Kids' chronic pain linked to anxiety

Children with chronic or recurring stomach pain without a clear medical explanation were also more likely to have an anxiety disorder than those without stomach problems, according to a new study in journal Pediatrics.

By the time kids with stomach pain reached age 20, just over half had had symptoms of an anxiety disorder at some point, most often social anxiety. Anxiety tended to start in early childhood, around the same time as the chronic stomach problems.
Past studies suggest between eight and 25 percent of all youth have chronic stomach pain, researchers noted.

Anxiety was more common among people who continued having stomach pain compared to those whose childhood symptoms went away.

Steve: One thing the researchers did not allot for is the fact that continually introducing foods to a gastrointestinal tract that sees them as toxic to certain children (i.e., gluten, corn, dairy, sugar, etc.) can create the mental disorders, and of course, the pain. In many of the cases we have seen, it is diet that addresses the pain and the mental disorder(s) sucessfuly at the same time.