Cholestyramine, BAM, and MC

[alim24]

Hi everyone,

I have been taking cholestyramine and it helps me a lot. I really wanted to go the purely diet route to attack the root cause, but doing that for month or two showed no improvement. I understand that isn't nearly long enough, but if I can remove the pain and desperate urgency from my daily life/be able to leave the house, why not do it right?

I still plan on dieting because even if the med works, I assume it's just masking symptoms and not necessarily healing/treating inflammation. But I wanted to know, if cholestyramine is helping, does that necessarily mean I have BAM? Some people on here it seems like it doesn't help at all, does that mean they don't have BAM? I think I read 40% of MC patients who see no improvement also have BAM. Anyways, just wanted to know because I love trying to understand how my body is working if i can.

Thanks!
Ali

[tex]

Hello Ali,

Yes, if cholestyramine helps, that's probably an indication that you have BAM. That said, that's not chiseled in stone, because cholestyramine also sequesters various other toxins, in addition to bile, so we can't be sure. It's rather likely, though, because budesonide (assuming that budesonide works well for you), in addition to suppressing Inflammation, also increases the reuptake of bile in the terminal ileum (which is how bile is normally removed from the fecal stream before it reaches the colon). At least, those are my thoughts.

Tex