The MiraLAX Blues

How is it possible for a doctor to look someone straight in the eye and guarantee that giving their constipated toddler an adult dosage of MiraLAX every day — for possibly the rest of her life — would produce no side effects or harm?

How can they know that? How?

This exact thing happened to a mother who happens to be a part of my team at Practical Homeopathy, when her 18-month-old complained of belly aches and bloating.

The pediatrician decided it must have been due to constipation, and initially prescribed what he called a “cleaning out” regimen — three adult doses of MiraLAX each day for three days —  followed by one dose every day … indefinitely.

In her wise-mother gut, she wasn’t comfortable giving her toddler the full adult dose every day. She continually asked her pediatrician and the specialist if she could discontinue it, but the answer was always “not yet.” This went on for two years — two years of daily adult dosages for her toddler.

Eventually (probably tired of fielding Mom’s repetitive questions), the specialist flippantly assured her, “I don’t think you should be so concerned. She could be on this for the rest of her life, and there will be no problem. My son’s been on MiraLAX since he was three months old — and now he’s 17!”

“What?! I don’t want that!” (As the mom says now, “This all happened before I knew better, but I knew enough to know I didn’t want THAT!!”)

Having her daughter rely on anything for the rest of her life was simply not an option for this mom. She wanted to get to a point where her child’s body functioned as it should — without interference.

Plus, frankly, there hadn’t been much improvement from the two-year treatment. In fact, now her child had developed other stomach issues such as diarrhea and vomiting. She was not sleeping, wouldn’t eat enough, and was antsy all the time — things other moms later confirmed seemed to be “undocumented” side effects of MiraLAX.

(By the way, back in 2013, I featured a blog post, “The Poop on MiraLAX,” in which Dr. Kaayla Daniel discussed other potential concerns about giving this controversial product to children.)

Taking matters into her own hands, this gutsy mom decided to wean her child off. Believe it or not, it took almost a year until her child could produce an adequate bowel movement without depending on the MiraLAX. A year!! That’s a long time to have the MiraLAX Blues.

This story is not unusual. And unfortunately, this is how we all learn.

In my life experience, I have learned that we, as mothers, need to look at medical situations like a game of chess. You don’t put your queen out in the middle of the board, take your hand off and then wait to see what happens next.

You keep your fingers directly on the head of that queen until you figure out what the other side of the board is going to do, what you’re going to do next, and what they’re going to do after that.

You’ve got to look four steps ahead.

Similarly, if you don’t look ahead at treatment advice you receive from traditional practitioners, that’s where you can go wrong. (And I’m just as culpable. I, too, have done this at one point or another in my life.)

The doctors know what’s ahead, but you don’t. They deal with it every day, but you’re new to this. We mothers assume that medical intervention will be temporary — that somehow makes it more acceptable in our minds. But many times, doctors already know that these interventions will end up being long-term band-aids.

So, you have to look four steps ahead.

It’s easy to fall into the trap. Don’t feel guilty if you’ve made bad decisions — learn from them!

You have to fall off the bike a few times before you learn how to ride it. Learning from those mistakes is how we get here — to homeopathy!

So, what to do next time? Instead of even entertaining the idea of MiraLAX for constipation, I usually utilize Nux vomica 30 for toddlers and young children — twice a day until constipation improves. Nux vomica is particularly useful if any drugs (which may be contributing to or causing constipation) have already been administered to the child. (See my blog “Medication Causing Constipation in Children.”)

If Nux vomica does not address a particular situation adequately, then I move on to 200 twice daily or other protocols, which I discuss more fully in my course Good Gut, Bad Gut.

Now you may ask, what if the presenting symptoms aren’t exactly constipation but rather belly aches and bloating (as was this toddler’s original complaint)? In that case, unfortunately, it’s a bit too complicated to teach all the various possibilities and alternatives in a simple blog post.

But again, my course Good Gut, Bad Gut goes deeply into many complicated topics relating to the digestive system. (However, I want to give you as much straightforward information as I can here. By clicking on the course link just provided, you can download a free infographic containing remedy information for a few of the more common digestive ailments.)

Learn. Learn. Learn! Being armed with as much knowledge as you can get your hands on will help your family avoid becoming trapped in a traditional medicine quagmire. And in the short term, it will certainly keep you from singing the MiraLAX Blues.

P.S. I want to invite you to register for a Free summit I am participating in. Happy Gut, Healthy Lives: How to Heal Your Gut and Reduce Your Stress, Optimize Your Weight, and Promote Clear Thinking.

My community friend Diana Previs will interview me and 21 other leading specialists (in fields such as Integrative Functional Medicine, Mind-Body, Nutrition, and Fitness) from around the globe who share their expertise in methods — and it’s all connected to your gut.

Each of the participants is confident in their paradigm. I too am eager to share my lifetime journey, clinical experience and what my students report to me after using my methods.

The Summit is free — here is your link to register.

And, I created an infographic you might want to add to your homeopathic library. Click here and scroll down the page to get an email sent to you in a jiffy.