My six year old son has spent the last two years of his life suffering from stomach ulcers. Last year my ex-wife took him to see a pediatric gastroenterologist in Denver to have his stomach scoped to see the ulcers and to take a biopsy to test for H. Pylori, but he came up negative. It turns out his ulcers are caused by stress.
You might be asking how a six year old boy can be stressed out, but the answer is pretty simple when you realize that his mother and I moved him away from his home in California to be closer to his mom's family, and then just a few short months later his mom filed for divorce.
This sort of thing has really affected our young son, and because it is stress related we have had multiple doctors say that the only thing we can do is give him lansoprazole and ranitidine to keep his stomach acid in check. Well, it's not working.
There is hope though. I recently came across a study that tested the comparative effect of palm vitamin E and ranitidine on the healing of ethanol-induced gastric lesions in rats. The study showed a significant effect of vitamin E in the fight against ulcers. From the study:
We found that the mean ulcer index obtained after 1 week and 3 weeks of treatment with palm vitamin E and palm vitamin E Plus ranithidine (sic) were significantly lower compared to control and group treated with ranitidine alone. This finding suggests that palm vitamin E given alone or in combination with ranitidine is able to promote the healing of ethanol induced gastric lesions.
I started my son on vitamin E this past Monday and in just two days he had marked improvement in the pain he was reporting to me. I give him one tablet in the morning with his other medications, and one in the evening. We use the "needles" scale to determine his pain level. He tells me how many needles it feels like he has in his stomach. Well after a couple of days using vitamin E he regularly reported ZERO needles! It's easily the most improvement I've seen in two years!
If you are in the fight against stomach ulcers, you might want to incorporate vitamin E supplements into your medicine program. So far it's looking promising for my son. I only hope his mom agrees with me and continues giving him his supplements when he is at her house.