medicine were more than twice as high as the conventional dosage in China. Long-term use will destroy the acid-base environment of the gastrointestinal tract. If you really suffer from digestive disorders frequently, it is better to keep a diary of your diet and rest for a week, and take it to the outpatient clinic to let the doctor help you find the triggers. It is much more effective than buying a bunch of medicines on your own. If it is also accompanied by black stools, persistent stomach pain, or sudden weight loss in a short period of time, don't take medicines at home. The more serious thing is to do an examination first to rule out organic problems.