New Childhood Condition: Milk & Cookie Disease

The cause for sleep disorders, chronic colds and coughs, and constipation in children, may be the tradition to give them milk and cookies before sleep. This was stated by the U.S. pediatric otolaryngologist Julie Wei from Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando.

In her clinical practice with children, she and her colleagues are often faced with the above symptoms, the cause of which could not be identified in the survey. Conventional treatments do not help. After analyzing these cases, Dr. Wei came to a conclusion that such a state is caused by the child’s habit to eat before going to bed. The combination of milk products and sweets causes gastroesophageal reflux. The situation is aggravated by the fact that the child is in a horizontal position and generally eats improperly. As a result, sleep disturbance and otolaryngological symptoms appear. Dr. Wei calls this condition “milk & cookie disease”.

Experience shows – it is enough to give up the tradition to feed the child with milk and cookies before bedtime, and make his or her diet healthy, for the above mentioned symptoms to disappear.