UPDATE and ? in OP! What is causing these stomach aches and diarrhea? (milk?)
UPDATE: Thanks for the very helpful feedback!! About ten days after she stopped drinking milk (though I still gave a bit here and there mixed in various things, and she still has yogurt and cheese, as she always has) the stomach aches went away. Diarrhea went away even sooner. It's been almost a week now since they stopped, so I think that might indeed be the issue. The only confounding factor is that she also resolved a school issue that had been causing her stress around the same time. However, the symptoms started before she knew about this issue. I will reintroduce milk sometime to make sure, but I hate to ruin her week I guess I'll also schedule an appt. with her doctor to see what she says, and I read that there are some tests they can do to confirm it. Is anyone familiar with those?
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WArning: bowel movements discussed!!
My teen DD has a history of constipation and stress-induced stomach aches. However, in the past few weeks she's been getting recurrent stomach pain and loose motions, and I don't THINK it's related to either of those things.
About three weeks ago, I noticed she wanted to go to the toilet more often than usual, but I thought it was due to her period. Then she got stomach aches, but again I thought period cramps. When it kept happening, I wondered if it was due to constipation since we were on vacation and she was eating a lot of processed grains, which is not typical for us. We brought the diet back to normal and it didn't stop, so I thought it was stress due to starting a new school. Well, she seems to be settling in well and quite excited about it, and two days ago she told me that she had loose motions too. The strange thing is, she can go through the whole school day without using the toilet, but this seems to happen in the evening and morning, accompanied by some cramping.
She is fine during the day and doing all her normal daily activities, but this happens sometimes at night and almost always in the morning!!
She is normally a great eater, but I noticed sometimes it interferes with her eating as she can't eat well when she's got a stomach ache.
Then I realized that she started drinking a lot of milk regularly a few weeks ago, due to vit. D deficiency. She has never loved milk but over the years she has had a small glass some days without any issues. She also decided she wanted to grow tall and started having a few glasses daily about a month ago, and we were on vacation with milk drinkers and all the kids had milk regularly. I wonder if THAT could be it because it was a sudden increase.
She has ALWAYS eaten yogurt and cheese (boatloads of it) without any issues, but I know cow's milk can be harsher for some folks. I stopped giving milk 1.5 days ago (and I believe she just so happened to not have other dairy since then, but I wasn't planning to stop all dairy) and she still had a stomach ache and loose motions this morning. I imagine it might take some time to clear out??
The advice nurse was not particularly helpful, though she gave advice on dealing with the diarrhea - recommended a BRAT idea, lots of clear liquids.. She said I should bring her in if this continues, but I thought I would do my milk elimination first, then take her in.
The only other theory I have is that it might be abdominal migraines, since she has a history of migraines, but it doesn't seem severe enough for that, but I don't know a lot about abd. migraines so I could be wrong. Her doctor once said that it's possible to have a "blockage" due to constipation and bowel movements move around it, so you're still having bowel movements even though you are constipated. I don't have any other theories
Any thoughts?
Last edited by Globetrotter; 09-19-2013 at 01:59 PM.
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