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Sorbitol?


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Hi,

My daughter has a mild-moderate cold and so I gave her chewable zincs to suck on two days ago, and started noticing a bit of ticcing poking through again. Just throat clearing and sniffing. Then I noticed the ingredient list on the zinc... sweetened with Sorbitol. Has anyone else had problems with this sweetener? It's one I haven't heard a whole lot about.

 

Then last night, she accidentaly got a dill pickle with TARTRAZINE in it. Can you believe they put colour in dill pickles? I feel like the label-reading police!

 

Thanks,

Calicat

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<_<

well, we can't have that!

 

sorry, don't know much about that, but I'd be interested to know if the throat clear/sniffing subsides after a few days when not consuming those things. I don't know, I have a hard time these days believing that a small amount of an offender could cause symptoms, I lean more toward having "too much", (unless you know for sure that an immediate reaction is usually noted when consuming these things). I mean, has she had pickles before and things did not go south?

 

Faith

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Calicat,

 

I would suspect the cold started the tics, not the zinc/sorbitol. I have made the observation before that my son tics "where he's feeling it." cold = throat clearing tic; swollen lymph nodes = neck tic; movie theater = blinking tic . . .

 

Regarding the pickles, I think most of them use yellow dye and blue. Trader Joe's sells dye-free dill pickles. They are not as pretty as the others, but they taste great.

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Giving myself an answer, I did just find this in one of the Latitudes 2003 newsletters:

 

"If your child reacts to corn syrup, beware of sorbitol as well," warns one of our vigilant parents.

She writes:

 

My daughter reacts to processed corn products such as corn syrup, corn oil, high fructose corn syrup, etc. Many years ago she was having severe behavior problems and we hadn't changed anything other than the doctor prescribing some medicine (Carafate) for gastroesophogheal reflux. After three days of constant tantrums, I looked up Carafate in the PDR and noted that sorbitol was the sweetener. I called the pharmacist to ask what sorbitol was made from, and when she didn't know, I asked her to call the drug company and ask. The pharmacist called back the next day and told me that sorbitol is made from corn. We quit the medication, and she returned to her sweet charming self after 24 hours.

This was subsequently confirmed by Archer Daniel Midland (ADM), the major corn processor in the US. Fructose is also usually made from corn. According to ADM, in processing corn oil, corn syrup, sorbitol, etc., they soak the corn in sulfuric acid and later add another chemical to counter the acid. All of the processed corn products have sulfur residues in them, with dextrose having the least amount. The person I spoke with at ADM told me that her mother reacted to the sulfur residue, and perhaps that was the cause of my daughter's problems.

 

(This child can eat ordinary corn with no problem, ruling out a corn allergy.)

 

I have noticed that for sorbitol, whether she reacts to it depends on the amount. The normal dose of the prescription medication that she had reacted to was to take 1 tsp, three times a day. She definitely reacted to that. Yet months later we retried the medication only taking it once a day, and she was ok. Unfortunately, medicines don't list the quantity of the inactive ingredients, only the primary active ingredients. So it's impossible to know how much sorbitol is in any particular product.

 

Note: If you or your child are asthmatic, sorbitol and other corn products may be an asthma trigger because of their sulfite content. See more about sulfite and asthma.

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