Food Allergies May Cause Your Child’s Bed-wetting Problem

Bed-wetting, or Nocturnal Enuresis, is a nuisance when parents are starting to potty train. But for many families this inconvenience stretches for many more years. As bed-wetting children age it becomes even more apparent to them that there is something wrong.

There is a shame that runs deep among those that grew up with plastic mattress covers and a second set of spare sheets already underneath them. It is a secret society of members that hold on to their anonymity for life. As adults they remember sleep over parties and vacations that were always wrought with anxiety. A bed-wetter knows when they to go to sleep that more than likely they will awaken hours later wet and embarrassed, and it is completely out of their control. Or is it?

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This subject is of utmost importance to me because I myself was a chronic bed-wetter as a child until I was over six years-old. In my case I had a congenital urinary condition that was corrected by surgery at six. Surprisingly, it did not immediately correct the nocturnal enuresis. That continued, with less frequency, until I was nearly nine years old. I can firmly remember wetting myself at a sleepover and having to ask my girlfriend’s mother to help me get fresh sheets. I was in the third grade.

Bed-wetting was common in my family, and I was always reminded that older relatives had also suffered. Eventually I was told it would cease and it did.

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Thirty years later, soon after my son was potty-trained, he began nightly bed-wetting episodes. To alleviate his distress we got into the habit of night-lifting him to urinate about three hours into his sleep. If we were late or forgot he would wet. Then something surprising happened. Six months ago we put him on a gluten-free, corn-free, Feingold diet to help him recover from re-occurring illnesses. Within 24 hours of complete avoidance his nocturnal enuresis ceased. Was this a coincidence, I wondered? Since that time there have been a handful of occasions when my son has inadvertently eaten wheat or corn. He always wets the bed that same night, and then resumes normal sleeping and cessation of bed wetting when he resumes a gluten-free corn-free diet.

According to Dr. Douglas N.Tietjen, M.D., and Douglas A.Husmann, M.D. from the Department of Urology at the Mayo Clinic,

“In a small minority of patients, nocturnal enuresis may be linked to dietary allergies that provoke bladder instability.”

Tietjen and Husmann explain that all the patients in the report stopped bed-wetting when they began food-restricted diets and the wetting re-occurred when the patients resumed regular diets. Tietjen and Husmann claim that

“Urodynamic studies performed while these patients were receiving general diets revealed the presence of either a 50% reduction in bladder capacity for age or uninhibited bladder contractions. In contrast, urodynamic studies performed while these patients were receiving a restricted diet demonstrated normal urodynamic factors.”

So if you have a child who is a chronic bed-wetter and also suffers from digestive problems, skin rashes, asthma, or has histamine reactions to food, then a good course of action may be to have a food allergy/intolerance test done. A diet without offending foods may do more than cure what ails your child. It just might set him or her on the right path toward good restful sleep and stress-free overnight trips with friends and family.

Tags: Allergy, Bed-wetter, Bed-wetting, Bladder Instability, Child, Children, Congenital Urinary Condition, Corn, Corn-free, Diet, Dietary Allergy, Digestive Problem, Doris Rapp, Feingold Diet, Gluten, Gluten-free, Histamine Reaction, Intolerance, Nocturnal Enuresis, Urodynamic Study

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Meet the Author

Caryn Talty

The editor of Healthy-family.org has a master's degree in English from Northern Illinois University and a bachelor of science degree in special education. She has taught students from early elementary school through college freshman level. Today she enjoys reading and writing about both hot topics and those not so commonly discussed on other websites. Most of her days are spent playing all kinds of make-believe with her three very young and active sons. | All articles by Caryn Talty.

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