Okay, pardon the pun, but today I'm talking about removing cow's milk from the diet of kids affected with chronic constipation. An interesting study was recently published that showed roughly 40% of kids (age range of 6 months to 14 years) in the study had resolution of their constipation by simply removing cow's milk from their diet.
Why did this happen? Researchers are really not sure, but believe it may be an allergic or otherwise immune-type response. This study was small- only 69 patients. However, the format of of the study is fairly convincing. They started with a baseline of one week, where they ran tests. Next, milk was removed and replaced with rice milk- and the researchers looked to see whether or not the constipation went away. This phase was followed with re-introducing the milk for three weeks, and then removing it for the final three weeks. Nearly 40% of the kids had normal bowel function in the two phases without milk, and returned to constipation in the weeks with milk.
What does this mean for your toddler or older child? Well, as long as you pay attention to calcium intake, it will do no harm to remove milk from your child's diet for a few weeks, and if that solves the constipation, terrific!
Will this work for adults? Hmm...maybe. Again, this is not a harmful fad diet, so why not give it a shot?
BOTTOM LINE: Consider a several week trial of removing milk from your child's diet if they suffer from chronic constipation.
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