I am so sorry to learn your little one is having so many difficulties.Below is an article which may be helpful to you... if after all the tests, diets and supplements, still nothing is helping your little one, you may want to consider a program specifically developed for children with IBS and chronic abdominal pain - pain that is not explained by any other disease, and that does not respond to any treatments or hospital visits. It can also be used alongside any other treatments. The program also helps the child with being able to stay in school and manage their pain - in most cases, greatly reduce it or eliminate it. This is the IBS Audio Program 60 for Children - and has had some very good results. Though the program gives a guideline of age 8 - 13, it can be used with younger children, and parents are part of the process.It works to 'rewire' the miscommunication between the brain and the gut, as well as helping the child reduce pain and motility issues (constipation and/or diarrhea). Clinical trials have shown it to be very effective, and there are absolutely no side effects at all. All children showed an increase in their overall well-being in addition to feeling better.Feel free to contact me if you have any questions as I am happy to help -This article discusses the reality of children's pain, as well as the use of guided imagery for Functional abdominal pain in children. The protocol discussed in the article is not readily available to the public, however, this affiliate program has proven to be very helpful with children having
FAP:http://www.healthyau...dren?r=VmPRrcNkHere is the
article:http://www.nytimes.c...3klass.htm?_r=118 and UnderA Prescription for Abdominal Pain: Due DiligenceBy PERRI KLASS, M.D.Published: November 22, 2010"For some reason people respect headaches," said Dr. Carlo Di Lorenzo, a leading pediatric gastroenterologist and a professor of clinical pediatrics at Ohio State. "I've never seen a parent or a pediatrician tell a child complaining of a headache, 'You don't have a headache - it's not real.' Bellyache is just as real as headache." Indeed it is. And recurrent abdominal pain in children is common, frustrating and often hard to explain. Consider a girl who came to the clinic for her 10-year physical exam. She gets these bellyaches, she told me. Had a bad one that week, but her stomach wasn't hurting right at the moment. She'd been treated for constipation; she'd been tested for celiac disease and other problems. Every blood and stool test over the two years since the pain began was completely normal. One night the bellyache was so bad she went to the emergency room - and her abdominal X-rays were normal as well. The diagnostic term for this common and perplexing condition is "functional abdominal pain": recurrent stomachaches, as the American Academy of Pediatrics put it in 2005, with no "anatomic, metabolic, infectious, inflammatory or neoplastic disorder" to explain them. When I was a resident, we often smirked when we spoke of functional abdominal pain, treating it as a code for a troublesome patient, dubious symptoms or an anxious family. But recent research suggests we were too biomedically narrow in our thinking. Scientists are coming to understand that abdominal pain is transmitted by a specialized nervous system that may be hypersensitive or hyperactive in some children. Studies in which researchers inflated balloons in children's intestines suggested that those with functional abdominal pain might be unusually sensitive to any distension on the inside. "We think in terms of a biological-psychological-social model" for pain, said Dr. Joel R. Rosh, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Goryeb Children's Hospital in Morristown, N.J., and an associate professor of pediatrics at New Jersey Medical School. "When a child says, 'My belly hurts,' what drives me crazy is people say, 'No it, doesn't.' "Why would people say that? You're feeling something! How much is biological, how much is psychological, how much is social?" The improved understanding of how such pain develops - and can be treated - has changed the ways that pediatricians look at the problem, but it hasn't necessarily made it easier to take proper care of these children, to worry over them enough but not too much and, above all, to make them feel better. The problem may start with some initial insult, an infection or inflammation that may affect pain pathways in the child - and may also set up psychological patterns and anxieties in the child and response patterns and anxieties in the parent. And then the child continues to be extremely aware of sensations coming from the gastrointestinal tract, even when the initial illness is over. The challenge to the parents - passed on to the pediatrician - is how diligently these pains should be investigated, how many tests a child should be subjected to, how much money should be spent. "One thing fairly well established is that as soon as you make a referral to a subspecialist, cost increases by fivefold," Dr. Di Lorenzo said. "We're going to tend to do a lot more tests." The more anxious the parent, he said, the more tests may be done for reassurance. With the 10-year-old girl, I was trying hard not to refer her to a subspecialist. She was growing well, she didn't have celiac disease, she had none of the red flags that signal a need for a medical work-up. We suggested that she learn techniques to cope with her abdominal pain and maybe see a counselor to talk about anxiety. Her mother thought we meant the pain was imaginary. "The vast majority of data suggest that what helps the children is working with the brain more than working with the gut," Dr. Di Lorenzo said. "Hypnosis is clearly more effective than medication." And the medications that may work include those that work on the enteric nervous system (which uses serotonin as a neurotransmitter), so low doses of antidepressants are sometimes helpful with functional abdominal pain. Miranda A. L. van Tilburg, a psychologist who is assistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, was the lead author of a study published a year ago in Pediatrics, which showed good effects from a treatment called guided imagery. "We would give them therapeutic suggestions," Dr. van Tilburg said, "like imagining something in your hand that melts in your hand like butter and then you put it in your tummy and it makes it stronger, or imagine drinking your favorite drink and again the inside of your tummy is coated with this special layer." The children were sent home with CDs and instructions to practice the imagery regularly as a prevention strategy. Our patient said she didn't want to see any more doctors. She didn't want any more blood tests, and she didn't want tests she had heard about that involved tubes. Her mother didn't really want those tests either, since as she said, they never seemed to find anything wrong. Neither was enthusiastic about seeing a counselor, but they finally agreed. It's an appropriate strategy. "It's very disempowering to have this alien living in your belly," Dr. Rosh said. "How about if I learn that my belly doesn't have to run my life?" And how do you help doctors, parents and children get past the idea that functional abdominal pain is not "real," that a child doubled up with pain is faking it, that it's all in his head? "If it was all in his head, he'd have a headache," Dr. Rosh said. "Clearly there's something happening in his belly." [A version of this article appeared in print on November 23, 2010, on page D5 of the National edition..]