Page 40 - Winter2020

The fact that If the baby is dehydrated, Campbell-Mc- SOLUTIONS THAT ARE NO SOLUTION
Miralax has Bride recommends adding more water to the When hydration and dietary changes do not
baby’s milk formula. In situations where the do the trick, or fecal impaction has become a
never been baby is producing only small amounts of very concern, it may become necessary to perform
approved by dark urine, the formula initially can be diluted enemas (for children who will tolerate them)
the FDA for almost by half; after the urine normalizes, the or more occasionally, to resort to glycerin sup-
parents can then experiment with different positories. Disturbingly, one of mainstream
pediatric amounts of water to find the correct ratio for medicine’s top recommendations for disim-
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use has not their baby. (She notes that every child has differ- paction—and often, its enthusiastic recom-
stopped ent requirements for water, depending on factors mendation for ongoing “maintenance”—is to
such as metabolism, activity level and weather.)
administer an “osmotic laxative” featuring a
health care Sometimes, dehydration is not the trigger- highly problematic active ingredient called
providers ing factor for infant constipation. Some babies polyethylene glycol (PEG) 3350. One of the
on the raw milk formula find high levels of leading PEG-3350-containing products is the
from dairy protein constipating. (Formula based on Bayer-owned, over-the-counter drug Miralax;
promoting it raw goat milk is more likely to be constipat- the fact that Miralax has never been approved by
as the “go-to” ing that formula based on raw cow’s milk.) In the FDA for pediatric use has not stopped health
these cases, Campbell-McBride recommends care providers from promoting it as the “go-to”
remedy for switching the infant to the liver-based formula remedy for constipated children. In fact, across
constipated and when the baby is old enough (no earlier all age groups, Miralax is the second leading
children. than four months of age), carefully starting to “digestive remedy” in the U.S. 23
Horror stories abound about PEG 3350’s
introduce appropriate solid foods (see “Avoid
the Rice Cereal”). propensity to cause extreme neuropsychiatric
Large amounts of high-protein dairy—such side effects, including rage, anxiety and para-
as whey, yogurt, kefir and cheese—can also noia. Between 2007 and 2017, the FDA received
aggravate constipation in some older children reports of over fifteen hundred different adverse
and adults. Deemphasizing these high-protein reactions to PEG 3350 in children, of which
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dairy foods and replacing them with more high- nearly three in five were neurological. A parent
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fat dairy—butter, ghee and homemade sour group called Parents Against Miralax has tens
cream—can help resolve the issue by lubricating of thousands of members, many of whom have
the gut wall and softening the stool. Campbell- joined class-action lawsuits.
McBride also recommends increasing animal There is growing evidence that PEG-3350-
fat consumption overall as well as prioritizing based drugs may alter the microbiome and
gelatinous meats over muscle meats. even increase the risk of antibiotic resistance.

C-SECTIONS AND INFANT CONSTIPATION: AN UNEXPLORED TOPIC
A growing body of research indicates that babies delivered by C-section are more likely than vaginally-delivered
babies to experience chronic health problems later in life, including type 1 diabetes, obesity and asthma. The hy-
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pothesis underlying these observations is that infants born by C-section miss out on exposure to the mother’s vaginal
and intestinal microbiota, and that during vaginal births this exposure plays an important role in “priming” the infant’s
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immune system. As one researcher describes it, “Every generation of mothers hands over its microbiome to the next,
as the baby is coated with beneficial germs while being squeezed through the birth canal—but this doesn’t happen for
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babies born through C-section.”
In 2018, Japanese researchers conducted a first-of-its-kind study assessing the potential correlation between C-section
delivery and infant constipation, expecting that infants not delivered vaginally would have higher rates of constipation
(as defined by weekly frequency of bowel movements). Although the study’s results did not bear out the researchers’
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assumptions—instead showing comparable rates of constipation for both modes of delivery—the investigators noted
that the low overall rate of constipation in Japanese babies (1.37 percent) may have made it difficult to detect meaningful
differences. Suggestively, they found that C-section babies were significantly less likely to be exclusively breastfed. One
wonders what such a study might find in the U.S., where constipation and C-sections both occur at alarmingly high levels.

38 Wise Traditions WINTER 2020