Toddler Diarrhea / Fructose intolernace

[Aimme]

Hi, I've been desperately reading MN posts for the past 1.5yrs trying to find something to help with my sons bad tummy. Long story short we've found the solution! It's been so life changing I wanted to share and pay it forward.

Heres our story - He's 2.5 and up until a few weeks ago never done a solid stool. On a bad day i was changing 10-12 messy nappies a day, it felt debilitating some days we couldn't leave the house. The nhs carried out a number of stool and blood tests, allergy pinprick testing, ultrasound. All negative. We were advised to try so many different diets... no diary, wheat, eggs, FODMAP, BRAT... Nothing helped and he was diagnosed with toddlers diarrhea. I was told we will hopefully grow out of it by the time he's 5.

We recently took him to a paediatric gut specialist who suggested it could be an intolerance to fructose. Literally 2 days of excluding fructose and he miraculously improved. Within 2 weeks he's now doing a (semi) solid stool a day and we've been able to potty train.

We had 10+ appointments with 2 other paediatricians and a nutritionist who hadn't mentioned anything about fructose so hoping sharing this info will help some other families

was he having lots of fruit?

he was 1 when it started?

what’s the name of the paediatric specialist?

Yes, probably 1 apple and banana a day. Lots of berries and tomato based sauces. Peas, carrots, green beans with his dinner. All high fructose foods.

About 7 months; when we started weaning

Paediatric Gut Investigation Clinic, based near Gatwick Airport. I think they've got a team of people but we saw Dr Michael Hii.

Can I ask what fruit and veg you can give him?

Im fairly sure my 2.5 year old has this, though mainly excess gas, cramping and bad breath. Always worse when he's had a lot of fruit. I just can't narrow it down completely because his nursery are useless when telling me what he's eaten that day. We're waiting on a gastroenterology appointment currently.

We excluded all fruit and a really extensive list of veg and pretty much anything sweet. We were given a 'safe' foods list - off the top of my head white potato, mushrooms, spinach, broccoli, courgette, cauliflower are supposedly okay. It's not been an easy diet to follow at all but the changes to his gut health have been so worth it. We're now trying to add the higher fructose veg back in to see what he can/cannot tolerate. I realised his multivitamin we give him each morning is full of fructose but the clinic told us we should keep giving it to him since the aim is to not exclude fructose entirely but reduce the intake as much as possible then slowly try and add it back in so the body learns to accept it almost like the milk ladder.