Wave: CNM – Dear Jacquie
Your health queries answered with Jacquie Lane, from the College of Naturopathic Medicine
My eight-year-old son gets 10 hours sleep a night yet has dark circles under his eyes! He also has constant sniffles and irregular toilet habits. Any ideas?
TF, Brighton
The first thing that springs to mind is a possible food intolerance. These stress the liver and kidneys, which can manifest on the face as dark shadows and circles around the eyes. A naturopath trained in facial diagnostics would be able to spot this by looking at him.
The fact that he has bowel trouble also points to a possibility that he may have a leaky gut. That’s where the permeability of the gut lining is increased due to irritation from a possible food source or pathogen. Food molecules then get through to the blood stream causing a reaction.
Dairy foods like milk and cheese can be hard for children to digest if they lack the right enzymes and bacteria to break it down. I would suggest you switch his dairy foods for calcium and vitamin D enriched alternatives. Examples are oat milk and rice milk, available in most supermarkets. Do this for a month and see whether there is a difference.
Ensure that he is getting enough fruit and vegetables and wholegrain cereals. Reduce processed foods from his lunchbox and crucially, check that he is drinking enough water. Many children can be dehydrated during the school day so pack him diluted juice or plain water for his breaks.
Making sure his digestive tract is populated with the right kind of ‘friendly’ bacteria is also key. Although I’ve suggested taking him off milk and cheese for a month, yoghurt is a cultured/fermented product which doesn’t put the digestive tract under the same pressure as milk, since there is very little lactose (milk sugar) remaining in the yoghurt after processing. You could try him with a portion of natural probiotic yoghurt with a capsule of probiotics sprinkled into it each morning, to provide the friendly bacteria which are gut healing. As in all cases, your son’s is highly individual and I would suggest seeing a nutritional therapist who can create a plan that’s right for him.
If you have a general health query that you would like to raise here you can email Jacquie at healthqueriesfor Wave@naturopathy-uk.com. Please note that Jacquie cannot enter into individual correspondence unless your query is chosen for publication.
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