Source: The Guardian >> Read Full Article and Comment
This mysterious yet common problem can easily be confused with more serious conditions
Shooting up . . . growing pains affect around 40% of children to varying degrees. Photograph: Leonard McLane/Getty Images
My two eldest children have periodically, since around the age of three, woken in the dead of night, howling in pain and clutching their lower legs. They are healthy and energetic by day and the same thing never happens to their younger brother. Our GP diagnosed “growing pains”, and their Granny remembers their father suffering the same problem, which is reassuring. But these episodes can be dramatic and disrupt sleep for the whole family.
When you look up “growing pains” online or in child health books, the information is infuriatingly vague. Some experts advise “cuddles” as the solution. But when our GP referred my daughter to a consultant paediatrician to rule out “other things”, this all became alarming. Google “paediatric leg pain” and you are instantly catapulted into the realm of arthritis and leukaemia. Fortunately, our daughter did not have anything of the sort.
However, this experience is common and parents can be understandably spooked by their children’s mysterious symptoms. Growing pains affect around 40% of children to varying degrees. “There is a lot of confusion among doctors over how to diagnose them,” says Helen Foster, professor of paediatric rheumatology at Newcastle Hospital. Many GPs, for instance, admit they do not have enough expertise when it comes to spotting musculoskeletal conditions in children, which growing pains can be confused with.
Nobody knows why they happen. But one thing is clear: they have nothing to do with growth. Children grow maximally as babies or during adolescence, but these are not times when you get growing pains. “It’s a total misnomer,” says Foster. “The term has stuck because it is just easier to remember than its medical name, ‘benign idiopathic nocturnal limb pains of childhood’. Growing pains is really just a label covering all sorts of uncertainties.”
Doctors do know that the pains are not linked to dietary deficiency or growth problems. They seem more common in active children, and children with hypermobile joints. And they tend to run in families. … Continue Reading
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