Can you take Magnesium Citrate and Colace together?

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Can you take Magnesium Citrate and Colace together?

Postby RumBum » 23 Feb 2017, 11:24

Good morning everyone!

Posterior AF newbie here.

Like so many of you here, I'm on a quest for the perfect stool consistency so that I can finally have a pain-free, blood-free BM and allow my AF to heal. (It's been almost 4 weeks of tinkering with various combinations of stool softener, fiber amounts and types, hydration, and osmotic laxatives). I have a question about stool softeners and osmotic laxatives taken together and would greatly appreciate any advice or personal stories!

Until last night I had been taking 150mg of Colace before bed with 1/4-1/8 tsp of Miralax and consuming roughly 22-25g of fiber throughout the day (combination of insoluble and soluble, concentrating on soluble as best I can, and taking a little Benefiber (1/2-1 tbs) when I'm not getting the fiber through food). Although it softened my stool, it didn't seem to be enough to really do the trick. And I worried that I was eating a little too much fiber given my general food intake right now and bulking up my stool too much. The diameter of my stool is slightly too wide, I think, to pass painlessly and avoid re-injury of the posterior AF. I noticed from my food diary that on the days that I ate between 19 and 22g of fiber, it was slightly better the next morning BM-wise for pain and bleeding.

Last night I tried a new cocktail: 150mg of Colace, 1/8tsp of Miralax, and 200mg of Magnesium Citrate (tablet form). This morning I had my first pain-free and blood-free BM in a long while! While I was elated to recall the pain-free BM experience, the stool consistency was not ideal. It was runny like really wet mud-- like melting milkshake consistency.

So I think my next effort at fine-tuning my stool softening regimen is to omit the tiny bit of Miralax and keep the Colace 150mg _ 200mg of Magnesium Citrate combo.

My question is whether it is a bad idea to take both Colace and Magnesium Citrate. Should I try to either up my dose of Colace to 200mg and omit Magnesium Citrate or omit the Colace and up my dose of Magnesium Citrate to 400mg before bed.


:thankyou:
RumBum
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Re: Can you take Magnesium Citrate and Colace together?

Postby chachacha » 23 Feb 2017, 15:50

I am not a doctor, and the site below recommends that you check with your own, but here is their response to those two drugs together.

https://www.drugs.com/interactions-chec ... 0,2365-487
Fissure since about 2007
Fissure diagnosed in 2011
Diltiazem for two years - didn't work well
LIS January, 2015
Hemorrhoidectomy December, 2017
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Re: Can you take Magnesium Citrate and Colace together?

Postby RumBum » 23 Feb 2017, 19:31

chachacha wrote:I am not a doctor, and the site below recommends that you check with your own, but here is their response to those two drugs together.

https://www.drugs.com/interactions-chec ... 0,2365-487


Thank you chachacha for this helpful link! It'll be a handy resource.

I did end up contacting a doctor and was told that they are safe to take together, and that if I want to try to reduce one or the other that I should reduce Colace and keep the Magnesium Citrate. No reason was provided in the message. Maybe the doc is going on the general guideline to use more natural remedies before pharmaceuticals or something. I'll update here on my experiments in fine-tuning the combination of these two with the goal to get the right stool consistency (very soft but still holding shape) and right diameter (narrow).

Thanks again!
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Re: Can you take Magnesium Citrate and Colace together?

Postby chachacha » 23 Feb 2017, 20:00

You're welcome. It has always been a very helpful resource for me in the past.

Good luck with getting things right.
Fissure since about 2007
Fissure diagnosed in 2011
Diltiazem for two years - didn't work well
LIS January, 2015
Hemorrhoidectomy December, 2017
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Re: Can you take Magnesium Citrate and Colace together?

Postby RumBum » 08 Mar 2017, 01:11

Hello All!

This is just an update. I've been blood- and pain-free for 13 days, ever since starting the Colace (150mg) and Magnesium Citrate (200mg tablet) before bed, eating 19-22g of fiber, concentrating on soluble as much as possible, drinking lots of water, taking Sitz baths after BMs, using a heating pad intermittently, and using the perianal support method for posterior AFs when I have a BM.

I've experimented a little with varying my diet, reintroducing foods I eliminated for about 4 weeks (a few slices of pizza here and there, fried shrimp...you know, good stuff :-) and things seem okay as long as I keep up with the rest of the regimen, supplementing fiber to replace what I would've gotten if I had done my usual quinoa and cauliflower, sweet potato dinner routine.

For those who may be curious, two different doctors (GPs, not specialists) told me two different things when I asked whether it'd be better to phase out Colace or Magnesium Citrate. One said Colace, because Magnesium Citrate has other health benefits, and the other said Colace, because a stool softener is gentler than a stool softener + osmotic laxative (which is what Miralax and Magnesium Citrate are). I think I'll try phasing out the Colace if I can continue my healing for the next few weeks and until I can finally get examined by a specialist to confirm healing and check for underlying causes of the AF. But in the end, having hard stools is much worse than having to keep up with Colace and/or Magnesium Citrate to keep them soft, so I'm still quite afraid to experiment!

Wishing you all healing
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