Hi Sam,

So sorry to hear your son is having such problems at so young an age. It's so hard to see your child suffer and not know the reason. However, it sounds like you've made some good changes and those changes could be leading you to the problem. Instead of looking at IBD first thing, talk to his pediatirician about the possibility that he has a food allergy or an intolerance to gluten, or possibly celiac sprue.

It's most likely that he has an intolerance to some food - wheat, gluten, dairy products like cow's milk, etc. Actual food allergies are rare and cause a very serious reaction like an anaphylactic response, closing of airways, severe swelling, etc. While food intolerances can cause annoying and sometimes severe symptoms like gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, nasal congestion, etc., they aren't life threatening. 

Your doctor should be able to do some blood tests to check for things like celiac, but the best way to test for food allergies is to see an allergist who can give him a pick test for the most common foods people are allergic to, or you could do an elimination diet with him - see my blog on this from a month or so ago. Or, a very effective but low-tech way of identifying trigger foods it to keep a diary of everything that your son eats (and I mean everything), keep this up for about a month, and then look to see if you can make any correlation between things he eats and symptoms he gets.

Work with his doctor, though, and you should be able to figure this out.

Good luck. I hope he's feeling tip-top very soon.

Cheers,

Elizabeth