Is Your Child's Stomach Pain All in His Head?
We all know there are times that kids seem to complain l a stomach ache to get out of1 chores or going to school. Don't be so sure that the pain they__2__is all in their minds2. We're learning more now about a condition 3 " functional abdominal pain" that is experienced by millions of kids every day.
Like many teenagers, Kyle Brust makes it a point to do his homework: as 4 as he gets home. Unlike most, Kyle often did his with a terrible stomach ache. In fact, the 5 often started while he was at school, but getting help there was getting harder.
"Some of my teachers wouldn't let me go, because I'd asked so many times before and they thought I was trying to get out of 6__ ," says Kyle.
Kyle's mom Marilyn says she couldn't blame the 7 . After all, she'd taken him to the doctor several times herself, and even they couldn't find anything__8__
"You know, you're running the tests and nothing's coming up4. So, is it in his head, is he just an extremely stressful child? It's just frustrating 9 we're not finding any answers," says Marilyn.
It turns out Kyle was suffering from a condition known __10__ functional abdominal pain, that affects as many as one out of every ten kids in this country. Even __11__the cause of the pain may not be obvious, there are real consequences.
"It really does hurt, and these kids really do suffer," says Dr. Campo, MD at Nationwide
Children's Hospital. To help __12__, Campo is looking into a new approach. He's conducting clinical trials of an antidepressant that changes the way the body handles a chemical called
serotonin. In a preliminary study, Dr. Campo found that in about eight out of ten __13__, the drug normally used to treat emotional pain worked to ease the pain in the __14__
"We think about it as being important in anxiety and depression and that's all quite true, but
what's really interesting is that 95% of our body's serotonin is in our gut," says Campo.
Campo believes these kids have extremely sensitive intestines, and controlling the effects of
serotonin may __15__ ease the pain. It seemed to work for Kyle, who is now completely pain free for the first time in years.
