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CHILDREN’S HEALTH

Tips to help a bed-wetter

By Dr. Bill Sears

AROUND 15 PERCENT of 5-year- olds still wet their beds, and boys outnumber girls four to one. As a pediatrician for more than 40 years, I want to dispel the myth that bed-wetting is a psychological or discipline problem.

Instead, it’s really a sleep quirk. It’s physiologically more correct to call this nighttime nuisance “sleep wetting.” Some kids sleep too soundly to respond to the get-up-and-go signals from their bladder. Here is a step-by-step approach that we’ve used in our family and in my pediatric practice.

Play show and tell. In my of;ce I draw a picture of the brain with “wires” connected to the bladder, explaining to the child, “Your bladder is like a balloon the size of a baseball. Inside the balloon are tiny nerves that tell you when your bladder is full. Your full bladder then sends messages to your brain, and the brain tells you to go pee. Because you sleep so deeply, the brain sort of says, ‘Don’t bother me. I’m sleeping.’ Yet, your bladder becomes so full it’s got to empty, so you pee in your bed. Here’s how we’re going to help your brain and your bladder listen to each other at night.”

Empty the bladder completely before going to bed. Many bed-wetters who are tired or in a hurry only dribble out a bit when they go to the bathroom before going to bed, so they go to sleep with a half-full bladder. Teach your child “triple voiding”: “To squeeze all the pee out of your bladder, grunt, grunt, grunt three times so you go to bed with an empty bladder.”

Have a bladder-programming talk. Be a bladder-training coach: As your child is dozing off to sleep, imprint on his mind what he will do when he

feels a full bladder: “I will get up and go to the bathroom when I feel my bladder get big. I will splash water on my face to wake up, and grunt three times.” This bedtime rehearsal programs your child to help his bladder and brain cooperate at night.

Shake and wake before you retire. Since most children bed-wet within a few hours after retiring, before you go to bed, fully awaken your child and help him walk to the bathroom and again “grunt three times” to completely empty his bladder. Then help the sleepy child get back to bed.

Get things moving. Since constipation is a frequently overlooked cause of bed-wetting, give your child a tasty laxative: a fruit and yogurt smoothie with a tablespoon of ;ax oil.

Give high-tech help for the persistent bed-wetter. If your child is becoming increasingly wet and bothered, try a pad-and-buzzer apparatus called a bladder-conditioning device. When a drop of urine strikes the moisture-sensitive pad, it sets off a buzzer that’s attached to the child’s T-shirt or pajama top. Explain this to your child as the “beat the buzzer” game. Encourage him to get up and go to the bathroom before the buzzer sounds.

In my pediatric practice experience, more than 90 percent of bed-wetters become dry after trying these strategies. A patient of mine thanked me, “Dr. Bill, being dry makes me feel so happy. Now I can stay overnight at a friend’s house without feeling embarrassed.” C

MENTAL HEALTH AMERICA has been observing May as Mental Health Month since 1949. Their platform for 2012 is a call to action to recognize and care for mental illness.

May is Mental

Health Month

“Do More for 1 in 4”
campaign

According to a 2005 National Institute of Mental Health finding, one in four American adults live with a diagnosable, treatable mental health condition.

As many as 50 percent of people living with a mental health condition never seek or receive help due to stigma, lack of information, cost or lack of health insurance. Many people may be reluctant to ask for help or don’t know where to find it.

You can make a difference by helping someone you know find treatment.

Dr. Bill Sears ( www.askdrsears.com) is an associate clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine and co-author of The Baby Book (Little, Brown 2003).

Lyme disease: No walk in the woods

THE DEER TICK that carries the spiral-shaped bacteria ( spirochete) that causes Lyme disease is as big as the head of a pin.

But don’t let the size fool you.

These spirochetes can cause plenty of trouble. The symptoms of Lyme disease include fatigue, joint and muscle pain, sleep disorders, memory impairment, brain fog, panic attacks, numbness, tingling, burning and weakness. Lyme disease has been reported in all 48 states of the continental U.S.

red rash or a bull’s-eye.

Untreated Lyme disease can result in even more severe symptoms, such as meningitis, paralysis or heart block.

Seeing your doctor right
away for an exam can avoid
these problems. “Early diagnosis
means a patient will respond
better to conventional antibiot-
ics,” says Dalilah Restrepo, M.D.,
a physician in the Infectious
Diseases Division of St. Luke’s–
Roosevelt Hospital in New York
City. “It also prevents the evolu-
tion into late or chronic Lyme,
If it is diagnosed early, the
treatment for Lyme disease is a
14- to 21-day course of oral anti-
biotics, usually doxycycline.

You may know someone:
common disorders

• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Symptoms can be variable and either situational or constant.

• Anxiety disorders. Includes obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, phobia, etc.

• Bipolar disorder. Also known as manic depression, it involves mood swings from excessively high and/or irritable to sad and hopeless, mixed with normal moods.