HOME HEALTH GUIDE
COELIAC DISEASE (By the Department of Health) Coeliac disease in children is a form of chronic indigestion, usually affecting babies and toddlers, in which fats and most carbo-hydrates upset the child, and are not utilised in the alimentary system. Because the food is not being absorbed, the child gets thin, is finally skin and bone except for a large distended tummy, and of course he doesn’t grow properly. It comes on between nine months and two years of age, as the child is trying to become established on a solid diet. Apetite goes. Diarrhoea attacks and vomiting become common. The child is fretful and wastes away steadily. There is pallor from anaemia. Investigation shows that fat is being digested all right but not being absorbed and used in the body. There is a really bad breakdown in the business _of absorbing food from the. intestines. There are times when the child seems to be getting better, but the hopes raised are falsified when the trouble starts all over again in a few weeks’ time. Most children ultimately outgrow the disease, but of course there are stunting and sometimes bony deformities.
The treatment is mainly dietetic. Fat has to be cut out of the -diet. There is difficulty in digesting certain starchy foods. The diet has to be built up on dried skimmed milk; protein foods—meat broths, liver extracts, chicken and fish or rabbit; certain starchy foods, such as thin, crisp toast or rusks; sieved green vegetables, and fi'esh fruit juices if they do not increase the diarrhoea. Mashed bananas are well tolerated. The bananas should have brown spots on the skin, or be even turning brown—that is, thoroughly ripe. All through the war in America coeliac babies had a priority right to bananas, a portion of the country’s supplies being set aside for the purpose. The banana is useful because of suitable carbohydrate, almost negligible fat and good value in vitamins and minerals.
Should any child of yours appear to develop this trouble, in the months of, or. after weaning, do not wait too long before getting medical help. Early diagnosis saves wasting and stunting.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BPB19461014.2.33
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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 37, 14 October 1946, Page 8
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358HOME HEALTH GUIDE Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 37, 14 October 1946, Page 8
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