Why is your child throwing up with no fever? This food could be the cause
We vomit when we can't tolerate food for whatever reason. PHOTO|FOTOSEARCH
What you need to know:
Summary:
- Joe’s parents had been to countless doctors and were at their wits’ end
- The most important thing for me was for Joe to stop vomiting
Every time Joe, age two, would eat, he’d be sick. At 12kg, his weight was reasonable, but his parents knew instinctively that the vomiting wasn’t a good thing. Furthermore, the stomach acid that was brought up every time was really starting to damage Joe’s throat and he now seemed to have reflux even when he wasn’t being sick.
Joe was taking a range of medication: motilium to help his bowel movements (he would go once every 3/4 days without it), and losec and gaviscon as antacids (to minimise the acid burning his throat). But most importantly, even with the medication, he wasn’t feeling good.
Joe’s parents had been to countless doctors and were at their wits’ end. I can honestly say that they looked a little suspicious of me when they came in. I didn’t blame them.
The most important thing for me was for Joe to stop vomiting. Once he could hold the food down, I felt that we’d be able to sort the rest. I made a very simple suggestion: for Joe to remove all dairy produce from his diet. “But he loves milk!”, his father exclaimed and that’s how I knew I was on the right track. You see, very often with children (and adults, for that matter), the thing that they love the most, is the very thing that’s making them sick.
On average, Joe drank milk three times a day, so that meant he was subjecting his body to something that it didn’t like fairly often. And commonly, when we can’t tolerate a food for whatever reason, we vomit. Cutting out dairy produce also meant no cheese, cream, yoghurt or ice-cream.
The next thing I looked at was his bowel movements. Why wasn’t Joe going twice or even three times a day as he should? Clearly, something wasn’t being digested as well as it should. While dairy is a common culprit in these cases, I also suspected wheat. Something that’s found in a wide array of foods from bread and chapattis, to cakes, biscuits and pastas. These were all regularly featured in Joe’s diet and were promptly eliminated.
At Joe’s next appointment just two weeks later, the difference in the little boy was quite noticable. His parents testified that he was much more “jovial” and much less clingy. His bowel movements were twice a day and he’d not vomited once.
