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Brooke Sarazyn
My 6 year old daughter has been having issues with chronic diarrhea for well over a year. Her pediatrician says she has encopresis which is when a child becomes so constipated that the bowels start to leak and diarrhea comes out without the child being aware it is happening. There are so many things I have tried to help her regain control of her bowel movements and fix the consistency. Most recently we went through 3 weeks of using a tincture of dandelion root, elecampane root, gentian root and ginger root twice a day. Doing this brought some minor improvement – during the treatment she passed two regular bowels but she is still having diarrhea multiple times a day in a pull up. Marshmallow root is something I have regularly given her in the past while battling this as well. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to help her?
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Jenny Bright
Hi Brooke, I’m so concerned to hear what your little girl is going through. I wonder how is her health otherwise, does she seem to be absorbing the nutrients from her food properly?
Have you been to see a naturopath/herbalist for an intake appointment? They would take a full case history and do a food diary for maybe a month to see if any causes could be found. I know Commonwealth Herbs are very good, and they do both paid and free clinical sessions for those who need it. I would also look for someone specialising in gut health to do an online session with.
I’m wondering if you’ve already tried an elimination diet to rule out food sensitivities. I’ve read lots of case studies for various ailments where that resolved the health issues.
Another place to ask for advice could be herbalists/naturopaths on YouTube with a lower subscriber count, who reply to questions in the comments section. One example is Byron Herbalist, who specialises in gut health, and whose videos you may find useful if you’ve not already found him.
I have no experience with encopresis, but I will look through my books this weekend and see if I can find any case studies online to see if there is anything that you might not have tried yet. I’m very interested to see what Doc and others suggest, hopefully you will be able to piece together a solution for your little girl!
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Hi Jenny,
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your ideas with me and help me with researching case studies as well. I will look into Commonwealth and Byron Herbalist. I have never heard of either prior to this. We have a local apothecary that I may share this with also but usually she is eager to go with me when I visit them and I try not to risk embarrassing her or creating more resistance. We have tried an elimination diet with her under the guidance of both our pediatrician and chiropractor who practices functional medicine. We did not find any allergens/triggers when going through the proccess of elimination. We eat a whole food diet and try to stay away from heavily processed foods as much as possible. We also give her probiotics. She is still gaining weight and height healthily. She is a very picky eater which I believe has direct correlation with her gut health/bowel movements; she asked to eat nuts for this first time in a very long time during the course of using the tincture I mentioned above. There is a part of me that is concerned some of the condition might have a psychological component because it started around the same time that my dad died and she became a big sister. We have not addressed the potential psychological component.
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Hello again Brooke,
That’s great to hear that she’s still gaining height and weight healthily 😊And it’s also good news that she doesn’t seem to have any allergens or food sensitivities.
Out of interest, what kind of probiotics is she taking? I keep meaning to do something about probiotics with my kids, but the supplements and store-bought probiotic foods that I’ve seen so far seem very expensive, and I’m not sure whether they have enough strains of good bugs in them to make a difference. I probably need to look into making something homemade like kefir that they will like, or get them playing in some good clean dirt more often.
About picky eating: My little boy, now 7, was a very picky eater, and there is still room for a lot of improvement. Before the age of 5/6 he had limited sources of protein, and the only fruit he would eat were bananas and baby fruit puree, no veg, not even potatoes!
At one point he reduced the foods he wanted to eat even more, so I started really focusing on it and watching all the YouTube videos and reading blog posts about picky eating. They mostly revolve around the same good advice – share meals with your child, let them have control over what they eat, offer them all kinds of different foods, be positive about food, don’t be stressed, etc. Following the advice, I was relieved to see very quick progress in the variety of foods he ate and his attitude in regard to new food and eating healthily.
I also felt very sad, because I wish I had been doing those things with him from the beginning. The first few years of his life, our family was going through a very stressful period, and I wasn’t focusing enough on my kids’ diet because my mind was elsewhere. I also had limiting beliefs about how “hard” it would be to try to get him to eat veggies, and vague feelings about how it was “too late” to change his tastes.
Even now, I still catch myself thinking “he won’t like that” and giving a new health food to my daughter to try and not him. But then I remember to ask him, and whether he likes the food or not, he now has a self-image as someone who tries every new food at least once. Yesterday, I gave him a green smoothie to try. I thought he would find it disgusting. And he did, but then he kept tasting it in his mouth, and decided he did like some of the flavours – and then drank a whole cup!!
He has a great sense of humour, so sometimes I incorporate that into trying new foods, such as “sneaking” one leaf of spinach onto his plate at a time and asking him to eat each one, which he finds funny. A few spinach leaves won’t improve his nutrition overnight, but I’m hoping to normalise the experience of “eating leaves”, a concept he found very offputting at first!
The things I just mentioned might not apply in your situation, but I really hope that you can find some good advice online that will help. I saw an Einstein quote elsewhere on the forum “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer”. Sometimes it’s just a matter of focusing on the issue more for a while or changing up your mindset, until the new habits become normal.
Also, it is very interesting to hear about the potential psychological component, as that is a recurring major theme in regard to many encopresis cases. I will stop writing now as this post is already getting very long, but I’ll continue looking into this and be back in touch!
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I find that it’s really helpful in getting kids to try new foods when they are brought into the cooking proccess. This is especially fun for them in combination with wildcrafting.
for probiotics we rotate between various fermented homemade foods ie. kombucha, apple cider vinegar yogurt, etc. I make a bee balm oxymel using apple cider vinegar and honey that both my 3 year old and 6 year old love taking by the spoonful. It’s both sweet and sour.
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Kristy
Hello Brooke,
Encopresis is something that has plagued a child of mine for 7 years. The goal is to keep the intestine clear so it can heal. My child was prescribed large doses of Miralax for years to keep their colon clean. The concept was right but the method was harmful to my child, that stuff slowly made them sick in other ways. We saw another specialist and have found relief taking senna pills (a plant from the legume family). One night a week 3 pills are taken to clean out the colon then 2 are taken each evening after that. The condition is still there but manageable. Eating foods with a lot of fiber is a must along with a schedule of visiting the bathroom after every meal. The goal is to keep things from sitting and getting stuck in that damaged area of the intestine. Your child is young enough you can work with her to create the really important habits that can induce healing. It’s definitely not a quick fix.
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Hi Kristy,
Thank you so much for sharing this with me! We have recently had a major breakthrough. Under the guidance of an herbalist at our local apothecary I used cascara sagrada to clean my daughter out. Although I had known if cascara prior to this , I had been hesitant to use it with a child due to its strength. The dosage was 1/4 teaspoon powdered herb every 3 hours. After 2 doses my daughter had a large poop on the toilet and exclaimed “ mom, I can feel it!”( prior she had been telling me she doesn’t know when she’s pooping bc she can’t feel it). We did one more dose the next day. That was 12 days ago and she has had a bowel movement on the toilet every day and has not soiled her pants at all!!!
It has also been suggested to that we use a tea blend of yellow dock, cinnamon, rhubarb root and licorice for regular maintenance but we have yet to do so bc she is doing so great already just from being cleared out.
The herbalist told me the plants I was using prior to cascara weren’t strong enough and that’s why I wasn’t seeing any improvement.
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Elizabeth
Hello Brooke,
Have you ever considered doing a parasite cleanse for your daughter ? Below is a cleanse that I would suggest :
https://www.mmherbs.com/shop/c3092-clarkfx-2-oz-4377?category=394#attr=
Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer!
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