medicines

[daddys fault]

a new day a new problem. my youngest has had oral thrush. the medicine is in a sugar suspension which she can't digest. have spent the weekend with her crying unable to eat or sleep. doctor says she has to have the medicine and could find no alternative. its been miserable and everytime i give her the medicine i feel i am poisoning her.

may try health food shop today but i bet they suggest natural yoghurt which of course would be no good.

[Copper]

I hope the health food shop have a magic remedy.

[daddys fault]

they were great. got a probiotic powder suitable for vegans with no dairy or sugar. will start it tonight. fingers crossed. also got contact for a nutrician therapist and a kinesiologist. do you think they will know anything we don't alredy know as they're very expensive.?

[Copper]

I hope the magic powder works quickly.

I listened to a radio prog a few months ago which was very helpful. Essentially they had two specialists from two well known hospitals talking about allergies and intolerances. In a nutshell they said that apart from coeliac and lactose intolerance there are no tests which are reliable.

They see people every day and rely on family history and food diaries for a diagnosis.

I personally can't see any point in spending out money for a diagnosis that is not reliable. You have to be careful as there are all kinds of people setting themselves up to do tests on gullible people.

Children who have to have dairy free diets should have their calcium intake monitored. This can be done by an NHS dietician. You just have to insist on being referred to a dietician. Sadly from comments made on this site there are good and not so good dieticians.

[daddys fault]

thanks for your thoughts. you are probably right. i pretty much know wnat we are dealing with and i don't think anyone can change it. its all very over priced and when i looked it up it sounds very wishy washy.

what gets me is that i think we're ok and then something new crops up and it starts all over again like with this thrush medicine. i just want someone to tell me what they can and can't have, sticking to it is the easy part.

[Copper]

Have you managed to work out what they are intolerant to? The only way is to keep a food dairy. The problem comes when they have more than intolerance.

Once you think you have identified the problem you have to remove it from the diet and see if things improve. If there is no change then it must be something else.

I was born with lactose intolerance which improved and then came back in childhood. It has been up and down since and now I am totally intolerant. Over the years I have acquired other intolerances but at least I only had one at a time which meant I could identify them fairly easily.

I have enough intolerances now so I hope I don't acquire any more.

My eldest daughter has gone through a similar pattern. She did acquire a number of intolerances within a month or two of her lactose intolerance appearing again.

[daddys fault]

at the moment i have identified lactose, fructose and sorbitol so i know to look for them on the ingredients. sorbitol is the new one that i didn't know about. actually easier with youngest who can't have any. my 3 year old can manage a little and so we end up going over quite often and then getting pain.

i keep my food diaries in my head which then leaves me going over and over things trying to work it all out. i need to be more organised with that i think as i am now very good at checking all ingredients.

now its usually only when i haven't even thought about it, like teething gel with my little one. didn't ocur to me to check what was in that, know better now!!!

do you have a notebook you keep with you or how do you organise keeping track of it all. especially hard with 2 who are slightly different.

[Copper]

I have kept my intolerances in my head as I have developed a problem every two or three years, so it has been easy for me to pinpoint what was causing the problem.

My eldest daughter is 30 :eek: She was ill just before a solo holiday to Australia. We quickly identified lactose and then her screaming for the first 9 weeks of her life made sense. She had been born lactose intolerant and then got over it.

She managed to survive in Australia but when the plane stopped for refuelling on the way home she was very sick. She had to have medical treatment and came close to not being allowed to continue the flight home. This was the start of yet more intolerances.

From then she was ill every month or so. The NHS did various tests and found nothing wrong. She then got worse to the point where she felt faint and sick in the middle of lunch. As you can imagine we were worried as she lives alone and in a different county to us. In desperation we paid half the cost of the York tests. By then we had worked out that bread was probably causing her illness. The test results proved this to be the case. They also identified other foods including egg. She was sceptical about the egg but within a year she found this to be correct too.

I guess there are two ways to keep a diary. If on the whole your two are ok then you could just write down anything new they have eaten or had to drink. If they are not that well then sadly the only way is to write down everything. You have to write down how they appear to be health wise too. Some symptoms might take a while to appear but hopefully there will be a pattern.

This diary would then be proof that there is a problem. If a child is ok for a while and then you give them teething gel (as an example) and they are then screaming or sick, then there must be something in the gel causing a problem.

[daddys fault]

york test?

[Copper]

See their site here

http://www.yorktest.com/

I am sure that this site will be helpful too

http://www.allergyuk.org/

[daddys fault]

have started reading. loads of great info. thanks. x

[Copper]

I hope it helps.

[rebecca c]

sweet things will make the thrush worse until she is better. I dont get on with sorbitol at all well either, hardly suprising since I am alcohol intolerent and judging from the name it has an alcoholic structure. You can get soya yoghurts with the live culture in them. Maybe worth looking into her toothpaste, I have trouble with peppermint, kingfisher toothpastes are good ones or (if it is still around) tom's of maine.

[cnc]

Have they not tested for some sort of sugar processing disorder, as I know there are several of those around, but sometimes it just takes seeing the right consultant to get things sorted. Good luck with it all.

[daddys fault]

sugar processing sounds like the right thing as lactose, fructose and sorbitol are all sugar structures. i think the gp is getting fed up with me and only see dietician once every 6 months. i'm wondering about a pediatrician or an allergy specialist.

[Copper]

If the GP is getting fed up with you maybe you could ask him/her to refer you to a specialist. Then you will go away :)