Published on 12, July, 2020
my 14yo child has just received an ASD diagnosis. The last few years have been extremely hard, with my child suffering severe anxiety.
They are now receiving help and have been prescribed sertraline to help the anxiety, which is starting to work. But they are still suffering from liquid diarrhoea every morning and during the day. Their sertraline dose is still low (only 50mg) and we are going to up it to see if that helps, but any other advice on how to help their gut would be great.
We have looked for links with food intolerances etc., but they have this diarrhoea every single day, it doesn’t come and go. It also only started as their anxiety got bad. But that does mean they have been living with an incredibly upset tummy for over a year now.
I get upset stomach due to stress and anxiety but also dairy! Try cutting it out completly. It's a pain as theres not a wide range of alternatives but it may help. I was being sick daily and upset tummy. I realised it was dairy
Taste buds can't detect Lactose - up to 5% of milk is pure sugar and it's suspended in the watery part so cheese is normally ok. Lactase converts the Lactose into simpler sugars that can be tasted (it's why Lactofree tastes sweeter).
The bacteria in the gut for dairy is a Western-only evolution so the bacteria lives on the narrower parts of the intestine's ridges so it's ripped away first with an upset tummy. It often comes back - but it can be months or years before you can process dairy again.
They stopped having milk already - breakfast cereals were the first to go. They do still eat cheese though.
For food, try simplifying down as much as possible - roast chicken & boiled potatoes work for me - simple salad - lettuce, cottage cheese, beetroot, chedder - tomotoes can be risky- their seeds moreso - just use the flesh. Boiled aggs & omelettes work too. Avoid processed things like spreads - real butter is best. Steak and bacon is good too - nice & lean. Tuna and mackeral work too - the oils seem to be ok.
good - then it just time that will give them the evidence of the patterns of behaviour. Trust is hard to repair.
Done that. They now get to help write their care plan. It is tons better now. They have three safe people (that they chose) to go to and a safe space that is actually safe etc. Just takes a long while for your body to believe what your mind is telling you. I can tell the safe space is starting to feel safe as they now remove their shoes when they go in there. But the fear reaction every morning continues.
The school's attitude is really not going to help them. It's probably why the stress of putting themselves into harm's way is triggering the stress response. 30 weeks a year of living hell - even if the stress source has been removed, the fear will continue - until you get the school into a meeting with you and the kids to define EXACTLY what will and will not happen to them in that environment - they will need almost a written guarantee of the school's behaviour and what to do in a melt-down situation - that might comfort them enough to calm down.
Their home environment is good - a safe space for them. After speaking to the autism person at Camhs it seems we have been doing everything they suggest automatically. It is school that has always been the trigger and that built up into any form of out of the house activity.
The school have been really bad - with the headmaster yelling at them, threatening them with expulsion etc. just because they were having panic attacks and were in the supposed safe space allocated to them. I ended up having to go to the governors to stop it and got the head of CAMHS in the area to come and see the school. It has taken time but I think the school is fixed now. But it is going to take a lot longer for it to feel completely safe for my child. We would have moved them but they have a great support network of friends there