GI Issues with Kids, Zantac, and "Natural Flavors" in Foods TONS O QUESTIONS=)

After 5 years of this I'd be seeing a naturopath in addition to the conventional doctors. I'd want to know *why* she has reflux. Have they offered a root cause? Allergy, lactose intolerance, gluten sensitivity? Have you tried an elimination diet to see what her triggers are? Does she need probiotics or digestive enzymes?

It's not normal for the digestive system to not work - rather than treat the symptoms, which is really all the conventional medicine does, I would also be working on correcting whatever is causing the reflux - either she's having an inflammatory response to something or is deficient in something. You can treat the symptoms while searching for a root cause - she doesn't need to suffer while you try to figure things out, but a naturopath can guide you in the figure-it-out process so you're not trying things that aren't helpful and won't yield good information.

The more I learn about overall health, the more I see that the digestive tract is the key to health. Our immune systems, hormones, and even things like mood all start in the gut so it's incredibly important to get it working as naturally as possible. Things like Zantac can be tremendously helpful in alleviating immediate symptoms - I took it when I had pregnancy-induced heartburn - but often what someone with stomach issues needs is, ironically, more stomach acid. Shutting off the stomach acid can really f-up the digestive cycle if used long term. Read up on hydrochloric acid as a treatment for reflux - the thought is that with *more* acid in the stomach, the stomach can digest food more quickly and efficiently, thereby keeping everything moving. When the stomach doesn't produce enough acid and digest food quickly enough, food sits in the stomach and that's when the muscle that keeps the stomach and esophagus separate can be stressed and leak stomach acid up into the esophagus.

Good luck - I hope you get some answers and get her digestive tract on track soon.

Have they tested her for lactose intolerance? My 6y has been complaining of stomach cramps and this is what we are looking in to for her.

Does she drink aloe Vera juice? It's amazing for gastro issues.

my son has reflux.. and certain acidic foods make it worse.. yogurt can be acidic.

Your daughter sounds like mine. I won't go into the whole long story, but it involved GI doctors, meds, xrays, etc etc etc. Finally we found one GI who quickly figured it out. She's extremely intolerant to and sensitive to (not technically allergic) sorbitol. Sorbitol is a natural sugar alcohol (not alcohol like beer or liquor, but that's the chemical description) that is found in a lot of fruits and is used as a "safe" sweetener in sugar-free products. Once we eliminated sorbitol, the GI problems disappeared.

That meant: no apple products at all (apple sauce, juice, etc), no pears or pear juice, no cherries, no red or purple grapes (green grapes are not chemically the same and contain no sorbitol, so 100% pure white grape juice is fine), and absolutely no sugar free gum or drinks.

We had to read a lot of labels. For example, a national brand of kiwi strawberry juice lists apple juice as the first ingredient. We switched to 100% peach puree instead of apple juice, and 100% white grape juice, and didn't buy any fruit rollups or fruit drinks.

The GI problems resolved almost immediately. The GI doctor told us that if all her patients eliminated sorbitol, she'd have a lot fewer patients.

By the way, things similar to sorbitol include mannitol, erythritol, and other things ending in "itol".

She's not a kid anymore, but still will get a stomach ache if she has a fruit drink sweetened with apple juice or pear juice. But she has developed the tolerance to eat a small fresh apple. Of course, juice is far more concentrated than fresh, because it takes a lot of fresh fruits to make a small amount of juice. Unfortunately most kids' drinks contain apple or pear juice because they're cheap and plentiful.

So I would encourage you to give this a try. Nothing with apples, cherries, pears, red or purple grapes, and nothing sugar-free. It's easy to do, relatively, and you will know pretty quickly if it helps.

I would find another GI doctor and homeopathic doctors. My son was a premie, with health issues from being a premie, including hernias/stomach ulcers/severe reflux for 2yrs. The peed prescribed Zantac, which treated the symptoms but not the problem (we learned later). After 2yrs, went to CHoP and saw the GI specialist who said he never prescribes Zantac for children under 5, as it progressively makes their issues worse. He determined that my son had stomach ulcers again (most likely from a recent cold he had), recommended quality probiotics (which my son was already getting 3x/day from our homeopathic docs) and a med called Axid for 6wks, then explained things may take 3mos to resolve. It was 3mos to the day that the ulcer symtoms stopped. The GI spec also said that my son has a sensitive stomach, that he might suffer from stomach ulcers each time he gets sick, that he might continue to vomit from nerves/crying/anxiety, and to keep him on probiotics (which we would do anyway, he gets once/day for maintenance) and let him know whenever we needed a refill prescription.

Fortunately, we've been able to avoid more meds - there was a time, after a cold, that he needed some children's Tums for a day or two.

And yeah, 'natural' means anything but! Good luck :)