PSA: Article on Safety of Laxatives as a Childhood Remedy

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My pediatrician posted this, today, I know a few ladies on here have used Miralax, so I just wanted to repost for you all:

NY Times link (Scrutiny for Laxatives as a Childhood Remedy)

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Yet another reason to try natural cures before medicine... it seems like every year "safe" medications are found to have bad side effects on our children.

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Agreed. Even some natural or homeopathic remedies can later prove toxic. Best to avoid intervention outside of recommended nutrition if possible, but of course there will be some situations where the benefit of medical intervention far outweighs the side effects.

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Oof, that is so scary!

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Jan 28, 2015 20:56:52 GMT -5 pistolpackinmomma said:

@bunannie it was so scary! Of course when the pedi sent us from her office to the ER I googled. Dumb move! Wayne was traveling so I called my mom crying and she came to sit with me. They had to do blood work and couldn't get blood out of him. After 4 pokes they finally got a little and called it good. Then they came back and said it clotted on them and asked if they could try again. I told them hell no! I have been very cautious with Colby for fear of the same happening to him.

Poor baby! I would have lost it if I were in your shoes. I cannot imagine having to go through that + having a LO in pain on top of it I'm glad he came out of everything ok.

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Oooh would love to hear her input!

[sisterjanet]

That's a fascinating article. Ethylene glycol is seriously bad for you if you ingest it. If I remember right, it basically crystallizes your kidneys. (and I've read that antifreeze is sweet, and it's usually bright colors, so make sure your antifreeze is stored where your kids can't get it or they might think they found a big jar of kool aid. Bad bad news.) The doctor at the end 'still having reservations' is a useful soundbite to include, I feel like, because it explains in a little nutshell why you can't always have a study to demonstrate some medical conclusion. The randomized double blind study is an awesome standard, but to do it, sometimes you'd have to give one of the study populations a known or suspected bad thing. (Not many randomized studies involving pregnancy for that matter; doctors can't in good conscience study potentially harmful things on pregnant women.) (and even if they could, the board that approves studies would almost certainly not approve the study.)

I know even for adults it's recommended to try diet changes and drinking more water if at all possible before relying on medicine to fix constipation because apparently your digestive system can grow dependent on the medicine to get things moving if you use laxatives a lot, so having a kid on a daily regimen seems strange--although, I don't know how recently the 'take it easy with laxatives' guidelines were developed, so kids who are toddlers or elementary school kids now, possibly the doctors didn't know yet when those kids were babies.

Also I have read snippets here and there that mental health may be connected to gut flora, so psych symptoms potentially coming from digestion medicines makes at least a little sense. I feel like I don't have the bio knowledge necessary to really understand the connections, and the connection might not be fully understood even by doctors at this point anyway.

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Prune juice, the ultimate gateway drug