Why baby's diet won't affect colic

Pediatrician Dan Thomas, MD Gastroenterology & Nutrition, shares advice for parents on whether breastfeeding or formula feeding can influence infantile colic based on a recent research study.
Is Infantile Colic Affected By Breastfeeding Or Formula Feeding
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Why baby's diet won't affect colic

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Infantile colic is a terrible problem for the baby and the parents to have to deal with. I wish I could tell everybody that I know the cause of colic. There isn´t an exact known cause of routine infantile colic. I know parents don´t like to hear the word routine, but after all these hundreds of years we don´t have a reason or causes of infantile colic. There is certainly isn´t an established gastrointestinal reason. To give you an example of this, we published a study with over 1,000 infants who were in the study. And these infants, we had the information for their type of feeding, their symptoms, whether they had colic or not, how long, and we also did two very sensitive tests to try to determine whether it had gastrointestinal damage. And the results of this study indicated that the infants across the board who had colic had normal test and they had no evidence of gastrointestinal damage and this was in comparison to the infants who did not. 20% of the infants out of the 1,000 had colic and the 20%, it didn´t matter if they were exclusively breastfed, breast with formula or formula fed infants. 20% across the board. And so we do not now know and I wish I could tell you that we had a cause for colic but we do not have a specific cause, certainly not a gastrointestinal cause.

Pediatrician Dan Thomas, MD Gastroenterology & Nutrition, shares advice for parents on whether breastfeeding or formula feeding can influence infantile colic based on a recent research study.

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Dan Thomas, MD

Pediatrician, Gastroenterology & Nutrition, Children's Hospital Los Angeles

Dr. Dan Thomas is the Head of the Division of Gastroenterology and Nutrition, and Medical Director of Liver and Small Bowel Transplantation at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Dr. Thomas presently serves on the Editorial Review Board of Pediatrics in Review and is on the Committee on Nutrition of the American Academy of Pediatrics. His primary clinical and academic interests include the care and study of children with congenital or acquired intestinal, pancreatic and hepatobiliary disorders.

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