Probiotics - Have I Made Things Worse?

[Zalie]

We've got an appointment to see a paed GI in early september and, as my daughter won't be having any bloods taken until after she's seen him, we don't know whether she has celiac or not yet.

She's always had mushy poop - very messy and often escaping from her nappy at night. For the past 6 weeks we've been giving her a gluten-free probiotic yoghurt drink every day, and now she's gone from being mushy to constipated. She still goes almost every day, but her poop is now ranging from tiny rabbit pellets to huge rock hard stools.

What have I done? Has anyone else had a similar experience with probiotics? I don't know if this is a step towards getting better and she'll gradually develop 'normal' stools, or if I am just making things worse. I've stopped the probiotic drinks as of a week ago, but she's still having the hard poop issues despite that. The bloating after food and all the other 'celiac type' problems remain, but we've switched from mushy poop to hard poop, and I'm not sure if I've made her worse, and why the probiotics would do that? She has dairy every day already, so I can only guess it's the actual probiotic part of the drink that's caused the problem, rather than the yoghurt.

I'll obviously be discussing this with the Paed GI when we see him, but was wondering if anyone else had come across a similar problem when introducing probiotic drinks?

Thank you very much for any input and advice.

[RiceGuy]

It sounds like she may be dairy intolerant. This is very common with Celiac too. Even if she's not dairy intolerant, the digestive system may not be up to the challenge due to damage from Celiac. I'd highly suggest taking her off all dairy immediately, and see how she does.

Incidentally, the tests for Celiac are not reliable for children under about 6 years of age. Regardless of the results, please try the gluten-free diet at that time, along with dairy-free. It is probably not a good idea to jump immediately to soy either, as that is a top allergen.

How old is your daughter?

To give her probiotics, there are some dairy-free options. Coconut yogurt may be one of them. I suppose you could pull open a probiotic capsule, and empty it into juice or dairy-free milk for her.

[Celiactapper]

I thought I would just throw out a thought--some celiacs go back and forth between diarrhea and constipation. This is very common. However, I agree that you should probably remove all dairy from her diet temporarily to see if it's the dairy itself that she is reacting to. Is it possible that the gluten-free diet corresponded with the addition of the probiotics? If so, then it could simply be that, after all the diarrhea, her system is now slowing down because she's not eating gluten. You might add prune juice or some other vegetable/fruit juice to see if her digestion normalizes. I can say from personal experience that when I've accidentally eaten gluten(which RARELY happens), I'll have terrible diarrhea for the first few days followed by horrible constipation. After a few days, everything returns to normal.

[Zalie]

Thank you for your replies. My daughter has just turned 3, so I would guess that the tests aren't going to be amazingly accurate for her then. She's going through a not eating phase again (she's always been very disinterested in food) so am trying to get some gluten into her every day and encouraging her to eat what she wants so that she actually does eat something each day! At the moment, what she wants is small amounts of dry bread, steamed vegetables, fruit, cheese, plain pasta and a cup of milk, with the occasional cracker or cookie. So basically, all she's eating is gluten, fruit & veg and dairy!

Is there a test for dairy intolerance? If there is, I don't want to cut it out of her diet until we've seen the GI in early Sept, just in case he orders tests that would pick it up. There's definitely something going on with her, but the swing from permanently mushy poop (2 or 3 times per night) to constipation and hard stools once a day has had me baffled. I'm just hoping that the GI is willing to listen to us, and not just try to send us away with a prescription for a laxative! Fingers crossed...