DS recently diagnosed with Coeliac Disease. Probiotics needed?

[RebeccaP]

Hi. My 4yo DS has recently been diagnosed with cd. We've started the gluten free diet. I'm wondering if we can help the healing process by giving probiotics or vitamins. I've also read about bone broth being beneficial for healing the gut - has anyone tried doing this?

[glutenfreecake]

hi, I gave my daughter probiotics for a while, I can't say if it helped or not, but it helped me to feel like I was doing something. I have the Hemsley and Hemsley cookery book from the library at the moment, they advocate bone broth a lot. I think it is such a weird term, I much prefer to think of it as chicken stock, and yes I do make it and feed it to the family, mostly as it's delicious and frugal. x I hope the gluten free diet is helping your DS feel better.

[RebeccaP]

Thanks glutenfreecake. What probiotics did you use? I think I'll get the Helmsley book. Not sure if DS is feeling much better yet. Been on the GF diet for 3 weeks now. I think that's why I want to try to help him by healing his gut faster!

[glutenfreecake]

hi, I bought some live yoghurt with probiotics, sorry can't remember the brand. The Helmsley book is interesting but they do have some ideas that are a little time consuming, and maybe not so child friendly.... I also gave my daughter (she's 16) a vitamin called metatone, but I don't think you can give it to children under 12, there may be other multivitamins you could give, I wanted one with lots of B vitamins and these often become depleted with coeliac disease. I make endless soups with the stock/bone broth. Have you registered with coeliac uk? they have lots of info on their site, and on their fb page. It might take a few more weeks to see some improvement on the gluten free diet but hopefully you will soon, we definitely could tell my daughter was feeling better after 6 weeks, but it can take a long time for all the symptoms to go, depending on the amount of damage. x

[MsRainbow]

When my DS was diagnosed at 20 months I gave him probiotics, like glutenfreecake I'm not sure if they helped him but it made me feel better. I used Optibac which I got from my chemist. Our Gastro consultant also recently recommended we try BioGaia probiotics. The BioGaia ones are small flavoured pills which my DS (now 4) won't eat, and he can tell if I grind them up and try to hide them in other things so I'm going to try Optibac again as that is a flavourless powder which can easily be added to food.
My DS is also prescribed Abidec by our dietician which he has daily.

[RebeccaP]

Thanks MsRainbow & Glutenfreecake. Yes I have registered with Coeliac UK. We're yet to get a dietician, which is probably why I feel like I'm floundering. Just want to make sure we're doing all we can for DS. I'm going to get on the case with the chicken stock! Will start giving vitamins too. Thanks both for your help.

[Wolfbasher]

I gave my two coeliac DC probiotics - I think from BioCare for a while after diagnosis. Not sure how much difference it made. They were expensive but quite cleverly designed - the 'probiotic' was hidden inside a straw, so I just gave them the straw to drink out of, and they didn't even know that they were taking anything. They were very young though (toddlers) so might not be necessary with an older child. I think the 'probiotic' yoghurts have too low a level of probiotic to do anything, plus are usually packed with sugar which doesn't do gut bacteria any favours.

The huge transformation in my eldest (severely coeliac) DS was, I think, just simply down to not eating gluten and having a healthy balanced diet that he was finally able to absorb the nutrients from.

I also give them WellKid chewable vitamins. Be very careful with vitamins and probiotics etc. - loads of them contain or "may contain" gluten. Make sure you read the ingredients carefully or else you could be doing more harm than good!