Eating issues

[JAG10]

Some of you have experience with your children restricting their food intake and we had this with our dd10 prior to IVIG. Now, we may be having the opposite issue....Since IVIG 5/10, our dd10 has gained weight....18.5lbs. Now, she does have a cast on her wrist, which seems pretty heavy, but that is still probably 15lbs? In 4 months? Yes, she's had a growth spurt too; 3 inches (and her shoe size flew to an 8.5!!!!) So, she's 5'1" and about 100lbs, not fat but more than she was before. Is this a similar beast as eating restriction? When she would restrict her intake it would be because she found some foods like meats "disgusting" and make her gag from disgust which I think is different that fear of choking. Now....she'll eat a wide variety of foods, too fast and too much.

 

I've been giving her 5-HTP, 100 mg in morning and 100mg at night and that seems to have tamed her appetite some. What do you think? A concern?

 

I must say since the May IVIG, her overt OCD issues have been well-controlled and not causing her problems. Her lingering symptoms are cognitive processing speed/learning/organizational in nature only and a little immaturity, but recently her handwriting has been beautiful.

[kimballot]

We had some compulsive eating going on with the last exacerbation and a large weight gain. My son is doing 5htp now and in a fitness program - which seems to be helping now that he is not fighting a chronic sinus infection.

 

Your daughter's BMI is right in the "normal" range, so you don't have to worry about that right now. It could just be a growth spurt and not related to PANDAS at all.... hard to know.

[dcmom]

We had some of that with healing too- dd hadn't gained a lb in nine months. After pex, I think she was making up for lost time. She ate, she gained, she grew, and it has leveled off. Try not to worry, offer healthy choices, keep her active, breathe, and things will most likely level off.

[Worried_Dad]

After 1st IVIG, our son started eating like a HORSE - more food than I could imagine at a single sitting! In our case, we were massively relieved by this, though. He'd been anorexic before that and had lost almost 20 lbs (which was about 20% of his body weight).

 

Almost seemed like he was "making up for lost time" and genuinely enjoying meals that had been pure torment for him prior to treatment. So - as long as your dd maintains a reasonable height/weight ratio - I'd say that's good news!

[emmalily]

Since starting abx last December I gained 10 lbs in just a couple months and then stopped (and obviously I am past the point of growth spurts). I had been restricting prior to that, so I think it's a combination of "oh yay I can eat food again" and a body that had been "starving" trying to find its naturally comfortable weight.

[nevergiveup]

Identical to my dd. She gained 5 lbs in one month, eating so fast and furious and always hungry. This happened when we switched her from gluten free back to normal diet. She said that she was worried she would stop eating and had fears of anorexia at this time so she shuffled down her food as fast as possible. I believe the fast eating and eating a lot can be some type of fear. It was my dd"s fear of going off the gluten free diet at the time and fear it would make her sick. Now two months into the regular diet she is eating slowly and not overeating. At the time of the overeating and fast eating she was also very preoccupied with what each meal would be each day and what time we were eating. This has also stopped now. But man did she eat alot. She only wieghed 80 lbs so 5 lbs in four weeks was quite noticeable. I am now very careful to make sure she is eating low calorie healthly food and slowing down during meals.

 

I think it is so important to recognize the ocd stuff as early as possible to help prevent it from becoming a long term issue. If my husband and I recognize my dd"s latest ocd issue early enough we can help by slowly exposing her to her fears and help her understand it is an irrational fear. However if she is in the midst of a very severe pandas attack this type of "exposure therapy" does not work, only works during "good" times. The key is catching it early, for us we now recognize her MO, she will lie or say she doesn"t feel good to get away from her fear. So we are very alert now when we see this excuse coming up.