Diverticular disease is a very common condition in UK and western countries. Specially in the older age groups. If you are diagnosed with diverticular disease or had an episode of diverticulitis, it is important that you try to prevent any more flareups. Flareups of diverticular disease can lead to complications such as bowel perforations, abscess formations leading hospital stay and emergency surgery. If the attack is bad enough and bowel has perforated, you might need to undergo emergency surgery with a formation of a stoma bag. Such situation can be distressing and it is important to try to avoid this.
So is there a way to prevent flareup of diverticular disease. Well you can not predict when the flareup comes. But you can try to maintain healthy life style and dietary habits to try to prevent these flareups.
It is known that constipation and stagnation of stools in the colon causes diverticular to form and these hard stools can block these tiny pouches (diverticula) causing them to swell (inflam) and rupture. So one way of preventing diverticular flareups is to prevent constipation.
Check my article of preventing constipation.
As mentioned in this article, keeping your self hydrated, making sure that you include lots of vegetables and fruit in your diet (Fibre rich diet) and physical activity can prevent constipation. Also laxatives can help with constipation by increasing the water content of stools or by bulk foaming.
Check the article on Laxatives in preventing and treating constipation.
Apart from these measures, is there any food that you need to avoid. Lot of patients ask this question. Although there is no direct evidence, it is believed that small nuts, grains, seeds and popcorn can go into these pouches (diverticula) and block them, causing flareups.
Hope this gives some idea as to what you should do to avoid getting flareups.
Check the article on Am I having a diverticular flareup?.
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