Is there any truth in the old wives tale 'no dairy when you have a stomach bug?'

Well it is based on the idea that you can become temporairily lactose intolerant after a bug. How true this is? I'm not sure. Ii have to admit I have always thought that there must be some logic to it.

I've never heard it for a stomach bug, but I know I've heard it said you should avoid dairy with a cold because it makes you produce more mucus.

I was once told by a gp that the bugs feed off something in dairy so by eating dairy (or at the time feeding my baby milk) you run the risk of keeping the bugs alive and therefore able to keep making you ill.

I have always made my kids go 24 hours on just fluids, mean mummy that I am!

Thanks all, I've told him not to question his mother and sent him to bed. ?

I was at the Dr's (a long time ago) with a stomach upset and the Dr said I had made it worse by drinking milk (which I had been doing to try and calm it).

When I had a tummy bug as a kid it would be 24 hours on liquid only, then 2nd day on toast and jelly/icecream, so I guess the icecream had dairy in, but only had it after a day of not being sick

My GP certainly said about the temporary lactose intolerance when my boy got gastro enteritis, and certainly until we realised everything dairy came back up violently. He could eat soya yoghurt, I think we gave wee man weetabox and rice milk.

He was not yet speaking and so could not demand proof

When my daughter was eight months old she got a really violent stomach bug. She had to go to hospital for something unrelated and stayed in for a couple of days. I was told at the hosp to only give her milk which I did (I was part breast and part bottle feeding at the time). She got worse and worse so they sent for the paediatrician. The first thing she said was get her off the formula milk although I could continue breastfeeding and top up with soya formula if needed. She told me that giving cows milk during a stomach upset can lead to lactose intolerance and indeed it did. My daughter recovered from the bug quite quickly once I stopped the formula but continued to be lactose intolerant for years - it gradully got better until by the time she was about 6 or 7 she was ok with milk again.

Maybe doesn't have the same effect on an adult, I'm not sure but perhaps that's where the old wives tale comes from?