Colicky babies and how I got interested in allergy

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[UPDATED JUNE 2022]

"You're the f***ing doctor, you should know"

....was the only advice my husband could give me when my firstborn continued to scream. Everything I knew to calm babies had been done. Not just the obvious - the car ride up the bumpy track, the slow waltz around the sitting room and the "she'll cry herself to sleep eventually and feel better because she was exhausted"... I had learned to cope with endless nights on call as a junior doctor by using the worst possible technique - ceasing to care about my patients, so long as I did not do anything for which I could eventually be struck off! Then I could survive the sleepless nights. But this was different. Here I had the little person about whom I cared more than anything in the whole world - she was suffering with colic and all my medical training had equipped me with nothing that could help.

Next step - local chemist for gripe water. But when I saw the alcohol content I realised it was for me, not the baby. I was happy for half an evening.

Think logically! There must be a reason! "She'll grow out of it at three months" was all I could get out of medical lore. And suddenly I realised that the medicine practised in modern society was not particularly logical. And that was what made it so difficult. I have to be grateful to my kids in many ways for changing the way I think. Little Ruth Myhill, not knowingly, was to teach me my first lesson.

"There must be a reason for this."

Ruth was breast fed, it must be something in the breast milk. I loved dairy products - cheese, butter, ice-cream - and so I stopped them all. Not only was Ruth transformed into a normal, quiet, burbling baby, but my chronic rhinitis magically got better.

So why was this not in the medical text-book? I thought this had to be a major, but single, omission. But when I started exploring the causes of illness I found it was just one of hundreds of vital omissions which could be safely used to restore the health of patients needlessly suffering.

And so began my journey!

For information on child allergies, please see:-


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