Food sensitivities in children are very common. They can present themselves in the physical sense which might be diarrhoea, constipation, frequent colds, ear and throat infection, constant runny nose or cough and abdominal pain. But they can also present themselves in emotional and mental ways too – in fact this is more common than the “classic” food intolerance signs.
As a culture we eat a lot of processed foods and factory farmed foods and “drinks” without realising the effects it has on your mental wellbeing. Doctors like to suggest kids grow out of these things. I don’t agree. Their bodies just learn to cope and so surpress the symptoms. Later in life they can reemerge as different illnesses. This is called The Stages of Adaption.
Here is a case study kindly written for me by a client about her daughter and the issues she had been facing. I can’t even begin to explain how common this is and how relieved I am that Jessica feels better.
“I thought jessica was a typical 5-6 year old with tantrums, crying, aggression and lack of concentration when I came across a case study on Tonic Nutrition website about the link between dairy & gluten and children’s behavior. I spoke to Lynsey about it and we discussed a plan to take jessica dairy & gluten free. To be honest I was sceptical and my hubby was even more so! But we went a long anyway. I would say it’s took between 2-3 weeks until I started to notice that she seemed a lot calmer, less stroppy and even sleeping better at night.
Still a little sceptical we carried on until it came to Christmas were we let her have a bit of diary and gluten here and there and the difference was immense! Wow….it was like her evil twin came to stay!!
She also started crying at night and complaining of a sore and itchy foof (our name for the downstairs area).
As I said before my hubby isn’t a huge believer so I tried to imply that it maybe due to her being out of her routine (Christmas holidays) and we decided to continue to give her small amounts of dairy & gluten whilst she got back to school and into her routine to see if this settled or not. Guess what…. They didn’t!!
We immediately took her off it (after a huge explosive tantrum) and within 1 week things slowly started improving. After two weeks things were definitely improving. She also stopped complaint about her foof too. I didn’t even understand what it was exactly I thought it was her not wiping correctly. It wasn’t until I spoke to Lynsey that I realize it was a yeast infection she was getting.
We are now into week 4 and things are looking good. Don’t get me wrong she is 6 years old so she isn’t perfect and will still have tantrums but they are much more manageable now”.