Food and drink
Diet is one of the main concerns people have and talk about following surgery. With your new stoma you may have some questions around what food you should and shouldn’t eat.
What can/can't I eat
Colostomates
Where possible it is best to eat a low fibre diet and stick to bland foods at the beginning. You can start to reintroduce your normal diet routine slowly. If you think a particular food is causing problems, try avoiding it for 2 weeks, then reintroduce it into your diet. Which foods affect you depends very much on your current diet and your own digestive system. Experiment and enjoy!
There is no need for dietary restrictions when you have a colostomy. A healthy diet with plenty of water is recommended.
Colostomates may be prone to constipation.
Management / prevention of constipation:
Drink plenty of fluids
Eat regular meals, slowly increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables
Chew your food thoroughly
Ensure wholegrain foods such as bread and cereals are included
Exercise regularly
Check medications which may cause constipation
Ileostomates
Where possible it is best to eat a low fibre diet and stick to bland foods at the beginning. You can start to reintroduce your normal diet routine slowly. If you think a particular food is causing problems, try avoiding it for 2 weeks, then reintroduce it into your diet. Which foods affect you depends very much on your current diet and your own digestive system. Experiment and enjoy!
What food to avoid
You want to avoid things like nuts, mushrooms, sweetcorn and coconut, as they might result in a blockage if not properly digested.
Food blockages
Some food can swell in the bowel and may cause a blockage. This will cause your ileostomy to stop working. You should seek urgent advice from your GP or Stoma Nurse if you think you are experiencing a blockage.
Urostomates
Your diet won’t be restricted but what you eat and drink can affect the smell and colour of your urine.
Drink
If your urine is dark, this is generally an indication that you are dehydrated, and you need to drink more fluids. Drink 6-8 glasses of water or other fluids each day.
Food
Foods such as radishes, fish, beetroot, spinach and spices may cause your urine to have an unusual odour and colour, but this isn’t anything to worry about.
Medication
Some medications can also affect the colour and odour of urine. Odour can be reduced by eating/drinking cranberry juice, yogurt, buttermilk and parsley/mint.
Keeping hydrated
Keeping hydrated is an important aspect of living with a stoma. For many people it is just making sure you are drinking plenty of fluids throughout the day. You should try to drink 6-8 glasses of water each day along with any other drinks such as tea or coffee.
We use necessary cookies to make our site work. We'd also like to set optional analytics and marketing cookies to help us improve the site and deliver relevant content. You can manage your preferences in the cookies settings.
Privacy Overview
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
__cfduid | 1 month | The cookie is used by cdn services like CloudFare to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It does not correspond to any user ID in the web application and does not store any personally identifiable information. |
_wpfuuid | 11 years | This cookie is used by the WPForms WordPress plugin. The cookie is used to allows the paid version of the plugin to connect entries by the same user and is used for some additional features like the Form Abandonment addon. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement | 1 year | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 1 year | This cookies is set by GDPR Cookie Consent WordPress Plugin. The cookie is used to remember the user consent for the cookies under the category "Analytics". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 1 year | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 1 year | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". |
icwp-app-flash | past | Cookie generated by our website management tool, iControlWP. icwp-app-flash is used to store a temporary wp admin message |
icwp-wpsf-notbot | 10 minutes | This cookie is placed by WordPress to detect bots. |
pouch_page_journey | session | This cookie enables us to remember your selections as you search our ostomy pouches based on ostomy type. |
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_wpfuuid | 11 years | This cookie is used by the WPForms WordPress plugin. The cookie is used to allows the paid version of the plugin to connect entries by the same user and is used for some additional features like the Form Abandonment addon. |
test_cookie | 15 minutes | This cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 1 year | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
wordpress_country | 2 months | This cookie allows us to remember which country you selected so that we only show products that are available in your country. |
wordpress_survery_timer | 7 days | This cookie is used when we place a user feedback on the site so that it only shows up after a specified amount of time. |
YSC | session | This cookies is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos. |
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_fbp | We use Facebook ads from time to time to help direct users to pages of interest on our website. Facebook may use cookies or web beacons to collect or receive information from our website. We use that information to compile reports and help us target our advertising more effectively. | |
fr | 3 months | The cookie is set by Facebook to show relevant advertisments to the users and measure and improve the advertisements. The cookie also tracks the behavior of the user across the web on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. |
IDE | 1 year 24 days | Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile. |
RUL | 1 year | Used by DoubleClick to determine whether website advertisement has been properly displayed - This is done to make their marketing efforts more efficient. |
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_ga | 2 years | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors. |
_gat_gtag_UA_143265736_1 | 1 minute | This cookie is used by Google Analytics to help us analyse traffic to our site. |
_gid | 1 day | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form. |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | 5 months 27 days | This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website. |
vuid | 2 years | This domain of this cookie is owned by Vimeo. This cookie is used by vimeo to collect tracking information. It sets a unique ID to embed videos to the website. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
__hssc | 30 Minutes | This cookie keeps track of sessions. This is used to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie. It contains the domain, viewCount (increments each pageView in a session), and session start timestamp. |
__hssrc | Session | Whenever HubSpot changes the session cookie, this cookie is also set to determine if the visitor has restarted their browser. If this cookie does not exist when HubSpot manages cookies, it is considered a new session. It contains the value "1" when present. It expires at the end of the session. |
__hstc | 6 months | The main cookie for tracking visitors. It contains the domain, hubspotutk, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session). |
hubspotutk | 6 months | This cookie keeps track of a visitor's identity. It is passed to HubSpot on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts. It contains an opaque GUID to represent the current visitor. |