Acid Reflux drugs could be tied to Pneumonia

Wow. As a mother who has given her son Prevacid, this doesn't make me feel good. But it DOES confirm wanting to find a more natural way of alleviating his acid reflux without drugs. According to the NY Times:

But a new study has found that patients who take these so-called proton pump inhibitors are at higher risk for pneumonia than those who do not.

Why might this happen? This is alarming to me because when I picked up the Prevacid from the pharmacy, the side effects listed for Prevacid were NONE.

Dr. Herzig said that proton pump inhibitors, which suppress acid in the stomach, might promote the growth of different types of bacteria in the upper gastrointestinal and respiratory tract, and that those bacteria might be the culprits in the pneumonias. Another explanation, she suggested, may be that acid stimulates coughing, and coughing less may promote pneumonia.

All in all, I hope parents (along with the help of their pediatrician) look into alternate treatments of acid reflux in babies. While a prescription seems like it would be an easy fix, as you can see from the article in the NY Times, sometimes they just don't have all the data they need to make the conclusion that the benefits outweighs the risks.

Our choice for probiotics

As mentioned earlier, we used Udo's Infant Probiotics to help our son's acid reflux. The site that we'd been using to purchase our vitamins was iHerb.com. We tend to order a lot of vitamins and supplements and so we like the free shipping for orders over $40.
(Psst! Wanna save some money? For new customers to iHerb, use the coupon code: SIC634 and save $5. )

Probiotics as treatment of acid reflux in babies

While researching various reflux treatments including gripe water and other homeopathic products, we stumbled upon probiotics. These were not foreign to us, and my husband started thinking. Maybe probiotics were what was needed. After all, the faster he digested his food (breastmilk) the less likely there would be acid to come back up his esophogus. We checked with our pediatrician and she said that we might as well try - it couldn't harm him.

So we settled on Udo's Infant Probiotic. It cost us less than the Prevacid. After receiving it, we began to give him a 1/2 teaspoon three times a day in his breastmilk. Within a couple of days, we started seeing a decrease in how much he was spitting up. Within a couple weeks, he was sleeping in a crib! Until then he had been sleeping in his swing. I couldn't believe it. We maintained the regimine for about a month and then started tapering it off to twice a day. By six months, we were down to one time a day and many days we didn't give him any at all. Comparatively, the doctor thought that he would be on Prevacid for 6 months to a year. Yikes!

I do believe that my son did not have a severe case of reflux. I have talked to other moms that go through a really challenging first year trying to figure out the best treatment. While probiotics is not a mainstream treatment for acid reflux in infants, I'm hoping this website can at least give some parents another option that may help their child. I didn't think my baby was ever going to be happy. The probiotics worked for him - and I ended up having an extremely happy and smiling little boy. Who sleeps on his back.