Recent statistics show that one fifth or so of the eight million babies born each year in the US suffer from acid reflux, also known as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and babies that face developmental or neurological challenges are even more at risk from this complaint. Baby acid reflux is a condition that remains incompletely researched and that is often subject to misconceptions as well.
In a healthy person, there is a circular muscle acting as a valve at the junction of the stomach and the esophagus (called the lower esophageal sphincter) and stopping stomach acid from flowing back up the esophagus. Gastroesophageal reflux disease happens when that sphincter cannot retain the acids in the stomach. These then move into the throat sometimes as far as the larynx. In simple terms, GERD is a mechanical problem in the digestive system, which can be corrected. Numerous symptoms can result from GERD leading to complications like infections, pain, ulcers, difficulties in eating, vocal disorders and even cancer in the long run.
For the first 3 to 4 months of a baby’s life, frequent vomiting happens in 50% of all cases, peaking at 4 months. In addition, reflux condition is easy to confuse with usual vomiting in babies. Vomiting is both painful and distressing when caused by acid reflux. Baby acid reflux can be particularly challenging to diagnose and treat. Because Babies cannot speak about their feelings, it is difficult to determine if they are suffering from a medical problem.
The best solution for the right diagnosis of baby acid reflux is to have a specialist diagnosis performed by an ENT (ear, nose, throat) doctor or a gastroenterologist. To correctly diagnose Baby acid reflux, several further symptoms of acid reflux need to be seen. Besides sporadic vomiting, these Baby acid reflux symptoms include: infections of the middle ear, waking in the night without reason, enlargement of the adenoids, abdominal pains, asthma, crying non-stop, anemia, vomiting of blood (hematemesis), continual coughing, a high-pitched sound when breathing, repeated croup, reluctance to feeding and inflammation of the nose and the sinus.
Possibilities for remedies to gastroesophageal reflux disease can be: medicaments, surgery and holistic programs. However, even for adult patients, surgery is rarely an option in normal situations. For baby acid reflux, neither medicament nor surgery is optimal answers. Medicaments may be sub-optimal in particular for infants for any of the three reasons below:
1. Medicaments for GERD treat merely the symptoms but do not fix the deeper cause of the condition.
2. Medicaments for GERD can impact an infant’s immune system, leading to weakness and vulnerability in immunity, possibly also leading to different health complications other than acid reflux as well as the worsening of acid reflux condition.
3. Medicaments can cause multiple secondary effects that are present but hidden in babies.
The best solution to baby acid reflux is a holistic one while focusing on a global set of changes in lifestyle and diet. Strong support is given to this concept by recent research. One such research for example demonstrated that moving to soy-based formula from cow’s milk based formula gave a 40% recovery rate in infants. Other research showed acid reflux symptoms being aggravated when infants received juice products. Modifying feeding and sleeping position was also seen to be of benefit in treating infant acid reflux.
