Glycerin?

[meaniejean]

Calvin has been having a lot of trouble the last few days and continues to have some alarming BMs as well as begging for glucose tablets, having abdominal pain and needing to be held. We purchased a vitamin for him this weekend that contains glycerin as the first ingredient. It was the only sugar-free vitamin we could find. I didn't think much of it until today. The only possibly questionable item he had is a few bites of avocado - certainly not something he has ever seemed to have a problem with before.

Now, my colonoscopy prep this past year was a glycerin solution and that stuff really messed me for weeks after. I had always assumed that it was the apple juice the doc suggested I drink during the "fasting" phase of the prep, but now I don't know.

Is glycerin allowed? I apologize if this has already been addressed. I am about to do an internet search. And I plan to call the GI in the morning - I'm just afraid they are going to want to do a scope on my little guy and so I'm trying to find out what the bleeding and mucus could be from.

Thanks to all.

[colormist]

It's definitely a sweetener (link on wikipedia about it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycerol )--as to whether it's a safe sweetener or an unsafe sweetener, I have no idea. I tend to avoid anything that I'm not familiar with. My suggestion would be to do a little controlled testing and (keeping all other things constant) remove the vitamin from his diet for a few days (a couple days shouldn't hurt anything--I didn't take vitamins for 20 years) just to see if he improves.

On the wikipedia link, it says, "The glycerol component can be converted to glucose by the liver and provides energy for cellular metabolism." That would make me think it's unsafe, since generally we don't have that function in our livers.

[meaniejean]

Thanks. We are going to remove it and stick to safe bread/crackers and meats for a few days. These safe saltines we found at Whole Foods are the staple of his diet this morning. His little brother is a saltine addict - that's my boy!

[Tammy]

Regina can only do glycerin in a limited capacity. She really liked a SF fudgecicle we found one time. She was fine if she only had one every couple of days. If she ate them every day she had terrible diarrhea.

The vits would be a good place to look. They'd be my guess.

[meaniejean]

When we told the GI about the mucus and rectal bleeding she wanted to check for C-Diff infection since Sawyer had this at a few months old (which we are not sure we believe anymore). Then she said that she also wanted to do an endoscopy as well to check for other malabsorption issues. It seems to us that she would rather believe that something else is also going on in addition to fructose intolerance instead of being wrong about the possibility of it being HFI (since she ignored my concerns).

I have done some reading about glycerin and glycerol since his reaction to the vitamin. This reaction would explain why he had such a bad reaction to the fast - makes your body release glycerol (pure form of glycerin found in the body).

We took away the vitamin and he was better the next day. Now if we could just stay away from the tiny fructose mistakes to give his poor body the chance to heal.

Our mistakes so far have been - unsweetened rice milk, unsweetened hemp milk, lemon juice, natural fruit flavors, avocado, broccoli, green beans and the glycerin in the baby vitamin - grrrrr!!!