Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Hi - Was your daughter on a gluten-free diet last year? Did she improve from this? If she was give the diagnostic test(s) for celiac after she'd been following a gluten-free diet, the results could have been false-negative. This is because once someone with celiac stops eating gluten, the inflammatory response to gluten ends and the body can heal. At that point blood work and the small bowel biopsy can both come back negative. So your daughter would have to be regularly eating gluten (for I believe 4-6 weeks) and they'd have to run the celiac tests to get firm results here.

If your daughter was better on a gluten-free diet, I'd definitely try that again. If she was just following the IBS diet, but not going gluten-free, you could return to that. As long as she's had the diagnostic tests to rule out inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, and her symptoms don't point to other serious problems that still need to be ruled out (bowel obstructions, Hirschprung's disease, etc.) trying either diet has no risk.

There are other anti-spasmodics she could try as well - Pro-Banthine is actually a children's drug. There's also Donnatol. They are all pretty close, but sometimes their effectiveness and level of side effects varies greatly from one person to another.

If you do go with the anti-depressants, make sure your doctor knows EXACTLY what he's doing. These drugs can be effective for IBS, but they are not typically used with children. They are meant to be used in very small dosages for IBS (a dose so small it would be ineffective for depression). And there are different classes of these drugs, with different side effects. Depending on your daughters's symptoms, certain classes of the drug could make her much worse, not better. So her doc needs to be very familiar with using these drugs for GI problems. And, honestly, I'd still be hesitant, because your daughter is so young, and because these drugs need to be taken every single day. At least the anti-spasmodics are only taken as needed.

Please keep us posted, and give your daughter a hug for me.

Best,
Heather

--------------------
Heather is the Administrator of the IBS Message Boards. She is the author of Eating for IBS and The First Year: IBS, and the CEO of Heather's Tummy Care. Join her IBS Newsletter. Meet Heather on Facebook!

Print Remind Me Notify Moderator