Pediatric indigestion is a common clinical syndrome in pediatrics, caused by internal injury from milk or food, or external contraction of diseases and evils, leading to gastrointestinal motility disorders. It also includes conditions such as poor gastric motility known as gastroparesis and gastroesophageal reflux disease. Clinically, it is characterized by intermittent upper abdominal discomfort or pain, fullness, heartburn (acid reflux), and belching. Often, due to chest tightness, early satiety, abdominal bloating, and other discomforts, children are unwilling to eat or try to eat as little as possible, have poor sleep at night, and many dreams. Pediatric indigestion falls under the category of "food accumulation" in Traditional Chinese Medicine. TCM believes that this disease is mostly caused by internal injury from milk or food in children, which leads to stagnation and failure to digest, and qi stagnation.
Milky food stagnation type: The child has a sallow complexion and is thin, often irritable and crying, restless at night, with poor appetite, or vomiting sour milk, abdominal bloating, diarrhea with a sour and foul odor, short and yellow urine like rice washings, often with a low fever; the tongue is red, the coating is greasy, the pulse is slippery and rapid, and the fingerprint is purple and stagnant.
Spleen deficiency with food stagnation type: The child has a dull and yellow complexion, is lethargic and weak, restless at night, lacks desire for milk and food, has a full abdomen that feels better with pressure, and has loose stools; the tongue coating is white and greasy, the pulse is fine, deep, and slippery, and the fingerprint is light and clear.
It is recommended to perform moxibustion once a day, targeting 2 to 3 acupoints each time, with each acupoint being treated for 30 to 40 minutes. Rotate the points treated, with a 10-day period constituting one course of treatment, and then rest for 2 to 3 days before continuing with the next course. (If time permits and there is a need, more acupoints can be treated with moxibustion. The specific duration should be adjusted according to one's own physical needs.)
1. To prevent this condition, one should control the diet flexibly, with milk and food intake scheduled and measured, avoiding extreme hunger or fullness, and not overeating raw, cold, or greasy foods. 2. Children should strengthen physical exercise, engage more in outdoor activities, and get more sunlight to enhance their physical fitness. 3. Food therapy recipe: Amomum villosum (sha ren) porridge. First, cook 100 grams of japonica rice into porridge, then add 5 grams of ground Amomum villosum into the porridge and cook slightly more. This recipe has the effects of warming the spleen and stomach, unblocking stagnant qi, dispersing heat, and stopping vomiting, suitable for symptoms of indigestion such as stomach pain, bloating, and vomiting.