There is a wide range of what is considered "normal" in the stooling (relieving feces) patterns of infants and children.
While the majority of infants, especially bottle fed, have one to three or four stools a day, some breast-fed babies have only one or two stools a week.
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Infant colic is a problem occasionally seen in infants, usually between one and four to six months of age.
Most babies have a “fussy” time during the day, but an infant with colic will draw their legs up on their stomach and cry inconsolably for a short while as if they had a bad stomach ache.
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[I wrote this article some time ago but it’s even more true today than in those years. The indiscriminate use of antibiotics for viral illnesses is now a major health problem as more and more dangerous bacteria become resistant to even our most powerful antibiotics. Unless this trend stops we will be no better than when almost every family had at least one child die of an infection.] (more…)
Atopy (allergies) are inherited. You are born with it!
Well, if that’s the case, then why didn’t it show up at birth? and why don’t all my kids have it? Why does it come and go? and why do allergies change throughout the seasons and the years? and why can you treat it with medicines?
All very good questions! Let’s answer some of them.
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Let’s see how well you do at playing diagnostician on this case. You have a four-year old little boy who has been in excellent health. He was sleepy in the early afternoon, so he was put down for a nap.
Five hours later he could not be awakened and had been incontinent of stool.
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In medical school I ran across a wild article by a “doctor” claiming he could “cure” hyperactivity by having them stop using things like toothpaste and anything else containing salicylates. The results and claims seemed wildly simple and too good to pass up to me; so I convinced my pediatric honors mentor to let me do a study for my honors project. She did.
Dr. Feingold, the proponent, proved to be most unhelpful so I used the best professor sources, his literature and all their procedures to set up a double-blind study which would “prove it.” Problem was, of our 30 patients who signed up for the trial we couldn’t get even one to actually respond so we could give them the real or placebo salicylates that would prove which it was.
My mentor reported the results after I had graduated and went on to become one of the country’s authorities on ADHD. I’ve written several posts on this blog covering various aspects and they are now curated into this series.
It is cruel irony that just at the time a child becomes overly concerned about self-image (teenage, adolescence) problems can develop with blemishes. More than 25% of visits to dermatologists for skin problems are for… pimples.