Why does a child feel sick: causes and treatment methods

As soon as your baby gets sick, you naturally cannot find a place for yourself. Especially if the child is sick. How dangerous is this? What could be causing this? And what to do in this case?

Is the child feeling sick? Why?

So, more details. In infancy, it happens that the child feels sick. The baby may vomit because he swallowed too much air during feeding. In older children, such cases also occur depending on other stimuli.

Main reasons

Is your child feeling sick? Correct diagnosis is important. What can cause nausea and vomiting? This malaise can be caused by gastrointestinal diseases, infections, intoxication, acute metabolic disorders, etc.

Gastrointestinal diseases

This could be one of the main reasons if your child is throwing up. Vomiting may be a harbinger of enteritis or gastroenteritis. Errors in nutrition, coated tongue, active audible bowel sounds - all this only strengthens the suspicion. These warning signs are also accompanied by acute pain in the abdomen.

Infections

If your child feels sick and vomits, this may indicate the presence of an infection in the body. Monitor your temperature and general blood picture. Vomiting may also be one of the first symptoms of appendicitis. Remember to carefully examine your abdomen at all times.

Intoxication

What else could cause your child to feel sick and vomit? Intoxication. And this is not only the inattention of others to children in connection with poisoning with large doses of medications. Even taking normal doses of sulfonamides, antibiotics, salicylates, anticonvulsants and other drugs can cause the baby to vomit.

Metabolic disorders

It happens that between the ages of three and five years a child feels sick in the morning up to eighty times a day at various intervals. Before this, irritability, lack of appetite, headache and negative behavior are observed. Vomiting occurs even in response to fluid intake. In addition, the child may experience colicky abdominal pain. There are no symptoms of infection at all. However, high acetonuria is observed in the urine. And the smell of acetone comes from my mouth.

Hepatogenic and renal vomiting

Does your child have nausea and diarrhea? This may indicate anicteric hepatitis. In this case, encephalitic and meningeal symptoms may be observed. Even lymphocytic pleocytosis.

Renal vomiting occurs with unrecognized or acute renal failure. Before vomiting occurs, this disease can be detected by uremia. Minor changes in urine are a clear indicator.

In order to exclude the occurrence of vomiting caused by diabetic metabolic disorders, it is necessary to monitor the level of sugar in the urine and blood. In a word, monitor the baby’s health.

Cardinal vomiting

If a child frequently vomits, this may indicate acute heart failure. Especially in infants. Accompanied by cardinal vomiting, refusal of food, pallor, and anxiety. In this case, it is necessary to check whether the size of the liver is changed. Do not forget also about the possibility of developing paroxysmal tachycardia in children with a seemingly healthy heart. In acute myocarditis, the liver is always enlarged, thickened and painful. Be that as it may, this makes diagnosis easier. Heart failure is also fraught with wheezing in the lungs.

Abdominal, psychogenic and hematemesis

In the case when a child constantly feels sick after eating, and abdominal pain is added to the vomiting, it is worth contacting a specialist. It may be necessary to exclude abdominal causes of the disorder.

Psychogenic vomiting is provoked by fear or excitement in organically healthy, but psycholabile children. In addition, in such children, vomiting may also be demonstrative. In this way, the little ones try to attract attention to themselves. There are also times when vomiting occurs when talking about it. Force-feeding or aversion to certain foods (self-hypnosis) can lead to such consequences.

Bloody vomiting indicates the source of the bleeding (nasal). In this case, a considerable amount of blood is swallowed. There is a tendency to bleed during the prodrome with regular and swine flu, whooping cough, measles, and also with upper respiratory tract infections. When examining bleeding of the posterior wall, it is also necessary to perform posterior rhinoscopy. By the way, bloody vomiting can also be a sign of a stomach ulcer. Therefore, it is also worth checking the lower part of the esophagus and the cardinal region of the stomach.

Profuse bloody vomiting immediately after breakfast or in the middle of the night (often with dark red clots) indicates varicose veins of the esophagus. In this case, you should pay attention to the baby’s spleen. Increased blood pressure is a sign of portal hypertension. Suspicion is heightened by anamnestic information about chronic liver diseases or exchange transfusions immediately after birth.

Cerebral vomiting

Is the child feeling nauseous and the temperature has risen quite high? This may indicate acute meningitis. But in the case of the development of serous meningitis, dizziness, headache, and hidden visual impairment also occur. These symptoms develop very slowly. And this, of course, significantly complicates diagnosis. Tuberculous meningitis is manifested primarily by unexplained vomiting, headache, and mild symptoms of damage to the cranial nerves.

Acute unexpected vomiting is the initial manifestation of space-occupying brain disease. As a rule, this happens at night. Typical symptoms of the lesion develop only after nausea occurs. Most often, this indicates the localization of the process in the posterior cranial fossa. Do not forget also that adhesive arachnoiditis can also develop in this case.

Other reasons

What else can cause a child to have a stomach ache and feel sick? One of the reasons is diencephalic epilepsy. It is also accompanied by paroxysmal tachycardia, headache, and fainting. It can only be confirmed, however, only after EEG studies.

Severe nausea can also occur as an equivalent to a migraine as part of a vasomotor headache. Periodic attacks are typical for this disease, mainly in the fair sex during the prepubertal period. Vomiting and nausea sometimes appear following dizziness, sensory disturbances, aphasia and focal clonic convulsions.

Sunstroke can lead to signs of increased intracranial pressure (meningismus, increased cerebrospinal fluid pressure with an increase in protein content, sometimes even red blood cells). In addition, drowsiness, nausea, vomiting, and impaired consciousness are also observed. Sometimes even coma and other symptoms of cerebral disorders.

Sunstroke is differentiated from thermal shock, which occurs when there is insufficient heat transfer, especially with inappropriate clothing and high air humidity.

Rarely

It happens that a child vomits without fever, but there are paroxysmal abdominal pains, as well as migraines and umbilical colic. This may indicate abdominal epilepsy. Sometimes it is accompanied by diarrhea and vegetative symptoms, clonus of the muscles of the limbs or abdominal muscles.

Bruns syndrome is the occurrence of headache and vomiting when the position of the head in space changes, dizziness, or imbalance. These symptoms are caused by organic changes in the area of ​​the third, fourth or lateral ventricles of the brain and in the cerebellum.

Posterior fossa syndrome is accompanied by bouts of vomiting with neck rigidity. In addition, headaches associated with periodic increases in intracranial pressure are observed.

Reichmann's syndrome consists of paroxysmal vomiting of light gastric juice due to its hypersecretion. In the evening and at night, the child experiences pain in the stomach area. Often Reichmann's syndrome is combined with a stomach ulcer or gastritis. Sometimes transitions to hyponatremic vomiting occur.

What to do?

So, you have found out why the child is throwing up. How to proceed? If the vomiting is a one-time occurrence, you may not need to do anything. For children, this phenomenon can be quite normal. Well, if vomiting periodically recurs (and even more so, diarrhea appears and the temperature rises), the child must be urgently shown to a specialist doctor. Depending on the baby’s well-being, you need to get to a medical children’s institution yourself or call a local pediatrician at home.

In the event that vomiting occurs more than twice within two hours, be sure to call an ambulance. And most importantly, don’t try to panic. In such a situation, it is necessary to remain calm. After examining the child, the doctor usually prescribes an additional examination. If you are advised to hospitalize your baby, do not refuse this under any circumstances. The fact is that certain diseases are treated exclusively in hospital settings.

Treatment

And finally. There is no independent treatment for vomiting. Therapy consists of treating the underlying disease. Vomiting is just a symptom. How can I help the child?

In case of poisoning, special therapy will be required after washing the stomach with a solution of potassium permanganate. For infectious diseases - the main treatment. For defects in the digestive system - surgery. For functional vomiting, treatment is psychotherapeutic.

In principle, it is inappropriate to list treatment methods in more detail. Consultation with a specialist is the first thing you need in this case. You should not self-medicate. Sometimes such moments end tragically. Although in mild cases you can use traditional recipes, but only after agreeing with your doctor.

In general, nausea in a child manifests itself in most cases painlessly, but unpleasantly. The baby, as a rule, refuses to eat and shows anxiety. The skin may become pale. And the legs and arms are cooled. Parents do not always even notice that the baby is throwing up. You need to be extremely careful. After all, nausea sometimes indicates very serious illnesses.

There are several rules that must be followed if a child experiences nausea. First, he must be laid on his side so that he does not choke on the vomit. Secondly, it is important to assess the full danger of the situation. And only a specialist can do this correctly. It is he who decides whether to treat the baby or hospitalize him. Only in the case when the child’s vomiting is one-time, and the general condition is quite satisfactory, can you wait to call a doctor. If you nevertheless called a doctor, start feeding the baby to avoid dehydration. It is necessary to give your baby water often, but little by little, so as not to provoke repeated vomiting.

If you do not have the opportunity to purchase glucose-salt solutions at the pharmacy (to replenish the loss of salts and water due to dehydration), you can make such a solution at home. To do this, dissolve a teaspoon of table salt, half a teaspoon of baking soda and eight teaspoons of sugar in a liter of water. Instead of water, you can also use rice water, rosehip infusion, or lightly brewed tea.

In general, be careful. The child's body is very vulnerable. And if the baby is feeling sick, pay attention to it! Perhaps the baby needs the help of a qualified specialist!