Abdominal pain medical therapy

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Abdominal pain Microchapters

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Diffuse Abdominal Pain
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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]

## Overview

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## Medical Therapy

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If there is mild abdominal pain, the following tips might be helpful:

* Sip water or other clear fluids.
* Avoid solid food for the first few hours.
* If there is vomiting wait for 6 hours, and then eat small amounts of mild foods such as rice, applesauce, or crackers. Dairy products should be avoided.
* If the pain is high up in the abdomen and occurs after meals, antacids may help, especially if there is heartburn or indigestion. Avoid citrus, high-fat foods, fried or greasy foods, tomato products, caffeine, alcohol, and carbonated beverages.
* Avoid aspirin, ibuprofen or other anti-inflammatory medications, and narcotic pain medications.

### Chronic Functional Abdominal Pain

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Non-pharmaceutical approaches to treating CFAP also overlap with treatments for irritable bowel syndrome. This includes enteric coated peppermint oil capsules, which act as anti-spasmodics to relax the gut and also have pain-killing properties due to the methyl salicylate that naturally occurs in peppermint. Gut-directed hypnotherapy or self-hypnosis can also mitigate the hyperreactive nervous system of CFAP, and help alleviate abdominal pain.

#### Contraindicated medications

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Abdominal pain in the absence of diarrhea is considered an absolute contraindication to the use of the following medications:

* Loperamide

## References

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Template:Gastroenterology

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