Intestinal Flu

Should you fall pray to the intestinal flu bug with acute vomiting and diarrhea, here are some things to help you get through this illness. Once you start vomiting, do not drink anything until you have not vomited for at least 1 hour. Then start with ice chips for the next 1-2 hours. If you are still feeling nauseated, keep on with just ice chips. Once the nausea is less, then you can start on sips of water. I do mean sips here. Do not take several gulps of water or other liquid, or it will come right back up.

You can advance to gingerale or gatorade, be sure to dilute the gatorade with at least 50% water. The ginger in the gingerale is actually very soothing to the stomach and will help a great deal to decrease the nausea. Again, be sipping not drinking a lot.

Once you've gotten through the nausea part and vomiting has not occurred in 6 hours, you can try something bland like toast or jello. Jello is great because it turns to liquid to help you not become dehydrated and it does contain some sugar to help feed the cells. The premise here is go slow and a little at a time.