Fearful of eating

[hugs2day]

Over a month ago my 7 year old started to restrict his own eating. Basically he went from being a big eater and snacker to rejecting food or not eating very much of his meals. I thought he had GERD because he complained about hiccups, chest pain, said everything tasted yucky and seemed relieved when we would give him alka seltzer gold. Well we have been treating the GERD (ratadine) and now he shows signs of anxiety anytime we ask him to eat or ask what he wants to eat. He gets anxious and says no thank you and wants us to leave him alone. I can offer him his favorites and he tells me NO in a panic.

 

He has limited language(autism) so this has been very difficult to figure out but my DH and I have reached the conclusion its looking more and more like anxiety at the thought of eating. We are managing to get a few pieces of toast in him daily with much effort. He will drink electrolyte water no problem so we are not in danger with him yet, but its only a matter of time as kids lose weight and can become malnutritioned very qucikly. He is already looking skinnier to me.

 

I have several calls into the his GI Doc to get more of a thorough workup but my instinct is leading me to believe it is anxiety as the cause more and more. He was a picky eater before but a robust eater and now not wanting to eat. I don't think its autism related I think OCD from the PAnDAS or Lyme is the culprit. My 9 year old whom is typical went thru this with pandas and said his brain told him if he ate then something bad would happen. He finally got over it when we switched his abx from azithro to penn vk. I think this may be happening now to my youngest but again not I am not positive.

 

Also I have to mention he does not look sick he is jumping on trampoline, playing his video games, doing great in tutoring, I think if it was GI related he would appear sick.

 

Any ideas or advice would be appreciated. Starting to panic.

[LNN]

I would normally suggest ERP for the eating behaviors, along with pepcid. But with the autism in the mix, I'm not sure how to suggest ERP, unless you can identify the fear behind the behavior/aversion.

 

We have a similar problem with DD, who restricts her eating due to GERD. But she'll happily eat sweets. Just not dinner. Antioxidants seem to help her feel better (we use alpha lipoic acid) but we haven't gotten to the root of the problem. I think yeast is part of it but there's also a seasonality to it - we have this problem every summer.

 

FWIW- alka seltzer gold is used in lyme treatments to help with herxing/detox and to make the body more alkaline. Not very well-read on it - you might want to ask about why it may help your son on the lyme forum. But I'd keep using it if it seems to help. I'd try it here but I can't imagine DD actually drinking the stuff.