Artificial sweeteners in childrens medicine

[elissas]

I'm not impressed. In fact, I'm downright angry. I've just seen the packaging of children's Dymadon and Dimetapp, and they contain Saccharin. I'm assuming that Baby Panadol has it too, as they advertise not containing sugar (but have flavour), but can't find it on the bottle. I'd rather DS have sugar - big time!!

The Chemical Maze (fantastic book on food additives) reports the following potential health effects for Saccharin: headache, cancer, urticaria (skin condition like hives), shrunken testicles, lowered testosterone levels, and mutagen (causing mutation of genetic cells).

Well, those bottles are no longer welcome in my house . Might keep some baby panadol just in case for rare occasions, but otherwise I'm off to check the Brauers range tomorrow.

[aardvark]

I'm with you - at least sugar is a food, not just a chemical.

I try to avoid all the artificial sweeteners, and keep them away from my children, too.

We've been on organic food for some time now, and noticed a real difference in our health. It would be nice to be able to trust common over the counter medicines when required, but now being a habitual label reader, there's not much left to trust.

I found it very hard when I was expecting and still exercising vigorously to find a sport drink without an artificial sweetener, too. I managed to find that one certain flavour of gastrolyte was sweetener free, and I drank that instead.

[elissas]

Yeah, I'm not happy. I've banned all artificial sweeteners from entering my house, and was duped with these.

And what makes me even angrier is how they're so sneaky about it. Dimetapp for example, don't have it on the bottle. They have it on the box in a section "Also contains", but not on the bottle. How many people would throw the box out thinking that all the info they need is on the bottle? I don't anymore, but I know that I used to.

[cwsmum]

What do you give instead of panadol? I rarely give anything like that to my kids, but sometimes you need to...so what do you suggest? I have read way too many scary things about artificial sweetners recently

[elissas]

Are you breastfeeding? Fantastic pain relief for bubs.

Chamomile tea is soothing for belly upsets and general out of sorts type stuff (like from immunisations).

I'll be sticking with saline, the vaporiser or breast milk up the nose to clear congestion instead of Dimetapp (which I only bought on the weekend).

I also do Reiki, which seems to help soothe and settle him too.

But for other stuff, that's why I'm off to look into Brauers. He's just started teething, and up till now we haven't really had any issues. So I want to know there's something that's effective for him.

[cwsmum]

No, I'm not breastfeeding.
I have a 3yr old who has a cold at the moment...I've been giving him the honey & onion stuff mum used to give us thru the day to help his throat but he also has a headache on and off...as you do with a cold...so I've had to give him something at night to help him sleep.
Thankfully DD hasn't got a cold, poor little thing has only just gotten over a virus that lasted 12days.

I'd be interested to hear what you find out about the Brauers stuff

[SassyDiva]

WOW... Thanks for the heads up, I've used the sugar free baby panadol on both my boys and had absolutly no idea.

[Pixie]

wow thanks for that I was aware of that and aspartame didn't realise it was in those!

[rynosmum]

I have just checked Nurofen for Children which is colour-free and sugar-free.

It also contains saccharine sodium.

[Briannabear]

If you have a look you'll also find that most toothpastes (including children and baby ones) have sodium saccharine too.
I hate that stuff. There's plenty of other alternatives, I dont know why they have to use that ****.