Abdominal migraine - does anything help?

[BeingFluffy]

My DD (13) has had recurrent stomach aches/nausea for several years. They do not appear to be related to diet or anything else. Our GP has referred us to a paediatric clinic at our local hospital as she thought it could possibly be abdominal migraine. DD does not have any headaches but has "seen bright lights" a couple of times which sounds like optical migraine. I just wondered if anyone else's kids have suffered from abdominal migraine and if there is any effective treatment?

abdominal migrane can someimes be linked ot visual stress, are you able to identify any triggers.

Things that have shown to help in some children are:
Sitting away from artificial light and nearer the window in class
avoiding black on white text/background
increasing font size
reading/concentrating in short blasts only.

Of course not all abdominal migranes are linke dot visual stress but it is worth considering
Also abdominal migrane sufferers can go on to have headache migranes.

Thanks I hadn't thought of that. DD is dyslexic so there could be a connection. We spent years trying to think of possible dietary links but there don't seem to be any. She quite often wakes up with it in the morning having been fine the evening before. I wonder if tweaking the light levels in her room would make a difference.

I had cyclic vomiting syndrome for a long time before it slowly changed into classical migraine episodes. The only things that seemed to space out the episodes was keeping hydrated and getting my neck adjusted by an osteopath regularly.
The attacks of cvs always started as I woke, which is very common, so no chance to take steps to take anything

Thank you for taking the trouble to reply to my post. I think the best thing at the moment is to note down everything and see what provokes the attacks. I hope my DD does not develop full blown migraine. I have optical migraine which I developed about 10 year ago and which appears to be related to diet. On the scale of things not too horrible just bright zig zags and lights for half an hour - weird, but not too debilitating.

I used to get these as a kid until they developed into head migraines when I was around 16.

Triggers for me were any thing acidic like oranges or tomatoes, chocolate and fizzy drinks. Even now if I have too much acid I am sick or get really bad stomach pains and migraine.

Also my doc at the time thought it could be hormonal. Given her age, is this possible?

My DD9 started off with abdominal migraines which have now progressed to a mixture of abdominal/head migraines. His neuro told me the treatment was the same no matter how the migraine presented. We tried Pizotifen but didnt really work. Just (reluctantly) started on Propranolol as they are starting to effect school/activities too much and he is so miserable.

My DD aged 6 has suffered from abdominal migraines for the last 18 months and the paediatrician gave her the pizotifen tablets which she has taken 1 a night since then and now very rarely gets any problems whatsoever. We were told there is nothing in the tablet that should suggest they work, but they do. She is now being gradually weaned off them to see if the episodes recur .

My DD has recently been diagnosed with abdominal migraines after a long spell of stomach problems. She was finally referred to a paediatrician after endless trips to the doctors. I had never heard of them until a friend mentioned them and after much research the paediatrician agreed that he thought this is what she had. It's such a shame and frustrating that it can go undiagnosed. My DD has had such a miserable time with it and missed several days off school. We are back to the docs tomorrow in the hope they can give her something to help.

My ds has been under the treatment of Dr. Boles who is the expert on CVS. Ds is being treated with high doses of L-Carnitine and CoQ10 - nutrients with NO side effects. He has been illness free for 6 months now which is the longest period in his short little life that he has ever been illness free. It appears that CVS is a mitochondrial disease and Dr. Boles is having great succes in treating patients with these co-enzymes. Please feel free to contact me through Mumsnet if you want more information.