Stomach flu or food poisoning: does it matter?

It’s stomach flu season. Ugh. Lots of diarrhea and some vomiting are rampant right now. Meanwhile, food poisoning gets a lot of press because some forms of it can result in truly serious illness, including kidney failure and death.

Whether your stomach bug is a normal stomach flu or food poisoning, the management is the same if there aren’t certain worrisome signs

Stomach flu is not caused by the same viruses that you get the flu vaccine for (that type of flu, Influenza, causes fever, cough, body aches, headache, and runny nose) so even though you got your flu vaccine, stomach bugs can find you. Stomach flu bugs can give a variety of symptoms including fever, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Usually, though, if vomiting is going to be a major part of the illness it happens very early in the illness and there’s lots of it. Sometimes kids will vomit every 30 minutes or so for several hours when certain stomach bugs take hold, while other times vomiting occurs once or twice or not at all. Diarrhea often gets going quickly too and frequency of diarrheal stools can be as often as eight or more times a day or as little as once or twice. Fever may or may not be present with regular stomach bugs causing stomach flu. Stomach bugs will often run through households but usually one person gets it, starts to recover and then the next person gets it and so on.

Food poisoning causes all the same symptoms but often has fever associated with it and there may be visible blood in the stool at times. Food poisoning often occurs nearly simultaneously in several people who ate the same foods so if the whole family is down for the count within a couple of hours of each other, food poisoning could be the cause.

But the vast majority of the time, food poisoning is no worse than a garden variety stomach bug and needs no special management. Avoiding dehydration or getting IV fluids if needed is all that is required when these stomach ailments occur.

Signs that your stomach bug (food poisoning or not) is serious and needs attention include fever lasting for three days or more, significant decrease in urine output, urine the color of tea or cola, visible blood in the stool, relentless vomiting with stomach pain but no diarrhea, little or no relief from symptoms after vomiting, cracked and dry lips and gums, and extreme listlessness or irritability.

Generally, as long as there aren’t the worrisome symptoms described above, you should wait two hours or so from the last time you threw up before trying anything to drink and then it should be just sips of a sugar-containing liquid or Pedialyte every 10-15 minutes to keep a trickle of fluid going. Once you’ve gone about six hours without throwing up you can get a little more liberal with drinking and even try a cracker or two.

Usually food poisoning is a short-lived illness, lasting a day or two with pretty frequent vomiting and diarrhea. Some stomach bugs can be short-lived too, but the younger you are and the milder your symptoms, the longer they last. In other words, if you throw up every half hour for eight hours you won’t have as long an illness as someone who never threw up. Loose bowel movements can occur for weeks following a bug but, about seven-10 days after the symptoms appear, the frequency of stools should be nearly back to normal.

Unless you have worry signs, managing stomach illnesses at home makes sense.