The Differential of What Causes Osmotic Diarrhea

Stool osmotic gap is what causes secretory diarrhea. Often it's accidental ingestion of laxatives, particularly magnesium-based laxatives. The other unmeasured osmas to consider are the sugar alcohols that a lot of our patients consume. And so when we walk into a room consulting on a patient with diarrhea and they have a bag of hard candy sitting there, usually there's some sort of sugar alcohol in there which precipitates or perpetuates whatever diarrhea they had started with.