This common sweet treat could kill your baby: warning
A spoonful of honey could kill your baby.
Dr. Sam, a TikTok personality from Singapore, is warning parents about infantile botulism, which can be fatal or cause nerve damage and paralysis.
Children under the age of 1 should not eat any amount — even less than a spoonful — of honey because it could be contaminated with the bacteria Clostridium botulinum.
Poison Control also warns against feeding honey to kids under 12 months old.
“Children under the age of 12 months are at risk of infant botulism if they are fed honey or anything with honey in it. Botulism spores can be found in honey; when swallowed, the spores release a toxin,” reads a warning on Posion.org. “Infants’ systems are too immature to prevent this toxin from developing. In fact, most cases of botulism in the US are in infants.”
Mount Sinai noted that experts don’t know “exactly how long it takes for symptoms to develop,” but estimate it’s “about three to 30 days.” Symptoms include breathing that stops or slows, constipation, saggy eyelids, a “floppy” body and gagging, to name a few.
“Over a period of a few days, a child can become acutely ill. Treatment in an ICU, including a respirator and feeding through an IV or a tube may be needed,” the warning continued, noting that infant botulism can be life-threatening.
While many parents are aware of the dangers, Dr. Sam, who goes by @Skingapore on TikTok, hopes to remind caregivers of the mistake that could be deadly, as seen in a video with over 7.7 million views.
Dr. Sam, who did not disclose his last name, shared a cautionary tale of a 2-month-old baby boy who had no medical problems and was on a healthy diet of breast milk — until he started developing mysterious issues.
The tot suddenly stopped wanting to drink milk, an issue which went on for a week. His parents took him to the doctor, who noticed the baby had poor muscle tone. The baby’s condition worsened over the course of one to two weeks. He developed seizures, a chest infection and difficulty breathing.
“The medical team ran lots of tests but couldn’t find the underlying problem. His condition just kept getting worse to the extent that he was admitted to the ICU and the team was discussing end-of-life care with the parents,” said Dr. Sam.
“All seemed lost until they sent his stools for testing, where they found the culprit, Clostridium botulinum.”
He said that the bacteria produces a toxin that paralyzes muscles.
“If you found this name familiar it’s because that toxin is basically Botox,” he explained.
Doctors later found out that the bacteria came from a pacifier that was laced with honey.
“About 6 to 10% of honey has been found to contain spores of this bacteria and while nothing happens to us (adults) when we take honey, infants below the age of 1 don’t really have a very well-developed gut,” he said.
The bacteria spores go into the gut and “germinate, colonize, reproduce and wreak havoc in infants, resulting in infantile botulism.”
He said that, thankfully, the boy was successfully treated and discharged after a month in the hospital. In a follow-up video, he explained the treatment for the condition is the antitoxin botulism immune globulin intravenous, also known as BabyBIG.
He said that’s why both raw and processed honey comes with a warning to not feed it to infants.
Some commenters on the video said the honey warning was news to them, and others admitted they had to protect their children from people wanting to feed them honey.
“Whaaaat? To think that my mom used to put my pacifier in honey to convince me to keep it in my mouth,” someone wrote.
“I had to fight my parents so hard about honey and in the end, I didn’t leave the baby with them until she was a years old cause I couldn’t trust them,” said another.
“In my country, it is common/a tradition to feed babies honey at birth. I have to literally fight my in-laws to not feed both of my babies any honey,” said a third.
TikTok has become a place where doctors and parents issue warnings as well as share their parental choices. Millennial parents were recently accused of child abuse for a trend that shows them feeding their babies chunks of meat to ween their kids off spoonfed purees.
Another mom on TikTok was criticized for feeding her baby a vegan diet.
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