One of my children have been a bed wetter. They have outgrown the time period where it is typical and moved on to the embarrassing stage. We blamed it on the fact that he is a very, very heavy sleeper. I never thought much past that.
I had taken him to the naturopath for allergies and she asked about his history. She asked if he is a bed wetter. She then proceeded to tell me that she is seeing a big correlation between bedwetting and dairy. I had never heard of that. He didn't have much dairy but after her conversation, I noticed that the nights that he did wet his bed, he had some sort of dairy the night before.
We have been off dairy for a while and he hasn't wet the bed in several months. However, he decided to go get an ice cream sunday with friends by himself the other day. Free agency is a kicker. That night, I awoke to the sound of the shower. Yep. He wet the bed. I asked him if the ice cream sunday was worth it. It was good for him to see that there was no doubt that dairy was the trigger. I guess you need a little reminder now and then.
If you have a bed wetter, give it a try. You need to give it a couple weeks for the system to clean out a bit.
It never ceases to amaze me that food is the link to most every problem out there, if not all.
I have no idea if bedwetting and dairy have a link, but I do know that my ex-husband was the reason my son stopped wetting the bed. Like clock-work everynight for 3 nights he'd get up every two hours and took my bedwetting son into the restroom and patiently waited till he did/or didn't "go" then took him back to bed. (He was the third child in a string of bedwetters)and like magic we never had another problem.
ReplyDeleteI could never muster the ability to wake up every two hours, just to get up and leave for work at 5:30am, but he did, and I really think it was what stopped it. (Maybe you have already been down this road?)
Crazy! Did she explain why dairy causes bedwetting?
ReplyDeleteShe said she didn't know why completely it works but she said dairy causes an inflammation and that includes inflaming the bladder. She says it works all the time.
ReplyDeleteOne explanation could be constipation, as many children get constipated on dairy and it is a known and scientifically described cause of enuresis.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree, Steve but in our case, Tanner wasn't constipated. He also ate dairy very limited.
ReplyDeleteI'm just learning about the connection between dairy and bedwetting. My 14yr old son has bedwetting problems. When you cut out dairy was it all dairy? Or just milk and ice cream? It would be very hard to cut out butter and cheese as well.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to see if dairy is the culprit, you need to do 100% all dairy for a good month. No cheats. For my son, after we were 100% for a couple months , a little cheat now and then seemed to be ok but if he did have a whole bowl of ice cream, it would pose a problem. It has been a couple years now and if he has pizza or a little ice cream now, he is fine.
ReplyDeleteMy son is almost 9 and still wets the bed at night and I thought we tried everything to try to keep him dry. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon an article discussing the bed wetting and dairy link. I thought we should try an experiment for 2 weeks. We tried Silk Pure Almond original, he likes it. We are just finishing week one. He has been dry every night. The only thing we have done differently is replace the milk. He has had some butter and cheese, not much. No ice cream yet, mostly due to the weather. So now I am wondering.... Should I have him tested for food allergies? Is Silk the healthiest alternative to milk? How does one begin to have a gluten and dairy free home?
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ReplyDeleteAllergy testing isn't always accurate and it isn't always an allergy that the body is reacting to. It can be a digestive issue. Many, many people cannot digest milk right so do your best to stay off it. Some do better with cultured diary so harder cheeses can often be tolerated but eliminate the best you can. As far as the brands, the least ingredients are best. making it of course is your best alternative but other than that,I like the plain Trader Joes better than some.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting. My almost 8 year old son who has worn pull-ups has never been dry in the morning and has never woken up in the night to use the restroom...that is until the last few days when we ran out of milk so he had water/lemonade for dinner. These last few days he has woken up in the middle of the night to use the restroom and has woken up dry. Could it be a coincidence? Could it be the lack of milk at dinner. I let him have ice cream and milk before 3:00 but not after.....Very interesting....
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