Constipation

Lactulose is not suitable medication for a diabetic as it is made of artificial sugars. Ask your doctor for another more diabetic friendly laxative such as Movicol for instance.

Drink at least 2 litres of water a day, more in hot weather, and if you can tolerate it, try eating a little more fat in your diet and fibre.

Oily fish is also very good. All these help to move things along.

Hi there
I had a similar problem until I started eating homemade DB friendly flax crackers and flax bread. Regular as clockwork now!

diabetic chocolate might help lol.....sorry am on Metformin myself and only slightly constipated am just happy the parents are off to Holland tomorrow and will bring me back some smoked eel until then smoked mackeral will have to do

I was prescribed Lactulose to soften stools while an anal fissure healed (20ml morning and night), and I specifically asked about its suitability for diabetics. I was assured by the consultant, and by the pharmacist, that it IS suitable for diabetics because Lactulose does its work but is not itself absorbed by the body. My BG levels are unacceptable at present, and I have been put on Metformin which is being increased incrementally over several months.. I'm now on 1g twice daily, and my BG has been falling. It looks like I'll be on 1500mg twice daily soon, which I hope will bring the BG to an acceptable level. I went on the Lactulose in the middle of all this, and I can confirm that taking it has not caused any rise in BG levels, which continue to fall, so it looks like the consultant and pharmacist were correct.

Marvin said:

I was prescribed Lactulose to soften stools while an anal fissure healed (20ml morning and night), and I specifically asked about its suitability for diabetics. I was assured by the consultant, and by the pharmacist, that it IS suitable for diabetics because Lactulose does its work but is not itself absorbed by the body. My BG levels are unacceptable at present, and I have been put on Metformin which is being increased incrementally over several months.. I'm now on 1g twice daily, and my BG has been falling. It looks like I'll be on 1500mg twice daily soon, which I hope will bring the BG to an acceptable level. I went on the Lactulose in the middle of all this, and I can confirm that taking it has not caused any rise in BG levels, which continue to fall, so it looks like the consultant and pharmacist were correct.

Click to expand...

Not quite. They didn't tell you everything....... :roll: Lactulose isn't, as they say corectly, absorbed by the body......the rest of the ingredients are though.

Lactulose is a synthetic disaccharide in solution form for oral administration. Each 15 mL of Lactulose solution contains: 10 g Lactulose (and less than 1.6 g galactose, less than 1.2 g lactose, and 1.2 g of other sugars). It should be used with caution in Diabetic's.

Galactose is a simple sugar. Lactose is a sugar that is found most notably in milk. Then of course there are the other added sugars.

They are correct about the action of Lactulose, but not the pharmacology of the whole of the drug......the additional ingredients can and have affected Diabetic's Bg levels.......mine for start. That is why my Endo changed the prescription to a 'sugar free' variant.....Movicol. Apparently that is more Diabetic friendly. Any Diabetic should ask for sugar free drugs wherever possible if suffering from constipation.

I would have thought that the Pharmacist and Consultant would have known all of that........

Ken.

This all goes to show that we need to be cautious in the advice we give each other because people differ, not least in their reaction to specific drugs. Movicol does not work on me at all, and as I told the consultant this, that may be the reason he prescribed Lactulose, knowing it should be used WITH CAUTION in diabetics. My query about its suitability presumably prompted him to reassure me it wasn't absorbed by the body and therefore he decided IN MY CASE and circumstances that it was the drug of choice. (Believe me, something was needed... an anal fissure is not a thing I'd wish on my worst enemy!, and at the time the most important thing was to get it healed).
I was fortunate that in my case the Lactulose did the trick and did notraise my BG levels either. But in another case the whole story could be different. This is why we should NEVER give other people drugs prescribed for us even if they have identical symptoms.

You are quite right Marvin. We are all different and what suits one may not suit another. That is why we hand out the advice which gives you ALL the facts, not just selective information.

That way people can then make an informed choice. Much better that way don't you think ?

Ken

I find that garlic is very good for constipation - not pills or capsules - but raw garlic chopped onto salads etc

How about Prunes and prune juice. 50p a tin from Tesco!

Dates and figs are good too but very sweet also so be careful.

In my personal experience the same thing very rarely works in the same way for different people.
For example things affect myself and my wife in very different ways.

Things that help me:

Lentils of all kinds.
Live youghurt (discovered this when going on a high protein diet which was starting to bung me up).

Things that help my wife:

All Bran (I am immune to this as I had so much when I was a kid).
Seeds such as linseed in home made seedy bread.

One thing I have wondered about but never tried - olive oil is supposed to be an all round good thing and some people drink it neat as well as using it on salads and in cooking.
Perhaps a small glass of a nice tasting olive oil at night might help things along?

Cheers

LGC