Hi Wazuan's

Need your help/opinions/suggestions......
My son 4 yrs 3 months has been having stomach pains that occur only at night for the last 8 months,i have seen paeditricians and i think he has taken almost all antibiotics and medicines but the problem does not seem to go away.

we have done scans,stool test,urine test,H-pylori and nothing seems to be the problem.

Is there anyone who knows about this condition or has an idea of what could be happening?

Hello,

Sorry for the case, below are some principles for good health, that can enhance life if adopted to the lifestyle.

- Go to sleep on an empty stomach, meaning that the last meal should be about 4 hrs before bedtime.

- The right combination of foods allow foods to pass through the stomach as quick as possible as well as prevent discomfort. A wrong combination of foods can be such as having a meal and mixing acidic fruits and alkaline veggies. If you'll be having acidic fruits, do not have veggies in that meal, rather have the veggies in another meal - without acidic fruits. Some alkaline fruits can be eaten with veggies, such as avo or pawpaw. Different foods require different conditions in the stomach.

- When cooking, ensure that the foods are well cooked. All manner of grains and legumes need to be well cooked, our stomach has difficulties breaking down certain foods - if those foods are not well cooked, hence there can be discomfort and digestion can take longer. E.g. beans - these need to be boiled until they are soft and can easily break or have broken while being cooked. Beans can take hours to cook while being an energy expenditure, and if there isn't much time, foods can be removed form the fire before they are fully cooked. Using a pressure cooker can help, or starting early or multiplying cooking sources. Considering this case, the effects are much greater on a young stomach.

- Sanitation – Use good soaps and detergents, preferably those that have anti-bacterial properties in washing hands, utensils, the dish rack, etc...

- Cook with minimum fat / oil - if at all necessary. Fatty foods are more difficult to break down or digest, hence fatty foods will take longer and the stomach will have to work harder. The fats that coat the food first need to be permeated before the foods can be accessed. Consider how difficult it is getting any type of fat off your hands, unless you use soap.

- Stay with natural whole foods. If possible, do away with refined foods or foods with artificial flavors or preservatives (white flour is refined, whole unrefined flour is brown. Whole foods are foods in their wholeness, such as flour grinded from a whole wheat - not flour that is composed of extracted parts of the wheat grain).

- Do not over eat

- Understand what a wholesome nutrition constitutes and then do your best to meet it.

- Drink filtered / distilled water

Unfortunately there is no time to get into the physiological effects of doing or not doing the stated principles (While there are a lot more principles, these are just a few that can directly apply to this case), for now you'd just have to try and adopt where possible.

All the best.

Doctors are helpful but they are not gods. A well informed patient is his own best doctor. So here is my suggestion. The problem is stomach pain at night so the first thing I would suspect is food. Buy a diary and in it record or have whoever feeds him record what your son eats every day and then record the pain or lack of it at night. Change the foods as soon as there is a bad reaction until you get foods that make the pain worse and those that reduce it.

You be the scientist. Write down your observations: Breakfast 8.00am: Tea Bread Blue Band. Lunch 12.45 Rice potatoes chicken 4.25pm Tea Biscuits Dinner 8.34pm:-Ugali sukuma nyama maziwa - Woke up with pain at 2am said pain very bad.
Ugali sukuma pekee - Woke up at 4am said pain was bad but went to sleep immediately after.
Rice fish some milk before bed - woke up ....... You get the point.

DO NOT RELY ON your memory WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. Even the house girl can be taught to write. It doesn't have to be neat or even in English just the time and food eaten. It is hard work but after a week or 2 you will be able to treat your child as good as a pediatrician or give a valuable insight to your pediatrician.

Some children have reactions to certain foods like gluten (A protein found in wheat) so akikula chapati or bread he has discomfort but if he eats ugali he is ok. Some are intolerant to lactose in milk so he is fine for as long as he does not take milk etc. These states of intolerance can be diagnosed by tests but the tests are sometimes expensive and will yield the same results you get at home by recording and observing reactions.

Be proactive with you and your children's health. Even if you do not achieve comfort for your son you will still have helped the doctor a great deal when you come with a month's diary showing you tried eliminating say milk for 3 or 4 days no change or wheat products for 3 or 4 days no change or fats or fruits or vegetables or beans etc. Some diagnosis are made on the basis of elimination. So go ahead and start gathering data.

I hope this helps.

It could be something non related to the stomach. I remember my sister used to become very sick on a certain day every week and was always in hospital getting tests done and nothing came up yet she had real symptoms. It was later discovered that it was a fear of swimming that was triggering her illness. So when that was sorted out, her "illness" stopped. But that was after my parents had spent quite abit on taking her to specialists.
So look for other things that could be triggering the aches only at night.

@ murchr, the child is 4yrs 3 months and you will be suprised how other things do affect children and manifest themselves as physical symptoms. Nway I am no doctor or medic, just offering another perspective.

ati fear? 4 yrs nilikuwa nachunga mbuzi!!!nkt. but labda ni ukweli anaogopa. after facebook generation.

Hi guys,

Thanks alot for all the info,keep them coming,@Kusadikika,i started on writing anything he eats today,i hope by the end of it we will have achieved something.
@mariacha,i will spend some nights with him and see what happens.

Am no medic, but how early does the kid take super.
It's always suggested not to sleep in a full stomach, ie take supper by around 7pm to sleep around 9pm.

Did you ever overcome the issue?

Parents here do you give your children dawa ya minyoo? See what was removed from a 3 year old kids stomach

@specky, i am not an expert but would recommend you try raw juice and vegetable diet on him for like a week and check if there will be any changes. Fruits and raw vegetables are easy to digest and "comfortable" to the stomach and may do the trick to the boy.