- Sep 11, 2006
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It's not something I have extensive experience with- I only get THESE kinds of troubles about once in 3 years, and a total of only 4 or 5 times in my whole life.
(There was a 10 years gap between the last one as a kid and the first one as an adult)
But what I DO have is... anxiety. Which makes me... paranoid. So I read tripadvisor all the time when trying new restaurants. I look for complaints that the food made them sick there. I am careful what I order when I eat out. I take supplements to prevent illness and I stay away from people who have been throwing up, in case it wasn't just something they ate.
But stuff happens.
Twice now- once in 2009, again in 2014, I happened to eat at an asian restaurant and later get sick.
It can be difficult to determine whether it's food poisoning or a virus, because both come with these symptoms:
-cramps
-nausea
-throwing up
-going #2 alot
-headaches
-fever
-chills
-body aches.
After a night of losing all your body fluids, you start to ache and feel feverish because you're dehydrated. It worsens as the day goes on.
Making it hard to know if it's a flu/bug or just something bad that caused bacteria in your tummy.
So last time it happened (2014 2 weeks before Thanksgiving), I studied alot about the problem and it's solutions because... well... I called out sick from work so I had a whole day to doodle online.
I tried some things and I learned some things to try next time! ... uhm... hopefully there's NOT a next time though. Ok maybe to try on my husband! He gets sick every now and then because he eats waaayy more risky foods than I do!
Preventative measure:
if you just ate out at a questionable restaurant, traveled to a strange country or ate something at home that you later realized was expired, you can drink a few tablespoons of the apple cider vinegar and it should stop anything bad dead in its tracks. It's also effective if you're around sick kids all day, nursing a sick spouse, or working beside a sick coworker who's been complaining about the symptoms above.
Should you still happen to start to get strange stomach pains and nausea, however, take a few more doses.
should you STILL happen to get sick, don't give up on the apple cider vinegar.
Pepto isn't going to fix it.
1) if there's something bad in there, let your body push it out. don't be a "superhero" and try to hold it in. that can make it so much worse.
2) don't eat for 24 hours after you throw up. this may not apply to everyone, but it does to me. Trying to eat anything, even just a bite of plain toast, within the same day as being sick, only makes you more sick.
3) Hydrate! don't eat but you must drink. drink water. Not soda, not gatorade. water. after a few hours, if the water stays down, add pedialyte to the water. Pedialyte is a gentle hydration and electrolyte formula for sick babies. it won't make it worse. in fact, it will make you better.
*if you can't keep water down, and this goes on for more than 24 hours, see a doctor. it can be something more serious like appendicitis or some accute infection.
4) get plenty of rest. call out from work, watch movies, don't leave the house.
5) take several doses of children's tylenol for headaches and fever. all spread out, they shouldn't be strong enough to make your stomach worse.
6) The next day, try eating one of these gentle foods: oatmeal, toast, rice, applesauce or bananas. if you can keep it down, eat plenty. but only those foods.
keep drinking pedialyte for 3 days.
7) When you reintroduce normal foods 2-3 days after the illness, do so gently and carefully. Avoid greasy heavy foods like chinese, hot and spicy food, heavy red meat, gas-causing vegetables like brocolli, heavy sauces, extremely salty or sugary foods, coffee and alcohol. Basically, you can add chicken, eggs, basic salad with light dressing, pasta with light sauce and lower sodium soups to the other 5 foods from the first day.
8) when you do feel 100% again, still try to avoid anything really heavy just in case. In 2009, I got a stomach bug 2 days after christmas. By new year's eve, I was eating normal food but my now husband and I tried to go dancing and have a few drinks for NYE. we had BOTH been sick with the same bug at the same time. We took 2 sips of our coke and rum and tried to go dance around and immediately felt queasy and exhausted. So we sat it out the rest of the night until the ball dropped, had a sip of champagne, and called it a day. lame.
If you do highly suspect food poisoning, there are a few additional things you can do.
for one, if no one else around you was sick, and you haven't heard about a bug going around but you DID eat something questionable like raw shelfish and now you find yourself hugging the "can" at 2am, there's an uncomfortable but possibly beneficial solution. I haven't tried this, it was recommended on someone's blog.
Take charcoal capsules. They sell them at Walgreens. It will absorb whatever is making you sick. after a couple of hours, take apple cider vinegar. after another couple of hours, take more charcoal. repeat as needed. You might still be sick, but it should cut the life of the sickness short by several hours or days. The blogger needed to do that because she was breastfeeding at the time.
If you are able to try it and it works, then if you get sick again in the future you know you can use that method if you're about to miss an expensive trip you can't get a refund for. or you just don't want to be sick.
(There was a 10 years gap between the last one as a kid and the first one as an adult)
But what I DO have is... anxiety. Which makes me... paranoid. So I read tripadvisor all the time when trying new restaurants. I look for complaints that the food made them sick there. I am careful what I order when I eat out. I take supplements to prevent illness and I stay away from people who have been throwing up, in case it wasn't just something they ate.
But stuff happens.
Twice now- once in 2009, again in 2014, I happened to eat at an asian restaurant and later get sick.
It can be difficult to determine whether it's food poisoning or a virus, because both come with these symptoms:
-cramps
-nausea
-throwing up
-going #2 alot
-headaches
-fever
-chills
-body aches.
After a night of losing all your body fluids, you start to ache and feel feverish because you're dehydrated. It worsens as the day goes on.
Making it hard to know if it's a flu/bug or just something bad that caused bacteria in your tummy.
So last time it happened (2014 2 weeks before Thanksgiving), I studied alot about the problem and it's solutions because... well... I called out sick from work so I had a whole day to doodle online.
I tried some things and I learned some things to try next time! ... uhm... hopefully there's NOT a next time though. Ok maybe to try on my husband! He gets sick every now and then because he eats waaayy more risky foods than I do!
Preventative measure:
if you just ate out at a questionable restaurant, traveled to a strange country or ate something at home that you later realized was expired, you can drink a few tablespoons of the apple cider vinegar and it should stop anything bad dead in its tracks. It's also effective if you're around sick kids all day, nursing a sick spouse, or working beside a sick coworker who's been complaining about the symptoms above.
Should you still happen to start to get strange stomach pains and nausea, however, take a few more doses.
should you STILL happen to get sick, don't give up on the apple cider vinegar.
Pepto isn't going to fix it.
1) if there's something bad in there, let your body push it out. don't be a "superhero" and try to hold it in. that can make it so much worse.
2) don't eat for 24 hours after you throw up. this may not apply to everyone, but it does to me. Trying to eat anything, even just a bite of plain toast, within the same day as being sick, only makes you more sick.
3) Hydrate! don't eat but you must drink. drink water. Not soda, not gatorade. water. after a few hours, if the water stays down, add pedialyte to the water. Pedialyte is a gentle hydration and electrolyte formula for sick babies. it won't make it worse. in fact, it will make you better.
*if you can't keep water down, and this goes on for more than 24 hours, see a doctor. it can be something more serious like appendicitis or some accute infection.
4) get plenty of rest. call out from work, watch movies, don't leave the house.
5) take several doses of children's tylenol for headaches and fever. all spread out, they shouldn't be strong enough to make your stomach worse.
6) The next day, try eating one of these gentle foods: oatmeal, toast, rice, applesauce or bananas. if you can keep it down, eat plenty. but only those foods.
keep drinking pedialyte for 3 days.
7) When you reintroduce normal foods 2-3 days after the illness, do so gently and carefully. Avoid greasy heavy foods like chinese, hot and spicy food, heavy red meat, gas-causing vegetables like brocolli, heavy sauces, extremely salty or sugary foods, coffee and alcohol. Basically, you can add chicken, eggs, basic salad with light dressing, pasta with light sauce and lower sodium soups to the other 5 foods from the first day.
8) when you do feel 100% again, still try to avoid anything really heavy just in case. In 2009, I got a stomach bug 2 days after christmas. By new year's eve, I was eating normal food but my now husband and I tried to go dancing and have a few drinks for NYE. we had BOTH been sick with the same bug at the same time. We took 2 sips of our coke and rum and tried to go dance around and immediately felt queasy and exhausted. So we sat it out the rest of the night until the ball dropped, had a sip of champagne, and called it a day. lame.
If you do highly suspect food poisoning, there are a few additional things you can do.
for one, if no one else around you was sick, and you haven't heard about a bug going around but you DID eat something questionable like raw shelfish and now you find yourself hugging the "can" at 2am, there's an uncomfortable but possibly beneficial solution. I haven't tried this, it was recommended on someone's blog.
Take charcoal capsules. They sell them at Walgreens. It will absorb whatever is making you sick. after a couple of hours, take apple cider vinegar. after another couple of hours, take more charcoal. repeat as needed. You might still be sick, but it should cut the life of the sickness short by several hours or days. The blogger needed to do that because she was breastfeeding at the time.
If you are able to try it and it works, then if you get sick again in the future you know you can use that method if you're about to miss an expensive trip you can't get a refund for. or you just don't want to be sick.
