Emma Howard: Hello I’m Emma Howard and now I am joined by Dr Su Laurent, who is consultant pediatrician at Barnet Hospital in Hertfordshire. Hello, Su.
Dr Su Laurent: Hi, Emma.
Emma Howard: Got a question here about constipation. So, again a common problem lot of people want to know the answer to this. Please can you give me some advice on how to treat constipation in my three year-old. She is often in agony and refuses to eat.
Dr Su Laurent: Constipation is a really common problem in toddlers particularly and I think is to do with is very much a western problem. It’s very unusual in Africa or India and is so much all problems and part of it is to do with diet and part of it is to do with the amount of fluid we give our children. So one of the first things you can do is to really focus on that and make sure you are giving your child plenty of water to drink or fruit juice and it is best to give those rather than milk in a constipated child and also really think about getting five portions of fruit and vegetable into your child every single day and that cant be quite a struggle.
But you probably if you are asking this question you are probably beyond that, you are probably got a child who is not eating anything because they are in such agony and they are screaming and they are looking pale and they are going to big distended obtain and this is the real problem and the first thing to do is to not be afraid of using laxatives to clear your child out and I prefer clearing out children from the top hand by really pouring in some laxatives in the top hand rather than putting out to puzzle rates and animals.
Emma Howard: And that kind of invasive procedure can really make that all?
Dr Su Laurent: It also makes them hold back over more you could imagine and very often when a child becomes constipated when they get the urge to poo, in fact they don’t want to do a poo so they start to hold back and you just develop this vicious circle which gets worse and worse and worse.
Now the laxatives out there, there are many of them and unfortunately quite a lot of children are given for long time something called lactulose, which actually is rather ineffective in a child who is really constipated for little bit of molecular station it can be helpful but it really bugged up child and they need something much more powerful and there is several really good things out in the market, there is something called medical and there is something called center and you really need your doctor to advice you what to give and how much but be prepared to be in for long whole if your child is constipated.
Emma Howard: That’s the problem isn’t it that when you start medicating your child, you will see them poo, you think you solved the problem, you stop the medication, allow the all --
Dr Su Laurent: It is so disappointing, its so disappointing when they come back and that is because that’s how they used to holding back, because that ball is rather sort of flappy by now and so used to just filling up and not really contracting down probably but they need to be retrained both from emotionally and also physically to learn how to poo.
Emma Howard: So would you say then the retraining is something that might take as long as you have the problem, bugged up for you, medicine for you?
Dr Su Laurent: You made well and with that is no normal.
Emma Howard: Su great advice, thank you and if you have a similar problem we have promote to given you some help, but remember it’s always best to go and see your own doctor for medical advice. Thanks for watching, we will be back with more health questions and answers.
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