Reflux: Getting to the Cause

By: Dr Steve Rondeau

A large portion of children I see in my office experience a condition known as gastro-esophageal reflux, also known as GER, reflux or heart burn for short. When this pattern takes on a more serious disease status, it is known as, gastro-esophageal reflux disease, or GERD. In contrast to most pediatricians, many parents are reluctant to use medications to manage the symptoms of GER unless it is severely interfering with their child’s and the parents lives especially with sleep. GER is a potentially serious problem that can lead to other problems later in life including poor sleep patterns, failure to thrive, pneumonia, dental problems, asthma and other respiratory problems, which is why it is important to find the cause. Many children experience reflux at some point before 12 months but most resolve by 1 year as they begin to be upright longer after feedings.

As noted, GER and GERD are different. GERD is associated with projectile vomiting, low weight gain, breathing trouble, and physiological changes which is potentially more serious. Many children with reflux begin to develop poor eating habits because they associate feeding with pain and discomfort. Vomiting especially after 6 months, picky eating or frequent eating, sleep apnea, fussy or colic, resistant to lying on back, clingy, poor sleep, waking often, night cough, and if they are old enough to describe it abdominal pain and chest pain.

Diagnosis is typically made by the child’s pediatrician followed by a prescription for h2 blockers or PPI’s such as Tagamet, Zantac, Pevacid, Prilosec that each come with a laundry list of interactions and side effects and in actuality can further perpetuate the problem by preventing the proper digestion of food leading to more sensitivities, allergies, yeast overgrowth, and GI dysbiosis. Sometimes recommendations are made to thicken formulas or change feeding schedules. Rest assured, other effective treatment options are available. Our unique ability to offer natural and convention therapies allows us to provide safe and effective therapies for GER or GERD in children in combination with giving parents the learning tools to manage symptoms at home.

In addition, treatment is only rarely just directed towards the child, but rather to the mother and child together if the baby is breast feeding. Often the initial focus is on alleviating symptoms and relieving discomfort, but is then more importantly followed by investigation of the root cause of why the baby is experiencing reflux. In my experience, food sensitivities tend to be the most common cause of reflux in children in strike contract to an excess of acid secretion.

These sensitives can be in the breast feeding mother, the baby, or most often in both. Most common foods that aggravate the breast feeding (and solid foods) baby include soy, wheat, chocolate, dairy, tomatoes, citrus, high fat foods, and caffeinated beverages. If these foods have been avoided in both for several weeks and reintroduced without changes, IgE and IgG food allergy testing is a likely next step. A simple way to try to manage symptoms may include holding baby upright for 15-30 minutes after feeding. This often can prevent symptoms of discomfort. By doing this, it eliminates the tendency of food to enter into the esophagus in a child with relaxed musculature that normally prevents this experience.

Abdominal massage with olive oil or castor oil and small added essential oils such as lavender or chamomile to the oils can act as carminatives to aid in proper digestion and help relax the child after feeding.

Over the counter homeopathics such as carbo vegetabilits, colocynthis, chammomille, can be very helpful when they are properly prescribed based on the unique presenting symptoms. Chronic intestinal yeast can create havoc with digestion and colic in infants and young children espically seen in children born premature or by cesarean delivery. In addition there’s a new hands-on physical therapy offered by Dr. Humphreys in office that has been successful in treating reflux in several patients in our office. In summary, reflux has many treatment options with most successful treatment being those aimed at finding the true cause, which therefore prevents more problems later in life.