At Home Comfort Measure
You hurt bad you are doubled over knotted up. You want to scream You want to sleep. Anything to get rid of this plan; Stomach Cramp can career around your abdomen like a ball on a billiard table. Almost every woman has had cramps sometime. If you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome or lactose intolerance or even have the occasional bout of PMT, you know a cramp when it grips you. The exact diagnosis or cause of stomach cramps may or may not be obvious. It could be stress, or a virus, or something else.
Stomach cramps will go away on their own after a few hours or days. But you don’t have to suffer that long. Women doctors offer these comfort measures. A cramp is really just a knotted muscle. If stomach muscles are making you crampy lying in bed with a hot water bottle on your stomach may help ease the pain. A hot water bottle is much safer than a heat pad, because it cools down, while a heat pad stays hot and can burn you if you fall asleep or use it overnight. Stick to the BRAT diet, that’s bananas, applesauce and dry toast foods that are easy to digest and won’t hurt your tummy. High fibre foods like popcorn, nuts or cabbage can be hard to digest and make cramping worse. Drink plenty of water, if you cramping stems from constipation or diarrhea, the best way to ease the cramping are by drinking water, water and more water. Water gets the waste products moving through your intestines, which should ease your constipation. If you have diarrhea, drinking of water will keep you from becoming dehydrated.
Cook up a batch of chicken soup, it works and nobody knows why, but chicken soup soothes stomach and abdominal cramps and cleans out the digestive system. If you have diarrhea or lactose intolerance, you’ll find that milk and other dairy products such as cheese and milk are hard to digest and often cause cramping. So until your cramps subside, go easy on the white stuff. If you have bowel spasms or trapped wind, peppermint oil stops the aching. Peppermint oil is available in capsule form in health food shops. Take one capsule two or three times a day between meals until your cramping goes away. Valerian fennel, ginger, chamomile, rosemary, peppermint and lemon balm teas also relieve wind and stop spasms of mild stomach cramps.
