6 Year Old with Headaches

you can try eliminating different trigger foods one at a time for a length of longer than 5 days to see if this helps. Or there is a blood test for food allergy antigens, which is easier than the prick tests.

if you want to try eliminating, start with Dairy, then soy (soy lecithin is an ingredient in LOTS of things), msg, preservatives and food dyes are culprits a lot too. Then go for the big one, Wheat and Gluten.

see if you can find a copy of "Is this my child?" I know Amazon has it. It talks about kids and food allergies.

I know that some headaches can be caused from something as simple as not getting enough water. Some kids may drink lots of things but still be dehydrated because the body wants water. So, that might be something to consider.

Dear Jamie,

My daughter who is now 26, had headaches simliar to what you are describing needed more salt in her diet. I have never added salt to my cooking. I hold water too much so I just eliminated thinking it would be better all the way around. After many test and doctor bills...it was lack of salt in her diet. It took 2 years to find that out! She even passed out from it several times so be careful if this is the case. Hope this helps.

Good luck
J.

My 4 1/2 year old is the same way, with a family history like yours. My dr. suggested we take some basic steps first. We tried otc Claritan for a month to see if they got better. They did. Once he was on the meds for about a week, his sinuses started to clear up a bit. The dark circles under his eyes started to lighten a bit, too. He still gets them when the weather changes (storms coming, etc.), so some of these headaches are sinus. When those happen, we do a dose of tylenol. I know the FDA came out with a new recommendation about OTC antihistamines, cold meds, etc., but my dr. suggested we start with those. We've since moved on to Zyrtec without any allergy testing, CAT scans etc. For us, the obvious answer was the right one. Good luck!

Have you changed anything in his diet. More milk perhaps? when my son was 5 he started getting headaches and come to find out he was allergic to milk. or maybe get his eyes checked. he might need glasses.

Does he eat a lot of yogurt? My son was eating 2-3 servings of yogurt a day and my pediatrician cut him down to 1. The headaches went away immediately.

Hi J.,
My son at the age of 6 had intermittent headaches that would come on suddenly on the back side of his head and then resolve spontaneously. Pediatrician said to give him Tylenol, but obviously this didn't make sense in that the headaches would come and go throughout the day. I took him to a neurologist, Dr. Harry Whelan at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. He ordered an MRI which revealed moderate hydrocephalus and Chiari Type I malformation (base of the brain protrudes lower than it should into the spinal canal). Needless to say we were shocked. First a shunt was placed in his brain to address the hydrocephalus and then a brain surgery to decompress the Chiari. He is now 17 and doing relatively well. I would get an MRI done if only to rule out anything major. Best of luck to you.
C.

when my son was 5 he started with frequent headaches and he missed a months worth of school because of it. His doctor sent him to an ear, nose and throat specialist and it was discovered that most of it had to do with his sinuses. he underwent surgery over the summer. they removed his tonsils, adnoids, put tubes in his ears and did what we call a rotor rooter on his sinuses to help open them up. he hardly ever has headaches anymore and when he does get one they aren't nearly as severe as they were. talk to your childs doctor and see if maybe you can get in to a specialist. that was all my son needed and now he is doing excellent. good luck and please let me know how things go.

Jamie

I work with a Health and Wellness company that manufactures products that will provide a solution for your son and the enitre family. My business is listed as Yes To Success and I welcome you to contact me
I know families that have switched their products, detoxed their home and no longer suffer with migrane headaches.
I look forward to your response. S. Karkowski

My 9 yr old daughter was having headaches last year as well. We did end up bringing her to the doctor, and we had a cat scan done. It was a pretty easy process, and they did not find anything wrong. She has not complained much lately,but I am thinking not enough sleep could bo one of the culprits.

L.

Hi J.,
As another mom posted, I would suggest you go to a chiropractor. My husband is one and sees this all the time. I was shocked when he told me but it's very easy to "cure". I can't believe how many kids are taking medicine, for the common cold, to head aches to allergies, it just doesn't make sense. Wouldn't you rather treat the problem and not the symptoms? This would also help you and your family as well, your shouldn't accept having headaches as normal. Anyway, my husband is affiliated with Olympic Chiropractic (see link to website), they have offices in Bartlett, Elmhurst and Sycamore. If you contact them, tell them D. Coop sent ya. Or if you want to discuss before you call, just email me back. Let's try to prevent the next generation of "drugged up" kids by getting to the root of their problems. Good luck and I hope he feels better soon!

http://www.olympicchiropractic.com/index.asp

Hi J.-
I work for a neurology group in Indianapolis and actually do see some kids that have migraines or headaches from time to time. It could be a number of things. Does he get adequate sleep at night. A good diet. Stays away from the migraines triggers: chocolate, caffeine, excess amounts of dairy products, peanuts. I'm sure he doesn't get some of things since he's just 6. But you would be suprised what some of the parents give some of our patients that are kids. It could be allergies, if it happens certain times of the year. Or pressure changes. Or he could just grow out of it. I get them when its raining outside. But its probably a good idea to have him seen if they keep persisting by his pediatrician. And they may end of sending him to a specialist for further testing. Hope this helps. D.

My Sister gets migraines from pickles. I know of someone else that gets headaches from peanut butter and another from caffeine and chocolate.
If he eats any of these things, you might want to try cutting them out of his diet one at a time to see if it helps.
My Sister is seeing a Chiropractor and he's been doing accupuncture on her besides the adjustments and it hasn't really been helping her much. She has allergies too. I guess she just takes after my Grandmother. My Grandmother was bed-ridden for days when she used to get her migraines and she went to see an accupuncturist. There were supposed to be 3 treatments and he cured her in 1. I guess it just depends on the person as to what kind of therapy works for them.
Not everyone is the same.
Good Luck!

My daughter was diagnosed with migraines at 7. I get them so badly that I'm on a preventative for them so more than likely she got them from me. I would contact your doctor. An EEG was done, and another head scan, to make sure they weren't something more. They ended up putting her on a preventative. ~K.

I don't want to tell you what my friend's son experienced when he had been complaining of headaches. Please just get it checked out. It probably is just a bad migraine issue so don't get worried just yet. It is usually nothing we just tend to jump and worry about everything. That's our job as mommies :)
Best of luck!

Have you tried a chiropractor? I get headaches and it turns out to be a pinched nerve in my neck. I can suggest a great one in Grayslake if you are interested. I know some people worry about taking their kids to a chiro but he has helped my kids and me a lot.

Headaches are a symptom of something. It is always best to let you doctor check your child out and determine the plan of care.

Hi----I would seriously pursue that problem and make sure that the headaches are stemming from something fairly easy to fix, like dehydration or allergies. I have a little girl with leukemia, and unfortunately, headaches and such can be a symptom. It is very rare of course, don't mean to sound so scary, but headaches and kids are not something to take lightly. Good luck.

My 10 year old has been complaining of headaches lately as well. I called the doctor and he said that it might be the pressure changes we have had lately. I have a history of migraines as well, so we are going to track his headaches. The doctor said Motrin Jr is fine to take. If the headaches don't ease up as the weather gets better or they get worse, we are going to go back in.
Another thing the doctor asked about was his water intake. He said kids tend to drink less water in the winter because they are not out running around, but dehydration is actually more comman in the winter. So, we are going to up my son's water intake and see if that helps as well.
Hope I helped some.

With my little sister it was caused by too much caffiene so check on that before the allergy tests (even though it could be that too).

Hi J.,

I'm sorry to hear about your son's headaches. You might want to take him to a herbalogists and try some soy tables for headaches. I use to get migraines and my eye doctor recommend the soy tables and they helped to the point that I now am free of migraines, but I now use the soy tables for blood pressure. I take them when I know I'll be eating out and I'm aware of certain foods that contain more salt that my system is willing to accept.

I started having migraines at 5, and my mom thought at first that I was just trying to get out of chores, etc. also. My vision was fine, like your son's, so she took me to a neurologist. They didn't do a cat scan on such a young child (I was 6 at that time), or allergy tests, just suggested to eliminate cheese, particulary aged, like cheddar, processed foods like lunch meat, hot dogs, etc. and also anything containing MSG. I would start with those foods and cut them from his diet. After about 2 weeks you may see improvement. Also, dairy is a very common cause of migraines. Both my kids had/have milk allergies while I was nursing, and when I wasn't having any dairy (anything with milk, casein, or whey), I didn't get migraines either. Good luck!!!
E.

My 5 year old daugther was complaining of headaches and we took her to see the eye doctor and a neurologist. The neurologist said that they were migraines. I didn't want to medicate her, so I decided to make her sleep more, because when I am tired I get headaches. I started making her sleep 10 hours insted of 8hrs, and it has worked. He doesn't have as many headches. I know my daughter needs to sleep more because on the weekend if I don't wake her she could sleep 11 hours.

i suffered from headaches from the time i was 4 yrs old. many adults thought i was either faking or trying for attention. come to find out once i was an adult that certain foods would trigger these. chocolate(caffeine), citris, anything with a shell, peanuts, green beans etc.
when he complains of the headache make a note of anything he ate within the last 24 hrs. keep a log, you'll be surprised.

K. P. 55 yr old school bus driver.

Make sure he is drinking enough water. Does he snore? could it be sleep apnea?

You could try Claritin chewables for kids to see if it is allergies. If it continues I would take him in to see the pediatrician.

Food for thought.

I have a 7 year old who complained every day after school (for 3 months) about headaches and also saw the school nurse several times a week for them. Found out hers were due to anxiety--worry about reading aloud, spelling test and anything related to math...

Since working on treating them a few months, she hasn't had another.

I would suggest trying nutritional microscopy. This is a test where the practitioner takes a drop of blood and looks at it under a microscope. They are able to see from the blood where you have imbalances within the body. They can see if there are allergies present, whether the digestive system is functioning properly, and much much more. If they see that there are allergies, they will tell you to go to an allergist, but at least then you know that you have reason to put him through this. I'm not sure what area you're in, but I know of a good nutritional microscopist in Indiana.

Hi J. ~

I've learned with my kids that it's better to let your Doctor know ALL the signs and sympthons ~ if you believe that something is really wrong they will run tests on your son. I ended up having the same problem with my son when he was a baby and by the time he was two ~ I was so sure that something was wrong with him ~ a Doctor on call once told me that I was a parnoid mother. After all my persistance ~ they did fine something wrong and he was taken care of. Just make sure they do all the testing. It's better to be safe than sorry. In the end it might not be something major. Mommies always go with there gut feelings!

Good Luck and keep us posted!

Had the same experience with my son when he was 5 years old last year, took him to doctor and righ away he said is sinus infection, prescribe antibiotics, but the headaches kept coming, check his vision everything came back o.k., finally because I insisted he had the cat scan and it was still sinus, so after another treatment of antibiotics, we get rid of the headaches. I was thinking the worse, but thanks God it was just sinus...

That's a rough thing for a little kid to experience. I highly recomment homeopathy. I take my son (and myself) to a homeopath in Naperville. DS has eczema since 1mo old and it's under control now. Getting better all the time w/ homeopathy. It's natural remedies to help cure the root cause of the problems. Our homeopath is Dr. Josephine Polich. She wrote a newsletter on treating headaches (see link below). If you want more info, please feel free to email me. I am so amazed at how well homeopathy worked for my poor baby's eczema that I shout it aloud to everyone! :-)
http://www.dupagehomeopathic.com/newsletters/headaches.pdf
Best of luck.

Jamie-
As a pediatric chiropractor I usually have parents check out the website www.icpa4kids.org. It is a great resource for finding a pediatric chiropractor in your area.

My daughter tends to get headaches a lot too. I was so worried also, and took her to get her vision checked too, which came back normal. Well, one day she was really complaining of a headache and it worried me so much that I took her to her doctor's office and she ended up ordering up a CT scan. Well, everything on that was normal also, thank the Lord! So, we talked about what to do next, and I was with you. I didn't want to have to bother with all the allergy testing either, but actually, her doctor said that she doesn't really like having allergy testing done on children anyway, because their allergies change all the time. So, what we did was decide to give Singulair a shot. It was kinda "treating" the allergies, to see if there really was an allergy issue. I already knew that at one point Aryana had allergies, because before she had her adenoids out 3 years ago, they did testing on her. But, that doesn't mean much now, because all those allergies could have disappeared in that amount of time. So, I agreed to the Singulair, she gave me two months worth of samples, and it really did work! She still gets the headaches sometimes, but it's gone from about one a week or more to one or two over the last few months! It may be something you could talk to his pediatrician about atleast and see how she feels about something like that. By the way, I know every kid is different, but I have personally found that Singulair is the one allergy medicine that has no side effects on my kids. I've tried Zyrtec, and oh my goodness! My kids seriously grew horns overnight! It was unbelievable how grumpy it made them! With Singulair though, I couldn't tell a bit of difference in any part of them.