Bed wetting=milk/wheat allergy?

[bbrandonsmom]

I've just recently come across an article referring bed wetting to be an effect of dairy or gluten allergy. So of course I started searching and found more. Has anyone come across this or know anything about it? I think we're going to try it-ds is 5 and still wets at night. Every once in awhile he's dry. He usually drinks a glass of milk before bed too. And it's dawning on me that our little guy-just turned 3-I stopped putting dipes on him at night and it's 50/50 w/ him, but he doesn't drink milk before bed, and is dry more. But we just started with him not long ago. We are not completely gluten free, but a lot of our diet is. For dairy, well, it does seem a big part of our diet-we love cheese and yogurt and I do cook w/ milk. I think I'm going to start with stopping the milk before bed, though everything I find says to cut all dairy and gluten for 2wks.

[3monkeys]

Ya know I think it could be or it couldnt be. Its not a magic cure thats for sure. I have a 7 year old who is day and night incontinent. I have tried it all, gluten free, dairy free, meat free, graiin free, you name it. ANd the diet I found works best for her is a NO preservative diet and an organic diet. The purer her diet is in terms of chemicals etc then the more control she seems to have. But I only found this after experimenting, but more than that I think its developmental. And not physical (no sign of that) but she does have a small bladder, but she also has icredible pelvic floor muscles. I think ofr her its neurological. I think there are bits of her brain that just havent made the connections yet and she wets (and cause her bladder is so small its such a small amount). BUT, she has just started cutting her adult molars and at the same time she is gaining control over her baldder during the day. Its almost like the change that happened that triggered her molars to come down was the trigger to help her control herself. She was 10 days dry, and she had NEVER done that. I am just speculating, as I have not read anything, but I am convinced her body has had a chemical and or neurological change toward adulthood and her body is maturing. I am glad we refused drugs etc for her cause they treated the symptom (ie being wet) and not the cause (ie not quite deveopled enough to have that control). And all she needed to learn was when she was wet to go, wash and change......... not overly hard. She still has her moments and is nowhere near dry at night but we have progress. I would try it, but honestly, I wouldnt expect a lot and if its that easy then thats great...................

[Wonder-Full]

yeah, not toooo sure, but I do know when I was trialling dairy free for DD (she wasn't yet 3) that one surprising "side effect" was that she had her first dry night within 2-3 days of going dairy free. It wasn't a sure fix, but I did notice it was the turn around for her and within a month or so she was free of nappies at night that occurred gradually whereas she'd been a very heavy wetter every single night until that time.

[Wonder-Full]

Oh, and DD was gluten free anyway because we eat GF in this house.

[TanyaL]

I've read of other foods being involved, really whatever a person is sensitive to, but DD was dry at night within 3-4 days of cutting out gluten and dairy, a nice surprise benefit. As far as I've been able to tell, those are the only foods she is intolerant of.

[bbrandonsmom]

We are on day 4. So for the past 3 nights=2 dry. I picked up Almond milk (going to try making my own), and ds likes it. I found a gluten/dairy free cookbook to try. I need to find a cheese and yogurt sub. I'd say we are about 1/2 gluten free and I'm working on that. It's not completely in my budget to go 100%-I need to check that though. A friend of mine buys bulk, so I need to check w/ her on costs etc.
I started thinking too about the times ds has mentioned his belly hurts after drinking his milk. I just figured it was maybe because he drank it too fast, but I'm wondering if he is intolerant.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Mine responded best to bribery and corruption.... :slinks away:

[Sandra17]

After first reading this post two weeks ago, it added to my thoughts about us going dairy free (or milk/cheese/yoghurt free; keeping butter for the meantime). For my daughter (3.5) for her incontinence, for my son for his asthma, for my husband and myself for lung/chest mucousy conditions.

It has helped us all, mostly signifcantly me (I'm feeling better than I had in years) and my daughter. She was wetting her pants sometimes and almost always soiling them. Two weeks into the dairy free regime, she hardly ever wets her pants, seems so much more aware of her body, and is using the toilet/potty for bowel motions most of the time. The pungent smell is much less so when she poos as well. Previously, she had been almost addicted to cheese (a weakness of mine as well).

Although I hadn't been concerned about nights (who cares about night nappies when you are still changing wet and/or pooey pants more than once per day?), I have noticed how much less wet her night nappy is now, and can see that she may be out of night nappies in the next few months after all.

[bbrandonsmom]

Ds hs been dry except 2 nights since my last post here. So I think that's great. HE is so happy when he wakes up dry. The only dairy he's had (unless it's been hidden in something and I missed it) has been a sprinkle of cheese on a sandwich, or a slice of pizza. He seems ok w/ that tiny amount, and he doesn't have it daily.
Now for my youngest (3), who was 50/50 on dry nights is now drier. I had run out of yogurt and he didn't have any for about a week, maybe more. And he's been having the Almond milk, as he doesn't like cow milk. I started to notice he is having less wet nights. I haven't been able to go gluten free yet. Mostly, we are, but not all the way.
Sandra-I found out about the dairy/gluten/bedwetting info on the Feingold Diet page. I'll link it.

[bbrandonsmom]

http://www.feingold.org/

[betach]

with the feingold ideas: is it primarily to leave out:


(CS) = Corn syrup or other corn sweetener
(MSG/HVP) = Monosodium glutamate
(CP) = Calcium propionate
(SF) = Sulfiting agents
(SB) = Benzoates
(N) = Nitrates/nitrites
dairy

did I miss something? seems that they are a good support group, but why would one need to buy a 'foodlist' book- instead of just being able to look at ingredient lists?

[TanyaL]

re: Feingold's food lists, my understanding is that they've done more in-depth research, things that aren't obvious like reduced fat milk, I don't remember if the issue is the form of vitamin A that's included or it's a chemical that stabilizes the synthetic vitamin A (but not the A itself) that's a problem. But whole milk that's not fortified, or raw milk that's not fiddled with at all, I think is Feingold-compliant. So if you just stick with whole foods, you shouldn't need it, but the more you want to include some convenience foods, the more helpful it seems to be.

Plus, for stage 1 Feingold, you'd want to reduce salicylates, a natural food chemical in a lot of normal, healthy foods--berries, grapes, almonds, quite a range of foods are high in salicylates. If you're salicylate sensitive, you can supplement a few nutrients to basically improve the bandwidth of that detox pathway--you can get other lists of high/low sals foods though. Salicylates and a lot of the other chemicals listed in Feingold are excreted by a specific chemical pathway in our bodies, and when we get low on nutrients for that pathway, we start having problems with those chemicals--it seems like more people react to the artificial colors/flavors/whatnot that Feingold limits than to salicylates, but either way, reading about those detox pathways (if you see improvement on Feingold) could be quite helpful. Wonder if I can find a page on that? ...

http://livingnetwork.co.za/chelationnetwork/food/sulfates_sulfation_feingold/

This talks about it some, but you'd want to go somewhere else to read more about sulfation, things like molybdenum and B6 are involved...

http://tuberose.com/Liver_Detoxification.html

The part near the bottom lists nutrients for the various detox pathways.

[betach]

Thanks TanyaL for your detailed response. I found it very informative.

I have a 9 year old is still has this challenge.. on and off at nights..
I myself wasn't totally dry at night until sometime when I was 10yrs old, when it became a mind over matter thing.
I've also heard very good results from the expensive alarms.. I would like to get a hold of one of those.. not worrying too much since I know it is in the genes (other cousins had it for a while too)

[TanyaL]

Glad I could help.

One thing to consider for things that run in the family, at least for me, those things that run in my family mostly have turned out to be that since we're related, we're susceptible in similar ways to similar problems. It's nice because once I find one or two solutions, it solves a lot, but it took me a while to figure out that I should even be looking for a solution. I don't know if that's a possibility in your case, but maybe it's worth considering.

That said--while DD stopped wetting when we cut out gluten and dairy, DS is 4.5 yo and still isn't dry at night. For us, I think it's a sign of something out of balance, but I don't know what yet. I think I've identified all his food intolerances so I'm not sure where to go from here. If I thought he'd be ok with acupuncture, we'd try that, TCM has acupuncture points and herbs for night wetting, but I don't think he'd lie still for needles. I'm considering an off-the-shelf homeopathic mix intended for nightwetting but I haven't decided yet.