It’s still the New Year and you still have a chance to lose weight. One way to lose weight is to increase your intake of water and decrease your intake of any type of beverage with a carbohydrate in it. According to the Obesity Society of the United States, a study has shown that dieters who have the discipline to exchange their sugary drinks or carbonated diet drinks with water instead will lose an additional five pounds a year. Furthermore, ff you simply manage to drink 16 ounces or more glasses of water a day even without cutting out your sugary or carbonated drinks you will still lose two pounds a day.

In the past all kinds of diet programs have always recommended drinking plenty of water but this was the first study known of by the society to actually support this theory that “drinking water causes weight loss.”

In this study, weight loss researchers compared 240 dieting woman with each other. The women, who were aged 25 to 50 were all on different diets such as the Atkins Diet, The Zone and the South Beach diet. One thing that all of these diet programs have in common by the way is that they limit the amount of calories that a person can consume a day.

Before the women begun their diets they were instructed by the researchers to drink two cans of sugary drinks a day (that would amount to being about 200 calories for each woman.) This included beverages like soda pop and juice. Then during the course of the study, some of the women replaced these calories with water. The two groups, the water-drinkers and the sugary beverage drinkers, were then compared in terms of how much weight they lost over a period of a year.

The water and weight loss study found that the dieting women who replaced all of their sweetened drinks with water lost five pounds more in a year then women who continued to drink the sugary drinks. Women who drank more than four cups of water a day lost an additional 2 pounds more than women who did not increase their water intake at all.

It doesn’t matter if you drink bottled water, bubbly water or tap water. The idea is to displace those sugary beverages with as much water as you possibly can in a day. Not only does this limit calories it is also healthy for you in other ways.

Not only does being properly hydrated help your muscles and metabolism work at their best, but drinking a large volume of water also helps prevent you from snacking because you feel full. It is recommended that you drink at least eight cups of water a day to optimize your weight loss.

To remain in the best of health, especially while you are losing weight, it is important for your body to remain properly hydrated. This is because two thirds of our total body weight is made up of water.

Just because your baby is being breastfed does not mean that it cannot develop a milk protein allergy. While it may occur less frequently than formula allergies the babies nonetheless can have symptoms of milk allergy. The suspicion on the part of a pediatrician that the baby might be allergic to breast milk is why most doctors recommend that a new mother start the infant on formula.

Many mothers think that when their child develops an allergy to breast milk that he or she is actually allergic to her milk. This is a common misconception and a true allergy to your own mother’s milk wold be very rare indeed. The baby is, in actuality allergic to certain proteins in your diet that you have digested and that eventually end up being secreted into your breast milk. . Sometiems if you eat less of these protiends the child is still able to tolerate the breast milk. This means that you as a mom have to be careful about what you eat in order to make sure that your breast milk does not cause colicky symptoms in your infant.

The treatment for mil protein allergy in the breast fed baby is dietary retraction of the offending proteins. While some lactation experts will recommend broad sweeping restrictions most babies will do just fine with the restriction of the milk proteins casein and whey. This translates to mean that you can’t drink milk or eat milk products like cheese or yogurt. This is because it is the components in cow’s milk that are likely making your baby colicky and sick.

The foods that contain casein and whey that you should avoid are

· Milk
· Butter
· Half and half
· Sour ream
· Yogurt
· Ice cream
· Cottage cheese
· Custard
· Curd ghee
· Nougat
· Brown sugar flavoring
· Margarine
· Deli meats
· Chocolate
· High protein shakes
· High protein flower
· Nondairy creamer
· Cheese

Your baby usually shows signs of improvement after just a few days of clearing your diet of milk proteins. Some babies may take two to three weeks for the complete healing of the intestinal inflammation. The key is to be patient and give it enough time. Many babies really do settle down after the two week period.

If you change your diet and the baby is still sick then you will no longer be able to breast feed the child. The main treatment for the milk allergic baby is to take him or her off milk and feed him or her one of the hypoallergenic baby formulas. There are all different kinds of formulas on the market that do not have a trace of these proteins and once your baby starts drinking these the symptoms usually disappear altogether. Removing intact cow’s milk protein from the baby’s diet serves the role of making baby feel better as well as confirms any suspicion that milk allergy was the cause of the colic in the first place (if the symptoms are relieved!)

Milk protein allergy is best described as irritation or inflammation that occurs in a baby’s intestinal tract in reaction to protein exposure.

Milk (and most foods) is made up of there major components – protein, fat and sugar. It’s the protein part of the milk that gives allergic babies a problem. These proteins are made up of large chains of amino acids which are the building blocks of protein Sometimes the body reacts to certain sequences that these amino acids form and the result is milk protein allergy.

Whether or not your baby will react to milk protein depends whether or not his or her immune system perceives the protein as a problem. If it does it will recruit white blood cells to the lining of the intestinal tract. These white blood cells release chemicals making the GI tract red, swollen and ulcerated. This, of course, can cause your baby great pain!

The two proteins most often responsible for reactions in babies are those found in cow’s milk – casein and whey. The protein whey used in standard infant formulas comes to cow’s milk. It isn’t intact or whole protein but it is cow’s milk protein nonetheless.

Even if you are breastfeeding your baby you are not safe from passing on a cow’s milk allergy to your baby. Infants can react to proteins found in our milk.

Between two and eight weeks of age the typical baby with milk allergies shows some combination of the following symptoms –

· Bloody stools – Infants with milk protein allergy often have blood-streaked stools. Not all blood in baby’s stools is visible and you may have to have the stools analyzed to detect it.

· Mucus production – The colon, like the vagina, sinuses and lungs is a mucus-producing organ. When there is a milk protein allergy your baby may excrete thick, stringy mucus that mixes in with stools.

· Cramping and fussing – Babies with ulcerated intestines tend to be very crabby. That is because they are experiencing painful spasms in their intestines that may be dismissed as just colic.

· Diarrhea – When the bowel is not happy it produces diarrhea. Diarrhea is caused by the inflammation of the intestinal walls.

· Excema – This is dry scaly patches of skin that are found on the extremities. Dry weather and excessive bathing of the baby can make matters worse. If your baby’s eczema is milk induced you will notice a marked improvement within two to four weeks after changing to a hypoallergenic formula. Infants with eczema due to milk allergy do have a more intense case of allergic inflammation.

· Wheezing and congestion – Like eczema, wheezing and chronic nasal congestion are often described as symptoms of milk allergy but in most babies they aren’t a problem. For most babies the reaction to milk protein occurs at the lining of the intestinal organs.

If you suspect your child has a milk protein allergy consult him or her right away so your formula can be adjusted.

Desperation is a feeling that is often experienced by parents of babies with acid reflux. Often a parent feels conflicted about treatment of the child with medication because newborns are so little. However if a child is full of acid and gas there may be no other way to treat it but with chemicals that are known to work when it comes to dissolving gas breaking up gas.

If the colic is due to acid reflux then there are medications that can help your child recover.

The goals of treatment of acid reflux are to

· Relieve symptoms
· Promote normal weight gain
· Heal inflammation
· Prevent complications

The medical approach is very straightforward. It involves addressing the issue of stomach acid, which creates the pain of the reflux and stomach emptying which are the key initiators of reflux. If you can get these two problems in line you will have a happier baby.

Gas Drops are the first line of over the counter treatment for gas. Before prescribing you any medicine your doctor may suggest that you try gas drops. Gas drops are over the counter preparations that help break up gas. Most formulations contain simethicone.

Simethicone is a compound that does a great job of breaking up big gas bubbles in the intestine and breaking them down into smaller ones.

However if the baby is taking in a lot of air due to constantly screaming then these gas drops may simply not be enough to handle the problem. Unfortunately the baby’s natural inclination is to gulp more air.

If stomach acid is the trigger that is making your baby scream then your doctor will prescribe an acid suppressant.

There are two classes of mediation that are used to suppress acid in babies. These include histamine receptor antagonists and proton pump inhibiters.

The histamine receptor antagonists are known to most of us as Zantac, Axid and Pepcid. They have been in use since 1981. For the baby with mild symptoms of reflux esopoghagitis these medications are a reasonable treatment option. However the drawback of using them is that they are a symptomatic treatment that loses its effectiveness with time.

Proton pump inhibiters actually stop the stomach from producing acid. This can help give the esophagus time to heal. The drug that is mainly used to treat children with reflux is called Prilosec. Children over the age of 11 can also take a similar drug called Nexium.

Prokinetic mediations are designed to improve your child’s intestinal motility. They do this by –

· Helping the esophagus squeeze close and stay closed
· Increase the LES pressure so the child does not regurgitate as often
· Accelerate the emptying of the stomach contents

The two most popular of the prokinetic medications that are prescribed are called Reglan and Bethanechol. Both medications are given to a child four times a day.

Reglan has quite a few side effects including sleeplessness, jittery behavior, tongue thrusting, arching and head turning. This means the side effects of giving your kid this drug is just as bad as the colic itself.