It is common that when a mother brings her child to the pediatrician she says the symptoms, that she is ill, where it hurts or what she sees and that, as a second doubt, she asks about the appetite, because "besides, it seems that lately she has not eat too well. "
This second complaint is usually answered with a "of course, it is bad, it is normal not to be too hungry", and sometimes they tell us "already, but this is before the disease", and yet the Reason is usually the same, even when appetite loss came before. And this happens because lack of appetite and illness usually go hand in hand.
The decrease in hunger as a warning of the disease
In 1939, Clara M. Davis presented a study that should have changed the recommendations about feeding children and has not yet succeeded (children should eat on demand). In the study, which we talked about a few years ago here, Davis decided to test the hypothesis that the children knew better than adults the food they needed both in terms of quantity and quality.
When taking care of 15 children in a time of famine, malnourished children, with rickets, etc., between 6 and 11 months of age, already weaned, with whom he was provisionally between 6 months and 4 and a half years, he decided to leave them to them the mission of deciding what they had to eat. Obviously, the children were controlled at all times at the health level, just in case the hypothesis was invalid.
They were always presented with food in isolation, without dressings, with representation of all food groups: dairy, fruits, animal proteins, cereals, vegetables and legumes.
They saw that each child made a different diet, but that everyone made balanced diets. They saw that everyone managed to be well nourished again. They saw that the calories they drank were always adequate, not at every meal, but throughout the day. They saw times go by without drinking milk, but their bone mineralization was not affected.
They also saw, and finally I get to the topic today, that when a child was ill, his appetite decreased 24 or 48 hours before he was ill and recovered about 12 hours before the total remission of the disease. That is, the decrease in hunger before the illness always happened and Davis and the rest of the caregivers served to know that this child was going to get sick the next day or two days later.
But beware, to make it clear, it is not that children suddenly stopped eating because they did not want to and as a consequence, for not eating, they got sick. Is that the body was already incubating something and one of the first symptoms was (and is, if we talk about now) loss of appetite.
But not all children lose hunger
However, at present, not all children lose hunger, or perhaps not all mothers realize they are eating less. In my house, for example, since our children eat "on demand", and that means they sit at the table to eat and eat the amount they want (which is usually less than we would like, at least in the case of the two little ones), we are not very attentive to the loss of appetite, unless they are very evident. The fact is that, as I say, there are children who eat a lot while being healthy and when they get sick they continue to eat the same. Obviously, It is also normal.
Should we assume that they can lose weight?
"Ok, but he is losing weight," mothers sometimes say, logically worried. And it is true, according to the picture that a child is suffering, according to the days that pass and what he stops eating lose weight. And if the mother is one of those who care because her child has a hard time winning it, imagine the grace that can suddenly make her lose 300 or 400 grams, if not more.
But there is no other, there are no pills that make the child recover from hunger and eat, nor vitamins that change his appetite (well, there is something, but they act at the brain level or have another primary effect and they are hungry as a side effect, along with other side effects, ...). So, How the disease and lack of appetite are usually hand in handIf the child is not hungry and is losing weight we must assume that there is what there is.
We will offer you food, we will offer you a drink and it is he who drinks as much as he enters. The lost weight is usually recover quickly, until reaching the weight that the child would have had not become ill, at which time the gain stabilizes again.
If we see that day does not come, that day when he returns to eat, and that the child is losing a lot of weight we should go to the pediatrician, of course. But this not usually happen: the sick child and, with or without treatment, if he does not need it, heals and regains his appetite. It has no more secret.
